Religion and Public Accountability

At the core of our dilemma over the issue of terrorism and religion is an agreement not to be honest.

For many of us, including myself, all creation cries out for the existence of God. However, because at its core religion supercedes reason, we are in the habit of putting everything about religion, including its ethics, values and practices, into the category of the unknowable. This means that little about religion can be held accountable to the usual checks and balances of public analysis and reasoned debate.

Modern western culture is based on the premise that all religions are equally right, or equally wrong. Despite a religion's basic beliefs, or the way in which those beliefs are taught and practiced, each faith is given complete and equal respect. That exemption from public criticism is a consequence of the religious persecutions of the Inquisition and the Reformation. The fires of religious hatred burned so hot, and for so long, that our ancestors eventually exhausted their need to prevail.

With the dawn of the Enlightenment a deal was struck. The civilization of the West gave religious belief a reverence not offered to any other form of human understanding, even as those matters of faith and practice became unfit for further public discussion. Thereafter religion became an entirely private matter.

That contract may now have outlived its usefulness. It is possible that we are witnessing the end of our ability to place religion safely outside the sphere of public discourse. Our political and intellectual leadership remains opposed to ending that exemption, and that resistance is understandable. The alternative has important perils all its own.

Until now we've been asked to judge the Islam practiced primarily in the culturally conservative Middle East based solely on Islam's best and most original impulses. How that school of Islam is actually practiced today by a large, committed and influential movement of third world fundamentalists is seldom the subject of public comment.

Recently, hundreds of thousands rioted and looted because a Danish cartoonist implied that Islam has a problem with violence, and he used a caricature of Mohammad to make his point. In response, virtually every Western leader confined their comments to describing the cartoon as "regrettable" or "terribly inappropriate." Meanwhile, little judgment was offered about huge crowds marching under banners that read, "Europe will pay, your 9/11 is on its way."

The source of that intolerance - the very mechanism that allows some Moslems to discard their lives for the purpose of killing others - is found in a fierce commitment to religious fundamentalism. It is more than obvious that without the mainspring of unreasoning intolerance the clock of Islamic terror would cease to tick and the bombs would stop exploding.

So what is the alternative - the dreaded alternative that is filled with "perils of its own?" That option requires us to set aside our centuries old contract that exempts religion from public scrutiny. Instead of expecting our leaders to simply absolve all religion from any accountability, we should expect these leaders to be a little more forthright, and a lot more honest.

There should be a strongly held assumption that religious practice is more important than theology. A theoretical attachment to loving your neighbor should not be a substitute for genuine opposition to intellectual diversity, progress and human rights. Even the most glorious sentiments should be discounted if the practical effect of how they are taught and practiced results in fear, ignorance and prejudice.

Yet this approach brings with it some genuine dangers, and not just from places like Palestine, Syria and Iran. If our political and intellectual leadership obliges all religions to meet certain minimal standards of reason, tolerance and civility, then who will be able to control where those expectations might lead?

Would we eventually realize that our real enemy is not Islam, but the prospect of any religious impulse placed outside the realm of public criticism and accountability? Is it possible that the razor of reasoned critique might cut just as deeply for an Imam in Tehran, as it would for a bishop in Nebraska? If religious fundamentalism is at the heart of our current dilemma, then could someone's insistence on Biblical literalism wind up looking just as irrational, and just as archaic, as someone else's commitment to Islamic jihad?

Letter To A Friend

Personal relationships are so very hard to manage. Without intention or design you sometimes wind up on the bad side of someone you had hoped to like, and whom you thought might like you back. The failure of that connection is a cause for disappointment and even anger.

Part of the problem is that relationships are complex. Seldom are they about what we pretend they are about. Have you ever been in a relationship with a man hoping that it would become something more, but it never did become something more? You maintained that the two of you were “just good friends.” You suggested to others that this was your only ambition, but deep down you knew this wasn't true.

Then one day you found out that he’d been sharing the company of someone else, someone you knew, and suddenly you hated him. How was that sudden hatred explained? You told your friends that he was stupid, or a Democrat, or that he was too forward, or that he was unkind, or that he lied to you. Take your pick.

The one thing you’d never say is that you loved him intensely and that he never loved you back. The cosmic unfairness of that was more than you could stand, so you decided to hate him in self defense.

