"150 YEARS OF THE 14TH AMENDMENT"

“150 YEARS OF THE 14^TH AMENDMENT”

            I’m sending out my weekly blog a couple of days early because today is the 150^th anniversary of the adoption of the 14^th amendment to the Constitution.  It was ratified on July 9, 1868, and on July 29, Secretary of State William Seward declared that it was officially ratified and now part of the Constitution. 

            This amendment is one of the most litigated of the parts of the Constitution because it did four important things.  First, it established the right of citizens to due process in relationship to the government.  Second, it provided equal protection to all citizens.  Third, it established the idea of “birthright” of citizenship – if you are born “here” in USA or our territories, you are automatically an American citizen.  Fourth, it indicated for the first time that state and local governments were subject to these three steps. 

            This 14^th Amendment has had a difficult time in American history.    Even while it was being ratified, white Southerners were working to undercut it, and indeed we did undercut it through a reign of terror and legislative manipulation.  It would take almost 100 years before it would gain even a minimal force of law through the Civil Rights Acts and the Voting Rights Acts of 1964-65.   In a terrible but not surprising decision in 2013, the US Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act by taking out its “special” enforcement status for those states whose history indicated an unwillingness to adhere to the 14^th Amendment.  It should be no surprise that decision (Shelby v. U.S.) came out of the state of Alabama, a state as Martin Luther King, Jr., said in his 1963 speech: “with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification.”

            This struggle over the 14^th Amendment is so great because, in many ways, it is the crux on which American history and indeed the idea of constitutional government hinges – it always seems to be hanging in the balance.  Do we believe in the idea of equality or not?  Our history says “no,” for the most part, but the 14^th Amendment is among our better angels, urging us to say “yes.”  Many of our leaders have understood the importance and the meaning of this Amendment.  Thurgood Marshall was one who understood it, and he put it this way in his Bicentenial speech in 1987:  “While the Union survived the Civil War, the Constitution did not.  In its place arose a new, more promising basis for justice and equality, the 14^th Amendment….guaranteeing equal protection of the laws.”

            Marshall correctly understood that the intent of the Constitution in its beginning was to keep power in the hands of white men of property, and so there was no mention of the full humanity of women or of people of African descent or Native Americans.  Yet, the idea of equality was so powerful and so electric, that the white men of property could not confine it to themselves.  Women heard their names called.  African-Americans heard their names called.  Native Americans heard their names called.  Latinx Americans heard their names called.  Asian-Americans heard their names called.  Poor people heard their names called.  LGBTQ people heard their names called.  The power of the 14^th Amendment is to speak to all of us:  the power of the idea of equality is calling to us all.  That is one of the great things that we should remember as we celebrate this powerful amendment to the Constitution.

            It is not just progressives who have understood the meaning of this 14^th Amendment.  Regressives have understood it too.  That’s why the fight over the 14^th Amendment continues.  Those who speak of being “originalists” over the authority of the Constitution are seeking to take us back to the days of the origins of the Constitution, when white men of property were seen as those entitled to power.   There is a lot of talk these days about the changing demographics in America, with young people and people of color becoming the majority in the USA sooner than many of us realize.   Some progressives have hopes in this demographic change, and I have hopes too.  Yet, we should realize that old white men (and women, it seems, since the majority of them voted for Trump) will not yield this power easily, if we yield it at all.  Limits on voting rights, purging voter rolls, overt gerrymandering – all designed to take us back to the original Constitution.  And, now the Supreme Court seems to taking a hard turn towards this regressive status, so perhaps a Dred Scott decision or a Plessy decision awaits us in the near future.

            So, let us give thanks for those who worked so hard for this amendment and others to follow.  Take time this week to read the 14^th Amendment – our very lives as a nation may depend on our ability to believe and to live it.  Then, while you still can, make sure that you are registered to vote and that all your friends, neighbors and colleagues are registered to vote – these November elections will tell us if we are moving with the 14^th Amendment or against it.

"NEIGHBORS OR FASCISTS?"

“NEIGHBORS OR FASCISTS?”

            While we were traveling in Boston after our trip to Princeton, we went to see the Mr. Rogers movie entitled “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”  It was powerful and moving.  The approach of seeing the “other” as potential neighbor rather than potential enemy obviously has deep resonance in these Trumpian days when the ”other” is not even remotely close to being seen as neighbor (unless they are Vladmir Putin).  In these days, the “other” is definitely seen as enemy.   Mr. Rogers urged a different approach, and I have seen many comments on this movie, all wishing that we had his voice now in the midst of the strife and the stoking of the primal fears that are within us all.

