I have never plugged another blog so vehemently as I am now plugging this one.
My wife and I were up until 1:30 in morning, rolling in laughter at this blog because IT’S ALL TRUE!!!
The author is not forthcoming with personal identity details, but that’s the blogger’s prerogative. The experiences chronicled and parodied here are almost universal among mainline clergy. I’m actually a little scared that if my parishioners found this blog, they would be able to read my mind.
Please check this out, especially if you happen to be the clergy type.
Martin Buber, author of ‘I and Thou’. Image is in the public domain.
Mark 9:30-37
Today, I would like to talk about it. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Maybe it’s been on your mind too. It goes without saying that I think it’s important. In fact, it’s probably the kind of thing that we should have brought up sooner than we have. What is it? Well, I’ll tell you what it is. In fact, I’m already telling you what it is. I’m talking about it right now. Do you get it?
It.
It is a big word. It is not very long, but it has a lot of meaning packed into itself. The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber says that there are two ways in which you can relate to a being in the world (i.e. a person, life form, thing, etc.): you can relate to any being as an It or as a You.
When we choose to relate to something (or someone) as an It, we objectify that being. In other words, we treat it like an object to be used. Objects have value. They are worth something. Their value is often based on their function (i.e. what they can do). My car has value based on its ability to take me from point A to point B efficiently and comfortably. We make use of objects as means to an end. When a particular object has outlived its functionality, it is either fixed or thrown away and replaced.
When, on the other hand, we choose to relate to something (or someone) as a You, we personalize that being. A person doesn’t have value or worth. A person has dignity. You can’t put a price on a person’s life. A person is literally priceless. A person is not an object to be used. A person can never be used as a means to an end. As the philosopher Immanuel Kant has famously said, each and every person is an end in himself (or herself). When a person’s life or existence comes to an end, that person is mourned. He or she can never be replaced.
I begin today by talking about the word it because of the place this word holds in this morning’s reading from Mark’s gospel. The scene begins as so many of them do, with the disciples competing, posturing, backbiting, one-upping, gossiping, and generally showing off amongst themselves. “Who is the greatest?” they ask each other. “Who among us is Jesus’ favorite?” “Which one of us has the truest and best interpretation of Jesus’ teachings?” When I read this, I think about our own denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), as it is currently in the process of ripping itself in two over the issue of homosexuality. Each side in this debate claims to have a monopoly on God’s truth and the only legitimate interpretation of Scripture. Behind this bitter argument, I feel like I can still hear the echoes of Jesus’ disciples fight amongst themselves over who is the greatest. As usual, the disciples’ self-centered argument blinds them from seeing what Jesus is showing them about God, themselves, and reality. They can’t see the forest for the trees.
Cue Jesus. How does Jesus respond to this latest display of religious ridiculousness? He turns their idea of greatness on its head by saying, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” What happens next is even more interesting. We the readers encounter that big-little word: It. The text tells us that Jesus, “took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’”
Most of us will be familiar with this story of the child from Sunday school. Many of us who grew up going to church remember singing songs like Jesus loves the little children of the world and looking at pictures of a kind and smiling Jesus, playing with children, holding them in his arms, and resting them on his knee. We tend to filter these gospels scenes through our own idealized images of childhood as a time of innocence and playfulness. In first century Palestine, they had no such illusions. In that world, they had a 30% infant mortality rate. Of those who survived, 30% were dead by the age of five and 60% by the age of fifteen. For folks in that culture, childhood was a time of danger. Children were vulnerable. For parents, children were necessary but uncertain investments. Children just didn’t matter to people in that society because they were little more than a drain on family resources until they reached young adulthood.
A child then, in that society, was no more than an It. It was a vulnerable liability. Jesus, when he wanted to turn his disciples’ preconceived notions of power and greatness upside down, held up a child as the symbol of the divine presence in their midst, not because he thought children were cute and innocent, but because he knew they were vulnerable. Jesus looked past the It and saw the You in the ones who matter least. Doing so, he taught his followers, is the key to seeing and serving God in this world.