So it is with most of our relationships. They meet a need that we choose not to share with others. Often we don’t even fully understand the reasons for those relationships in our own moments of careful reflection. They are a combination of mysterious chemistry, and the near absence of logic.

Eventually we get hurt in some unexpected way. Or perhaps we are reminded of our own detestable flaw by seeing it in someone we care deeply about. Then we lash out in the most destructive way.

I once heard that perfect understanding would entail perfect forgiveness. The older I get the more I believe that is true. If someone you care about turns against you over an issue that seems trivial, or an issue that wilts in the face of logical argument, be sure that this issue is not the source of your problem. There is something you don’t understand, and just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean that the other person isn't hurting for good reason.

A cold hearted grievance is seldom the source of human estrangement. Anger is more often caused by something exquisite, something to yearn for, and something denied.

What Is The South?

What is the South?

When I moved to North Carolina I felt I knew the answer to that question. I would have described the South as any state that took sides with the Confederacy during the Civil War. Given that I’m from the North, and therefore immune to the subtleties of Southern culture, I like putting such matters into simple categories.

However, I’ve learned that most things in the South are not that simple.

Not long after I came here I established a group of friends who were born and bred in the South, and my closeness to them belied my lack of tenure. One fair summer afternoon a few of those friends and I set out for a meeting in Greensboro. We arrived with time to spare, and it seemed that the best thing to do with an empty hour was find a place to fill our stomachs.

We located a restaurant set back on a tributary road. The place spoke eloquently of what a small café in the South should be. There was a long counter with red padded circular seats on columns of chrome. A mirror extending along one wall reflected the four of us hunching over our plates.

One of us picked up a copy of the local newspaper and read aloud the lead from a story. There had been a racially oriented dustup in South Carolina. “Isn’t that terrible,” my friend said, “you’d think those people would learn.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but you know, down here I haven’t found race relations to be all that bad. Up in Chicago we had far less reason to be proud. Blacks and whites seem to get along pretty well in this part of the world.”

He looked at me as if I were hopelessly ignorant, “Well friend, Moore County isn’t really the South. Too many golf courses, potters selling high priced bowls and Yankees like you.”

I reflected on that for a moment, but knowing I’d traveled further a field than just Moore County I asked, “The rest of North Carolina, that would be considered the South, wouldn’t it?”

“Sort of,” he said in a patronizing tone, “but North Carolina isn’t the 'real' South. Here you have the research triangle, world class schools like Duke and UNC. You’d have to go a lot further south from here.”

“Further south, like Texas or Florida?”

“No,” he objected, “Texas isn’t the South. Texas is the West. And as for Florida, that really isn’t the South either.”

He paused for a long moment and then reconsidered, “Well, that’s not entirely true. Florida’s Southern if you’re in northern Florida. ”

Now I was hopelessly confused, but being among friends I wanted to get it straight, “So in Florida you have to go north to be in the South? And if you go west, even if you’re in the south, then you’re not in the South anymore?”

“Yes,” he said, “That’s pretty much it.”

It was tough going, but I felt I was making progress. “So South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana – states like that would be the 'real' South.”

“Mostly,” he said, “but Atlanta’s getting less and less Southern. Way too many people in Fulton County vote like Democrats.”

Just then his voice lifted in a quizzical way, “As for Louisiana and Mobile? Well, the jury’s still out if you can be a Catholic and Southern at the same time.”

He knew I was Catholic, and I knew he was pulling my chain, but I rose to the bait. “How about Scarlett O’Hara?” I protested, “She was Catholic.”

“Yeah, right” he replied, “and Mickey Mouse is a Baptist.”

We left the subject there. I had learned a little, and what I didn’t comprehend would have to remain a mystery. The important point was that North Carolina is in the South, but it isn’t all together southern either.

The vagaries of that concept were too subtle for someone from Chicago. Like a lovely woman friend is so fond of saying, “George, dear, you just aren’t southern enough to understand.”

I didn’t expect that the fine points of that discussion would ever come in handy, and for a long while they didn’t. Then, a few weeks ago, I visited Raleigh. That day the weather was unusually cold and a persistent wind sliced though clothing that was insufficiently heavy.

As I turned the corner on Salisbury Street I fell in step with an older woman. She greeted me using those long liquid vowels that are so pleasant to hear. My hands were stuffed in my pockets and my shoulders were arched to cover my ears. “A cold one today, isn’t it?” I replied.