            This year is the 50^th anniversary of his first show, and the movie did a fine job of showing the evolution of the show and the thought of the man behind it.  What struck me the most about the movie, however, was its narration of its first week, a week in which we are introduced to the ruler of the neighborhood, King Friday the 13^th.  It is the summer of 1968, and violence and changes and struggles are rampant in American culture.  In light of this, King Friday the 13^th orders that a wall be built around his castle to keep the “bad” people out and to keep any changes from occurring.  He also orders signs to be posted:  “No Changes!!  No Changes!!!” 

            The result of this wall-building on Mr. Rogers’ show in 1968 was not the safety and tranquility that King Friday the 13^th sought, but rather an increase in fear and a dissolution of trust between the neighbors INSIDE the wall.  It was eerily prescient of the time in which we now live, and one could only marvel at the genius of Mr. Rogers, whose emphasis on being neighbors caused him to understand how much we would resist this idea of neighborliness, no matter the era in which we live.  The idea of seeing others as “neighbor” requires that we bump up against the categories which the world uses to separate us – race, gender, culture, nation, sexuality, income level, and I have to sadly add, religion.  Israel’s passage of the Jewish state law, Trump’s and the pandering Republicans’ emphasis on the danger of the “other,” Europe’s rise of anti-immigrant political groups, the radicalizing of some Islamic groups, white Christian support of separating children and their families at the border – these and many other developments point to the power of fear to push us towards seeing the “other” as enemy rather than neighbor.   Walls go up in response to fear, and I wish that I felt that Donald Trump had the wisdom to see the deep irony of the former Republican hero Ronald Reagan telling the Soviet Union to tear down the Berlin wall, while Trump seeks many more dollars to rebuild that same wall on the Mexico border.    

            I don’t think that the Trumpsters are capable of this, but King Friday the 13^th had the wisdom to tear down the wall and to start a newer and better way of relating to others.  I’m hoping that a stinging political defeat this November will make President Trump recalibrate as King Friday the 13^th did.  Yet, there are two problems with my hope.  First, there is no guarantee of a stinging political defeat in November.  It will require a huge voter turnout, and I hope that I am wrong, but right now I’m wondering if we can do it.  Please prove me wrong by registering to vote yourself, getting your friends, colleagues and neighbors to register – and get them to do the same for their circle of friends.  Then work to make sure that you and all of them vote in the November 6 election.  Vote for moving us back towards seeing one another as neighbors rather than as enemies.

            The second problem with my hope is that I am not certain that Donald Trump will be as wise as King Friday the 13^th.  I’m not sure that he will change his course, no matter what happens in November.  Yet, even so, if the Republicans lose control of one or both legislative houses, there will be significant roadblocks to what Trump can legally do.  Many of my friends believe that unless those legislative changes are made, we are well on the way to fascism.  I don’t want to believe that, but I must say that the lack of courage of Republicans to stand up to Trump gives me pause. 

            It makes me wish all the harder that we could turn to being neighbors, that we would learn that the approach of King Friday and Donald Trump (who seems to wish that he could be king)  to build walls and separate us makes for disaster rather than peace and security.  As Octavia Butler poses in her powerful book “The Parable of the Sower,” do we want to be neighbors or fascists?  We’ll know soon enough, and the waiting is terrifying.  To paraphrase the quote attributed to John Wesley, let us work as hard as we can, for as long as we can, with as many people as we can to move us towards being neighbors rather than being fascists.

"ETERNAL VIGILANCE IS THE PRICE OF LIBERTY"

“ETERNAL VIGILANCE IS THE PRICE OF LIBERTY”

            July is the birthday month of many strong women!   Caroline (July 3), Margaret Walker (July 7), June Jordan (July 9), Mary McLeod Bethune (July 10), and today, July 16, is the birthday of Ida B. Wells.  She was born in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on the land owned by the man who “owned” her father and mother, Jim and Elizabeth Wells.  She was born just before General Grant’s troops captured Holly Springs in the Civil War.  It would be a few more months before Union control of Holly Springs was solidified, but Ida Wells lived the early years of her life in slavery, yet under the oversight of the Union army.   On the land where she was born, there now stands not the house of her former owner but rather a museum in her memory.