Today, two thousand years later, it seems that we are still learning this lesson from Jesus. We still have an innate tendency mistake a You for an It, to treat a person like an object. How many times have we heard scorned lovers cry, “I feel so used” or “Such-and-such a person used me”? How often do we hear powerful and successful people say things like “It is not my problem” or “It is not my responsibility” in relation to the poorest and most vulnerable members of society? If we’re going to call ourselves Christians, if we want to take Jesus’ words seriously, then we have to agree with him that “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
This is the fundamental principle underlying all Christian ethics. This is where the It becomes a You. Martin Buber said, “In every You we address the eternal You”, which is God. The Bible tells us in 1 John 4:16, “God is love and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” Whenever we flawed and finite mortals find it in our little hearts to love in the slightest degree, we touch the very face of God. In that moment when an It object becomes a You person in our eyes, the veil between heaven and earth is rent asunder and eternity comes pouring into our lives. This is what Jesus had in mind when he taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Whenever we choose to love another in whatever small way we can, we make a little heaven on earth in that moment.
Another important word that Jesus mentions in this passage is ‘welcome’. He says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” This idea of welcoming has to do with the Middle Eastern customs of hospitality. We North Americans have a very watered-down idea of what hospitality is all about. We think it’s all about making polite small talk over coffee and setting out fresh towels with clean sheets. Most of us tend to measure ourselves by the standard of “hostess-ness” set by Martha Stewart’s TV show. But hospitality in the ancient world had little to do with Martha Stewart. Remember that they had no cell phones or AAA service. There wasn’t even a regular police force to keep people safe on the open road. Strangers in a foreign city had no guarantee that their basic human rights would be respected by the citizens of that town. This was a universal fear for all travelers. As a result, their culture developed the custom of hospitality as a religious obligation, if not a legal one. Hospitality, in this sense of the word, has to do with one’s duty to offer provision and protection to traveling strangers. Welcoming someone meant that you were taking personal responsibility for that person’s life. This is what Jesus meant when he said “welcome”.
When Jesus was first teaching this spiritual principle to his disciples, he used children as his example of overlooked and vulnerable people who often get treated as Its instead of Yous. Who, in our society, would fit that description today? It’s easy for us to see how elderly and permanently disabled people would count as overlooked and vulnerable. Most folks would probably extend that definition to include combat veterans, laid off workers, and other examples of people who count as the “worthy” or “deserving” poor. But what about those who our society labels as the “undeserving” poor? I’m thinking of people like convicts, drug addicts, and panhandlers. It’s easy to feel justified in treating them like Its instead of Yous because of the damage they have done to themselves and others. However, Jesus doesn’t seem to make that kind of distinction in his ministry. He listed prisoners among those who require care and compassion in God’s name. He was infamous for extending hospitality toward self-destructive outcasts and rejects. Whether they deserved it or not, Jesus treated each one of them like a You instead of an It.
How about yourself? How do you fit into this grand scheme of deserving and undeserving people? How often do you feel vulnerable or overlooked? Where and when have you been treated like an It instead of a You? My guess is that we do this to ourselves on a regular basis. We objectify ourselves whenever we measure the quality of our lives against some outside standard of success, happiness, or beauty. We treat ourselves like an It whenever we build our sense of value and self-worth on the basis of achievements or possessions. All this really does in the end is feed our egos, which have nothing to do with who we really are. If we could somehow learn to relate to ourselves as Yous instead of Its, we would be able accept ourselves for who we really are, complete with all our faults and flaws. You could begin to embrace who you are and reclaim your inherent dignity as God’s child, made in God’s image, and a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Cultivating a You-relationship with others is not limited to human beings, either. We can learn to see the earth itself, with all of its plants, animals, and ecosystems, as a personal You in its own right. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to buy into superstitious myths about fairies and tree spirits. We can live as perfectly rational people and still treat the earth with dignity and respect as an end in itself. In this way, all of nature can become a portal through which we come to glimpse the very face of God.
We don’t even need to stop there. We can look around at all those things that we take for granted as Its because they don’t possess the quality life, as we know it. We objectify them because they appear to be objects to us. But have you ever had a piece of art affect you on a personal level? Have you ever seen a painting, a film, or heard a poem or a piece of music that touched your life in a deep way? Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and John Coltrane’s album, A Love Supreme, have both done that for me. These products of creative genius serve as windows into the soul of the artist. They communicate something about the nature of what it means to be human. In doing so, they also reveal something about the very heart of God. We can learn to see that when we relate to these works of art as You.