            And, remembered she should be!  Though born into slavery, she came to consciousness in the time of the Emancipation Proclamation and the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War.  Thus, her primary definition was not “slave,” not “property of white people.”  Her primary definition was daughter of God, woman held in slavery by those who professed the idea that all people are created equal.  She never allowed that internalized oppression to enter her heart and consciousness.  She never accepted the idea that she and her family were slaves because they were supposed to be slaves.  She understood from the earliest stages that she was held as a slave because of the oppressive nature of the masters, and this consciousness made a huge difference in her life and in her imagination.

            I have written about Ida Wells often, and Catherine Meeks and I are now working on a book about her witness for our time.  For today’s blog, I want to share one snapshot from her life.  In 1875 in its last significant law for civil rights until 1957, the U. S. Congress passed an act that forbade segregation on public accommodations.  In 1883, the US Supreme Court ruled the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional, and the floodgates of segregation and re-enslavement were open fully.  In the spring of 1884, Ida Wells followed her usual pattern of purchasing a seat in the ladies car on the train on a trip out of Memphis.  After the train had pulled out, the conductor came to collect the tickets and then informed her that she would have to move to the car reserved for black people.  Seventy-one years before Rosa Parks, she refused to give up her seat, and when he grabbed her and tried to pull her up from her seat, she bit his hand and braced herself not to move – no nonviolent resistance for her.  He went to get male reinforcements, and it took three men to throw her off the train.

            Undeterred, she took the railroad to court under Tennessee law, and the judge who heard the case was a former Union soldier.  He ruled in her favor and awarded her $500 in damages.  She was thrilled with the victory, but it was short-lived.  The railroad appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, and in 1887, they overturned the verdict.  Ida Wells was crestfallen and wrote in her diary on April 11:

“I had hoped for such great things from my suit for my people generally.  I have firmly believed all along that the law was on our side and would, when we appealed to it, give us justice.  I feel shorn of that belief and utterly discouraged, and just now if it were possible would gather my race in my arms and fly far away with them.”

            Wells was beginning to develop the sense that the power of racism was deep and wide in those classified as “white,” and she would later lift up a phrase that ironically Ronald Reagan would use as one of his hallmark phrases:  “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”  Wells meant it in the sense that we know it today:  racism is deeply embedded and intertwined in our American consciousness, and we must always be working to mitigate its loathsome power.  Some of us had hoped that its power was ebbing with the election of Barack Obama, but we have seen so many examples of its continuing power, not the least of which was the election of the ultimate white man, Donald Trump, whose signature phrase was “Make America Great Again.”  We call it “staying woke” today – Wells called it eternal vigilance.

              Wells would be shaking her head but also shaking her fist and calling on all of us to stand and seek to deliver on the promises of the powerful idea of equality, adopted in her birth month into the Declaration of Independence.  Through many dangers, toils, and snares, she stood and delivered, and on her birthday, let us seek to walk in some of her steps.  If you’d like a short intro to her life, let me know, and I’ll send you one.  Or find her autobiography “Crusade for Justice,” lovingly pieced together by her daughter Alfreda Duster. 

"BLACK JESUS AND FREEDOM TO THE PRISONERS"

“BLACK JESUS AND FREEDOM TO THE PRISONERS”

            When we moved from Norfolk to Nashville late in 1980, I began working for the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons(SCJP), whose purpose it was to work on prison reform.   I also wanted to transfer my ministerial membership from Norfolk Presbytery to Middle Tennessee Presbytery (both have since changed names).  Middle Tennessee Presbytery was deeply divided at that time, much like the country is now, with only a few votes making a difference in each important issue.  This was also prior to reunion with the former UPCUSA (1983), so I expected and got an extensive grilling on the floor of the Presbytery meeting.  One of the opponents to my being received into the Presbytery read a quote at the meeting from the brochures of the SCJP to the effect that our ultimate goal was the abolition of prisons in the USA.

            He asked me (lots of “he’s” at that point) if SCJP really believed that prisons should be abolished, and if I believed it.  I wanted to keep my answer simple and persuasive at the same time, so I said that it was biblical, that Jesus had said in his first sermon in Luke 4, that he come to free the prisoners.  So, yes, I believed in the Bible, and I believed that Jesus was being literal when he said that.   He had come to free the prisoners.  There was a fair amount of murmuring in response, but I did squeak into the Presbytery by a few votes.