This task is somewhat easier when we are talking about beautiful art produced by brilliant minds, but what about the more mundane expressions of human ingenuity that we encounter on a daily basis? I mean, have you ever really looked at a power drill or thought about it with any seriousness? Imagine the work that went into designing such a device. Imagine the factory workers who manufactured it or the minimum wage employee at the hardware store who sold it to you. When you consider these questions, even for a moment, and give thanks, you are encountering that power drill as a You instead of an It. You are consciously holding that tool in a way that allows it to become a portal for you, through which the kingdom of heaven is able to invade earth and set up camp in your life.
This was the end-result that Jesus had in mind when he said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind. Heaven is a way of seeing and being in the world where we “live, move, and have our being” in conscious awareness of the One “from whom, through whom, and to whom” all things come. It was for this reason that Jesus interrupted his disciples’ ego-driven pursuit of power and greatness by drawing attention to that which is normally dismissed as forgettable and unimportant. Jesus saw the You beyond the It in that child. His hope was that his disciples might one day learn how to do the same, so that these overlooked and dismissed ones might find their dignity and claim their identity as open gates of heaven, through which the reality of eternity is made manifest in space and time.
I’m told that today is “Quote the Prophet Muhammad Day”, so I’m reblogging my own post from this past spring. Offered in hopes of greater understanding in the future.
Last Sunday, I preached against Islamophobia from the pulpit of Boonville Presbyterian Church. As a supportive addendum to that message, I offer this post in hopes of fostering greater goodwill and understanding between Christians and Muslims.
The purpose of this post is to lead readers from all religions toward more peaceful coexistence. If that’s not something you want, then don’t read or comment on this article. All offensive comments will be deleted. I’m telling you now so that you don’t take it personally when it happens.
The following verses from the Qur’an and the English translation of the Achtiname of Muhammad were found in an article by Dr. Zakir Naik in the online magazine Islamic Voice. You can visit their website at: www.islamicvoice.com
Passages from the Qur’an on violence and forced conversions:
“Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from error” [Al-Qur’an 2:256]
Reading Teilhard de Chardin today, I found the following passage. This is all the response I wish to give to Mitt Romney’s remarks about “the 47%”:
Fundamentally, in spite of the apparent enthusiasm with which large sections of humankind go along with the political and social currents of the day, the mass of humankind remains dissatisfied. It is impossible to find, either on the right or the left, a truly progressive mind which does not confess to at least a partial disillusionment with all existing movements.
A person joins one party or another, because if one wishes to act one must make a choice. But, having taken a stand, everyone feels to some extent hampered, thwarted, even revolted. Everyone wants something larger, finer, better for humankind. Scattered throughout the apparently hostile masses which are fighting each other, there are elements everywhere which are only waiting for a shock in order to re-orient themselves and unite.
All that is needed is that the ray of light should fall upon these people as upon a cloud of particles, that an appeal should be sounded which responds to their internal needs, and across all denominations, across the conventional barriers which still exist, we shall see the living atoms of the universe seek each other out, find each other and organize themselves.
Adapted from Building the Earth by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, written in 1937, published posthumously in 1965. These words are mostly his, I have only altered them to make use of gender-inclusive pronouns.
Here is a link to a video by Jason Silva that’s sure to blow your mind on a Monday morning. It’s only about 3 minutes long and worth every second.
From a Stanford study, it has been found that exposure to ‘awe’ at regular intervals leads to an increase in empathy, compassion, increased feelings of altruism and general well being.
I found it on Facebook via Rev. Dr. Margaret Aymer Oget.
Waking up early on a Monday to do lecture prep for my Ethics course.
I found this image on Facebook. For me, it’s not only cute, it’s also a little nostalgic. My pastor in Vancouver, Rev. Dr. Sylvia Cleland at West Point Grey Presbyterian Church, used to have this photo up on her office door.
That was the last church I attended where I was not either the pastor or the pastor’s spouse.