            I was reminded of that episode this week when a multiracial (African/Hispanic) friend of mine wrote me to ask about the mass incarceration rate in the USA.  In specific, he was wondering about Jesus and prisons.  He had noticed that Jesus talked about prisoners a lot, and he remembered Jesus’ sermon from Luke 4 about bringing liberty to the captives.  He was noting that most people believe that the purpose of prisons is a response to crime, and did Jesus want to abolish prisons?  He was wondering why Jesus and the Bible itself looked at prisons and the judicial system in such a different way, ending with this note:  “They seemed to have no trust in the judicial system.”

            My response was that we must remember that Jesus was an oppressed and marginalized person, born into imperial Rome.  He had no rights as a citizen and from Rome’s point of view, he was merely a commodity to be used by Rome.   In this sense, I usually refer to the Black Jesus, not because of the color of his skin or even his racial classification, but because of his socio-economic status at the margins of Roman society.  It is no accident that the historian of the four Gospel writers, Luke, places the birth of Jesus squarely in the shadow of the Roman Empire.  Black Jesus would understand that the Roman prisons did not exist as a response to crime but as a tool of social control.  Jesus’ view of prisons was similar to the views of those people held as slaves – they would have no trust in the judicial systems of the masters.

            It is in this context that we must reflect on the imprisonment of the children of immigrants, separating them from their families, no matter what their age.  Even the proponents of this horrid doctrine defend it not as a response to crime but as a deterrent to certain behaviors.  Multiply this by a thousand times, and you will get a sense of the mass incarceration of millions of African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans.  Prisons are not a response to crime in the United States – if they were, there would be so many more people classified as “white” held in our jails and prisons.  If they were, there would be so many fewer people of color held in our jails and prisons. 

            I grew up with Jesus as a white, middle class man, and because of that context, it was easy for my forbears to take a passage like Isaiah 61:1-4 and spiritualize it and individualize it.  They made it into a passage about becoming free from sin and getting into heaven when I died, and I believed that teaching.  Seeing the Black Jesus, however, has helped me understand that the Bible and Jesus did not mean for this idea to be spiritualized.  They meant for Roman (and Babylonian and Egyptian) prisons to be emptied of their brothers and sisters so that justice could be done. 

            Would I abolish prisons if I could?  Absolutely.  What would I put in their place?  A system where those who have been oppressed and marginalized could be brought into the center of life and society, a system involving recognition and repentance and reparations and recovery.   Would there be any prisons left?  Yes, likely, for those rich and others whose core beliefs seem to involve robbing and hurting others, but even the goal for them would be rehabilitation.  To quote the Apostle Paul from the beginning of the 5^th chapter of his famous letter to the Galatians:  “Freedom is what we have.  Christ Jesus has set us free – stand then as free people, and do not allow yourselves to become slaves again.”  As long as we have prisons, we will have slaves, and we all will be slaves.

"SALEM WITCH TRIALS"

“SALEM WITCH TRIALS”

            This past week was one of traveling and reflecting, after my lecture at Princeton Seminary.  We took the African-American heritage tour in Boston and then went to Salem to look at the extraordinary 10 months or so in 1692, which became know as the Salem witch trials.  Our daughter Susan had devised and directed a play last year on the Salem girls who had become possessed by demonic powers and had accused many, many people of being witches.  Nineteen of those who were accused were executed, eighteen by hanging, and one by the medieval torture of “pressing,” where more and more weight was gradually added to the person’s body until it was crushed.  More died in prison awaiting trial or were unable to pay their way out of prison before they died.  It was a time when mass fear seemed to overwhelm everyone.

            Susan led us on this tour, and it was sobering and powerful, because in many ways, we seem to be hovering around there in 2018.  The Salem Witch Museum had a formulary for various periods in American history, where similar occurrences happened.  Their formula was “fear+trigger= scapegoat.”  They emphasized that fear was ever present in Puritan New England, and that when the girls got possessed, that served as a trigger that led to many people becoming scapegoats, with disastrous consequences.  The Museum asked visitors to give suggestions for more episodes in American history.  I suggested the time of lynchings in American history.  There was a great white fear of African-Americans, triggered by the new amendments to the Constitution which affirmed the citizenship and even the humanity of African-Americans.  This fear and trigger led to the lynchings of so many African-Americans, and yes, there is still no federal law against lynching.

            And, I also added 2018 to the suggestion. It was no stretch to put our time into that category.   I have been thinking that we are close to the time of the 1850’s, when the country split apart into the Civil War.  Or, at times, I think that we are close to the 1890’s, when the white Southerners, who lost the Civil War, reconstructed their power with both laws and violence, with the conservative Supreme Court ratifiying their work.