I often call it “Vancouver’s Best Kept Secret” for several reasons:
It’s the only Presbyterian church I knew of where Koreans and Anglos worshiped together (they have separate presbyteries and usually keep apart).
It’s the only church I knew of where students from Regent College and Vancouver School of Theology would worship and serve their internships together. In spite of the fact that they are only two blocks away from each other, these two seminaries usually keep separate. The Regent folks generally assume that the VST folks are godless heretics while the VST folks assume that the Regent folks are fundamentalist fanatics. They’re both wrong.
The church’s small size made it possible for ministerial interns to actually do real ministry, like preaching, pastoral care, and education. At the bigger, more popular churches in town, student interns would end up answering phones and making coffee. We actually got to find out what being a pastor was really like.
So, if you’re thinking of going to seminary in Vancouver, BC (at Regent College or Vancouver School of Theology), check out West Point Grey Presbyterian Church at the corner of 11th & Trimble. Thank me later.
Church is probably going to feel like an Indiana Jones movie this morning because I’m taking you on a hunt for lost treasure! We’re going to explore some dangerous and exciting new territory. There’s bound to be risks aplenty. The treasure we’re looking for doesn’t belong on a dusty old shelf in some museum; we’re going to put it to good use in our lives, where it can yield a return on our investment.
(OK, that opening was a bit gimmicky, but give me a break, I’ve got to start the sermon somewhere!)
What I’m interested in doing today is exploring one of the lost treasures of the Bible itself. It sounds weird to hear someone talk about “lost treasures in the Bible”, right? I mean, isn’t the whole thing right there for us to open and read anytime we like? Of course it is! However, there are certain parts of the Bible that have been passed by or ignored over the years. This usually happens because these passages just don’t fit very well with the big ideas of the people in charge, so they get minimized and pushed aside while other passages take center stage. Once this has happened for several generations or even a few centuries in a row, most people forget those passages are even there. But that’s just the thing about the Bible: if you actually read it, it has a way of challenging the status quo and opening you up to new ideas that the powers-that-be might even call “heresy”.
This is exactly what happened with our Protestant ancestors, Martin Luther and John Calvin. Once they actually got their hands on the Bible itself, it led them to challenge a thousand years of church tradition and authority. Both of them were eventually excommunicated for preaching this crazy idea that regular people, not just priests and monks, should be able to read the Bible for themselves, in their own native language. It’s just like Desmond Tutu said in God Has A Dream, the book our congregation read together last summer:
Oppressive and unjust governments should stop people from praying to God, should stop them from reading and meditating on the Bible, for these activities will constrain them to work for the establishment of God’s kingdom of justice, of peace, of laughter, of joy, of caring, of sharing, of reconciliation, of compassion.
This morning, as we open the pages of this dangerously subversive and revolutionary manifesto that we call “the Bible”, we’re going to be searching for a particularly fascinating “lost treasure” that has been hidden in plain sight for thousands of years. This treasure that I’m talking about is actually a biblical character, like Jesus and Moses. Her name is Wisdom.
To the ears of us North Americans, talking about Wisdom as a person sounds weird. We’re used to thinking of Wisdom as a virtue or a concept, like intelligence or compassion. Wisdom (so we think) is not a person, but a character quality possessed by those of our elders who have lived long and lived well. We all aspire to be holders of Wisdom in our old age.
But that’s not how the Bible portrays Wisdom. The Bible sees Wisdom as a person, not a concept. In this morning’s Old Testament reading, taken from the book of Proverbs, Wisdom is portrayed as a bold and brave woman:
Wisdom cries out in the street;
in the squares she raises her voice.
At the busiest corner she cries out;
at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:
‘How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
and fools hate knowledge?
Give heed to my reproof;
I will pour out my thoughts to you;
I will make my words known to you.
There is so much to love about the scene that is being set here. First of all, as I’ve already pointed out, Wisdom is portrayed as a person, a woman. In Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, the word for Wisdom is Hochma. In Greek, the language of the New Testament, the word for Wisdom is Sophia. That’s where we get words like philosophy from. Philosophy literally means “the Love of Wisdom”. Sophia also happens to be a very familiar name for women in our culture. Sarah and I actually considered naming our daughter Sophia, but then we found out that it was the single most popular name for baby girls in 2008, so we decided to name her something more unique to her. So, for the remainder of this sermon, in order to emphasize the personal and feminine nature of Wisdom, as she is portrayed in the Bible, I will be referring to her by that Greek name: Sophia.
What kind of woman is Sophia? We learn right away from this passage in Proverbs that she is both unconventional and courageous. Proverbs says that she “cries out in the streets” and “raises her voice” at “the busiest corner”. Imagine, if you will, the gender-segregated world of ancient Palestine. In that culture, a woman’s traditional sphere of influence was limited to the home. Proper women, so they said at the time, didn’t make their presence known in public, which was the domain of men. If a woman needed something to get done outside of the home, she had to get it done through a man, like her husband, brother, or father. There were only two kinds of women who would raise their voices on a busy street corner: prostitutes and desperate women who had suffered such an injustice that they had no other choice but to take matters into their own hands. Either way, whenever a woman raised her voice in public, people were apt to think the worst.
So, I think it’s extremely significant that when we first meet Sophia, here in the book of Proverbs, she is crying out in the streets. The fact that she is doing so in that culture meant that something had gone very, very wrong indeed: either something was wrong with her or something had gone wrong with the world. Her willingness to speak up makes her the kind of person who is able to think outside the box and color outside the lines of what is socially acceptable. She is this strong, creative, and dynamic presence who raises her voice in order to change things for the better. In that way, the figure Sophia reminds me of pioneering women like Eleanor Roosevelt or the famous primatologist Jane Goodall. Both of these women, in the fields of politics and science, respectively, made a lasting difference by trespassing over the borders of what was expected of them from society. If we were to make a movie about Sophia, I think I would cast someone like Whoopi Goldberg or Kathy Bates in the lead role.
What can we learn about Sophia from looking elsewhere in the Bible?
In Proverbs 8, we meet her again. Just like before, she is crying out in the street in defiance of public opinion. She says:
To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.
O simple ones, learn prudence;
acquire intelligence, you who lack it…
…I have insight, I have strength.
By me kings reign,
and rulers decree what is just;
by me rulers rule,
and nobles, all who govern rightly.
I love those who love me,
and those who seek me diligently find me.
At this point in the poem, things start to get really interesting. Up to now, we might still be able to dismiss Sophia as an impersonal concept, symbolically represented as a woman, but listen to what she says later in chapter 8:
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth…
When [God] established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.
This is most interesting. Sophia, according to the ancient Hebrew sage who wrote this poem, holds a prominent place in cosmic scheme of things. Somehow, God works through Sophia in creating and shaping the world. The natural order we observe in the universe, according to this poem, is the direct result of God’s creative energy working with and through Sophia. Earlier, she says, “By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just”. This means that the ideals of goodness and justice, far from being arbitrary cultural norms, are actually woven into the very fabric of the universe by Sophia herself. In this sense, she can be compared to that which Chinese philosophers have referred to as the Tao, the fundamental organizing principle of the cosmos.
We can learn even more about the development of the idea of Sophia by looking at the books of the Apocrypha. While these books, written by Hellenistic Jews in the centuries after the last Jewish prophet and the birth of Christ, were not accepted as sacred Scripture by the Protestant reformers, they are nonetheless helpful for demonstrating the developing thought patterns of the Jewish people in the years leading up to Jesus’ lifetime. This passage, a meditation on Sophia, comes from chapter 7 of a book called The Wisdom of Solomon:
because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things.
For she is a breath of the power of God,
and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty;
therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her.
For she is a reflection of eternal light,
a spotless mirror of the working of God,
and an image of his goodness.
Although she is but one, she can do all things,
and while remaining in herself, she renews all things;
in every generation she passes into holy souls
and makes them friends of God, and prophets;
for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom.
She is more beautiful than the sun,
and excels every constellation of the stars.
Compared with the light she is found to be superior,
for it is succeeded by the night,
but against wisdom evil does not prevail.
What I find so fascinating about this passage is that the figure of Sophia is becoming more and more closely associated with God’s own self. As we move into the New Testament, the apostle Paul refers to Christ as “the Wisdom of God” in his first letter to the Corinthians. Decades later, someone writing in Paul’s name expanded on this association of Christ with Sophia in the epistle to the Colossians. Listen for the similarity between this passage about Christ and the one we read earlier from Proverbs 8:
[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.