             Our time at Salem makes me wonder if we are not closer to 1692.  With the Trump administration’s evil policy on family separation, we see the outcome of the fear plus the trigger leading to scapegoats.  Trump built his campaign and now his presidency on cultivating fear of the other, especially immigrants from Mexico and south and from Africa.  Trump seems to be doing this in order to get votes, but the Salem history should give us pause.  If this fear persists and begins to grow, there will be a tipping point at which the process takes on a life of its own and is no longer under any person’s or group’s control.   The Salem terror was relatively short lived, lasting only 10 months or so.  I asked Susan when and why it ended, and while she named several reasons, there were two main reasons.  First, a judge finally stood up and no longer allowed “spectral” evidence, meaning that those possessed could no longer cite ghosts as the verification of someone’s being a witch.  Most of the evidence evaporated at that point.  Second, the girls accused the governor’s wife of being a witch, and the usual political power stepped in.  However, nineteen innocent people had been given the death penalty by then (most of them were women). 

            Are we in that kind of time now?  I hope not, but I am uneasy about the kind of demonic power that has been loosed in our current times.  The best current cure is for all of us to step up and be witnesses for justice and equity and mercy, and of course, all of us must register to vote in the November elections.   The Democrats are no saviors, but in these difficult times, they may be our best political hope.  So, register to vote, and get your friends and neighbors and colleagues to register and vote. 

"CO'S, FELONIES, AND GOD'S IRONY"

“CO’S, FELONIES, AND GOD’S IRONY”

            For those in the ATL area, don’t forget that I am preaching at North Decatur Presbyterian this Sunday, June 17 – worship is at 10 AM!

            I heard from several folk in response to last week’s blog on my journey, and one of my long-time friends, David Billings, remembered all that we had shared together.  With his permission, I’m sharing one of the many stories of our adventures together.  David has written a powerful book on white racism entitled “Deep Denial,” and if you have not read it, please get a copy and do so.  You can order one from the publisher http://www.cddbooks.com/Bookstore/DetailPage.asp?item=978-1-934390-04-7

or from Amazon.

            David and I grew up together in Helena, Arkansas, and we bonded over the years, so much so that after our sophomore years in college (he at Ole Miss, me at Rhodes), we went to Brooklyn together to work in the summer program of Lafayette Presbyterian Church, working with black kids from the Bedford-Stuyvesant area.  Our hearts were changing from our white supremacist roots, and we wanted to see what life outside the South would be like.  To be truthful, we were dazzled by the thought of being in New York City!   We sampled many delights and mysteries of the city, but the biggest impact on us was that the experience changed our lives forever – we could no longer believe the lies of white supremacy.  Racism still lived in our hearts, but we began to see a different world.  I thank God for David – I don’t think that either of us would have gone to NYC by ourselves – and we have continued to help each other grow over lo these many years.

            That background brings me to this week’s story.  We both went to seminary after college – me to Vanderbilt and he to Perkins at SMU.  In the spring of 1970, we both were part of a student movement to oppose the Vietnam War by dropping out of seminary and challenging the draft system to take away the automatic deferments of seminary students and ministers.  As I wrote last week, our movement failed miserably, and the draft board was delighted to draft us, which they did.  David and I both applied for conscientious objector status, which I got, but he did not.  We heard on the street that the local draft board turned him down because he had a raucous reputation in high school, and they knew that he was just trying to get out of the draft. I had always been seen as a likely ministerial student, so they figured that I was sincere.  David was scheduled to be drafted and sent to Vietnam.

            But, in his background, there was a strange and oppressive case.  In his last two years at Ole Miss in 1966-68, he had become involved in a United Methodist coffeehouse on campus, a place that sought to get black and white students together (James Meredith had become the 1^st black student at Ole Miss in 1962).  He did great ministry there, and because of that, he became well known to the local white authorities.  They developed some trumped up charges against him and some others, charging him with grand larceny.  It was a ridiculous case, and we felt that it would be easily dismissed.  But, a local white friend contacted David’s dad and told him that the authorities were serious – they would send David to Parchman prison on this charge.  So, his dad found a good local attorney, and they worked out a plea deal – David would plead guilty to malicious mischief, a felony, and he would be sentenced to 5 years probation and 5 years exile from Mississippi.  David reluctantly took the deal, and it was a huge injustice – small, of course, compared to many in Mississippi, but nonetheless an injustice.  We cursed the state of Mississippi, and David left for New York, awaiting word on the draft.