It seems that the early Christians saw Christ as the earthly embodiment of Sophia herself. More than anyone else in history, Jesus lived a life in harmony with this fundamental organizing principle of the universe.
How can it be then, that such an important figure as Sophia has become one of the “lost treasures” of the Bible? The answer, I think, comes from the various kinds of cultural momentum and inertia that can be found in people of every place and time. Christianity itself has grown up in a patriarchal society. The sad fact is that women’s voices have not counted as much as men’s voices. When it comes to the metaphors we use to describe God, Christians have embraced images of masculinity and power (e.g. Almighty Father, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, etc.) to the exclusion of more feminine images (e.g. Sophia raising her voice in the marketplace). Nevertheless, our sacred Scriptures remind us that men and women are both equally made “in the image of God”. The Bible also gives us several feminine metaphors for God apart from Sophia the Wisdom Woman. Deuteronomy 32 describes God as an eagle teaching her young to fly. Isaiah 49 describes God as a mother who could never forget her baby. Women served as metaphors for God in more than one of Jesus’ parables. One of my favorite images comes from the Hebrew root of the term that gets translated as “tender mercies”, a character quality that is often applied to God. In Hebrew, the word for “tender mercies” is rachamim, which comes from the word rechem, which literally means “womb”. When the Bible tells us that we are the recipients of God’s “tender mercy”, it means to say that we are being nurtured and loved as we grow within the very womb of God. I like to tie this right back in to the image of Sophia as a metaphor for God. When I think of God, I have little use for the image of an angry, powerful man with a long white beard who sits on a throne above the clouds, hurling thunderbolts of judgment down to the earth. That kind of Deity sounds more like Zeus than Jesus. When I think of God, I prefer to think of Sophia: that brave and beautiful woman who raises her voice for justice in the city streets and carries the earth like a baby on her hip. That’s the God to whom I have given my heart.
This week, as you go out into the streets where you live, work, and play, I pray that your ears would be open to Sophia’s voice, calling out to you. Whether you are walking along an autumn trail, sitting in a meeting, milking a cow, or ringing up a cash register, may you become aware in those moments of that same sacred presence that shaped and renews the cosmos. Like Jesus, may you feel her creative energy pulsing through your veins and granting you the insight you need in order to live a life in total harmony with the universe itself.
Time magazine named author and pastor Brian McLaren one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America.
McLaren has written more than 20 books, and he is a principal figure in the Emerging Church, a Christian movement that rejects the organized and institutional church in favor of a more modern, accepting community.
McLaren’s new book is called Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World.
Vida Dutton Scudder. Image is in the public domain.
Vida Dutton Scudder (1861-1954) was a professor at Wellesly College, a member of the Socialist party, and a prominent activist in the Episcopal Church. She was involved in the Social Gospel movement, the campaign for labor rights, the equality of women, and (eventually) pacifism. She helped to organize the Women’s Trade Union League, the Episcopal Church Socialist League, and joined the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross. Vida and her partner, Florence Converse, lived together for 35 years, from 1919 until Vida’s death in 1954. She is celebrated in the Episcopal Church’s calendar of saints: her feast day is on October 10.
Earlier today, as I was reading Diana Butler Bass’s book A People’s History of Christianity, I came across an amazing prediction of Scudder’s that Butler Bass took from Scudder’s 1912 book Socialism and Character. In this passage, Scudder prophesies the advent of mainline church decline, which eventually started to happen in the latter half of the 20th century. I was amazed at how closely Scudder’s views resemble my own, except that she was writing a full century before I started thinking about it. Listen to what Scudder has to say:
One certitude is forced on us : it is unlikely that Christianity will retain so nominally exclusive a sway as it has hitherto done in western Europe. In all probability, the day of its conventional social control is passing and will soon be forgotten. The time will come when the Christian faith will have to fight for right of way among crowding antagonists as vigorously as in the times of Athanasius and Augustine.
And in thoughts like these all genuine Christians must rejoice. Without the call to high adventure, the faith has never flourished.
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 