            In no small touch of irony, David finally heard from the draft board – they had discovered that he had been convicted of a felony, and thus he was ineligible for the draft – he would not be allowed to serve his country by being blown up in Vietnam!  With a sigh of relief, we got a good laugh at the ironic development, until we remembered all the young men who died and whose lives were scarred forever in that war.  We also sobered up when I heard from a friend on the Helena draft board that they never saw our applications for the CO status, that the secretary of the draft board had decided that issue, a rank violation of the law.

            So, as we tremble to wait to see what war Donald Trump will drag us into, I am heartened by this memory of David’s and my journey together, by our friendship and love, and by all the twists and turns that we have shared together.  I have known him since 1956, the year that the Yankees (his favorite baseball team) won the World Series yet again, and Mickey Mantle won the Triple Crown (in baseball, not horse racing).   I am so grateful for these 62 years and counting.

"ON THE JOURNEY"

“ON THE JOURNEY”

            On June 23, I will be giving a lecture at the Barth Pastors’ Conference at Princeton Seminary on the “Witness of the Pastor.”  I have been working on it for awhile, and that work has called back memories of the beginning of my pastoral journey.  I was ordained as a pastor 43 years ago this week on June 8, 1975 by Norfolk Presbytery.  Caroline and I had been called to be the first clergy couple to serve in a local church in the former Southern Presbyterian Church  (PCUS).  We were called to serve St. Columba Ministries, which included being pastors to the 12 member church there and to develop a community ministry for the 1500 low income families housed in Robin Hood Apartments.  It was funded by Norfolk Presbytery.  At my ordination ceremony, the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Virginia Beach irritated my mother greatly by indicating that, if at any time, I wanted to get out of the ministry, I could do it.  As he spoke those words, my mother heard that he was discrediting me, but I heard it that he himself was tired of the ministry.

            I did not take I personally because it had been such a hard journey for me to get to that place in my life.  As regular readers of my blog know, I grew up in the church, and I was nurtured greatly by it.  The members of First Presbyterian Church in Helena, Arkansas, helped my mother to raise me as a single, working mom, and on that level, they were the community that they were supposed to be.  Whereas I told myself that my main definition was “boy abandoned by my father,” they told me and showed me that my real definition was “boy claimed by my Father (and Mother) God.”  It was a powerful gift to me, and I will forever praise them for it.  They also told me over and over again that I would someday make a fine minister.  That part was not so believable.  In white, Southern culture, the ministry was largely de-humanized because we did not want to experience Jesus as a real human being.  We did not want to focus on the life and ministry of Jesus, because if we did, it would be difficult to support slavery and neo-slavery.   So we chose to make Jesus other-worldly, and we chose to make the purpose of life to get us into heaven when we died.  Even at a young age, this was unattractive to me – I liked life and living too much!

            Then I went off to college and learned how much the church had been complicit in slavery and exploitation of women and in believing in redemptive violence.  So, I dismissed the church as a viable option for me, and besides that, I never wanted to be in the public eye as ministers were.  I loved theology and religion, though, so after college, I went to seminary to study religion and move towards a doctorate in theology.  It was right in the middle of the Vietnam War, and I wrestled mightily with the automatic deferment that I received as a seminary student.  In the middle of all that, my fiancé broke up with me, and my world went swirling around.  In May, 1970, after the USA began to openly bomb in Cambodia and Laos, I joined a seminary movement that sought to get deferments from the draft taken away from ministers and seminary students.  The idea was to force churches and ministers to oppose the war.  I joined a small group of students who decided to drop out of seminary and challenge the draft-exempt status of church-related occupations. 

            To no one’s surprise, the draft boards were happy to have more fodder for the war, and I was drafted.  I knew that I was not going to be a soldier in such an unjust war, and I wrestled for several weeks about what to do.  It was either Canada, jail, or conscientious objector (CO). I felt like the CO was a lot like the draft-exempt status of ministers – it was an educated person’s way out of the war.  My friends Ed Loring and Harmon Wray helped me discern that the CO could be much more than that, and so finally I applied for it and got it.   Ironically, I did my two years’ service  as the manager and director of a halfway house for men getting out of prison in Nashville.  It changed my life, and later, Ed Loring again helped me to re-start my 7 year journey through seminary.  He was then on the faculty at Columbia Seminary, and I ended up going there and graduating in 1975, and then it was on to Norfolk.

            It has been quite a journey, and I thank my mother and God and Caroline and so many others for it.  Now, after 43 years, it’s on to the next phase, whatever that is!