“Yes,” she said, bending low against the wind, “All my life I wanted to live in the South, but somehow I wound up in Raleigh.”

Assuming the air of someone who shared with her a secret understanding I said, “Yes ma’am, I know exactly what you mean.”

Giving Care

Last night I downloaded a new photo organizer called "Picasa." It's a great program and it's free, so I recommend it.

However, that plug is not the reason for this post. While installing "Picasa" it went through my computer and found every picture that I'd ever saved and then neatly organized them for my review. Occassionally I've accidently saved pictures to a folder that had nothing to do with my photo archives. When that happened the picture became utterly lost, and so it was with this picture that I've entitled "Giving Care."

My stories are passed around and that's just wonderful by me. They float out like a bottle on the ocean and only rarely do they come back with a note stuffed inside. When they do it's a treat, and this picture was attached to one of those notes.

Some years ago a woman, whose name I now forget, sent a comment and identified herself as a care giver for an elderly woman. She included this photograph and said it was the only recent picture she had of herself.

I remember being taken by it. I've never seen a photograph that told a more touching and affectionate story than this snapshot. It distills the grace and the glory of love between two people in a way that makes even well chosen words seem clumsy and insufficent.

It was a gift to have this picture returned to me from right under my nose. If the woman who sent it finds her way to this web site, I'd love to hear from her once again.

Jackson Hamlet

Last Saturday I was asked to attend a meeting in Jackson Hamlet. That's a small community, really little more than a large neighborhood populated primarily by low income black folk. It is surrounded on three sides by the far more affluant community of Pinehurst. We all met in a small Baptist church and I listened to stories being told of how lives are lived in the shadow of a wealthy community which influences their lives without including them in any meaningful way.

Pinehurst has annexed land all around this small enclave and law allows Pinehurst to govern codes a mile beyond its borders. So there is this small community with only those services which are provided by the county. Population density is at a municipal level, but police protection is minimal. There are no sewers, and there are few street lights or paved roads. When they ask for inclusion in the town that surrounds them they are given a cold shoulder.

I sat there in a church with windows painted purple to achieve the effect of stained glass. The ceiling was dropped and the panels were old and uneven. The place was filled with black folk dressed in clothing that was "Sunday best." They talked about having streets that are ink black at night, and having septic systems that no longer work. I learned that water from washing machines and bath tubs is called "gray water," and that the people of Jackson Hamlet save the declining effectiveness of old septic tanks by piping "gray water" directly onto their property. Meanwhile, the Pinehurst sewer system runs but a few hundred feet away.

If they subscribe to a garbage pick-up service, they must do so individually and it's expensive since they have no municipality to negotiate for competitive rates. They exist like a hole in a block of Swiss cheese, surrounded by a town that can tell them what to do, but which refuses to help, and would never take them in as their own. Empty land is what Pinehurst is eager to acquire, but when it comes to including people, at least people like those who live in Jackson Hamlet, then that's another matter entirely.

Notes From The March

The march for Martin Luther King was a mile and a half long. The day was cold, the wind biting, and everyone was wrapped in jackets and sweaters. Those who marched filled the street for three city blocks. Behind the marchers were the elderly and the infirm who traveled in buses with the headlights turned on. Along Broad Street everyone sang "We Shall Overcome," and people walked out of the stores to watch. Virtually all of them waved and applauded.

Caught up in the enthusiasm a few bystanders left the curb and joined the march. Those who were black, and caught unaware, felt obliged to explain. They’d see someone they knew and call out, “My kids are at home”… “I have to work”… “Next year, I promise.”

Everywhere were hand lettered signs that read, “Live the Dream”... “The Dream is You”... “The Dream is Alive.”

Clumps of marchers walked behind the banners of fraternal groups, political parties and civic clubs. Passing cars would honk in support. The pace was quick, and everyone was excited.

But not everyone was pleased. A black leader was marching with her five year old grandson when a man in a pickup truck veered in their direction. The driver rolled down his window, extended his arm, held up his middle finger and began to curse. The child started to cry.

That woman is a veteran of the cause who marched in Washington when King delivered his "Dream Speech." She was grown when segregation was still alive and well in Moore County. She remembers far worse than an isolated bigot in a pickup truck. Bending over her grandson she said, “Hush. Before Dr. King that was what our world was like."

That bigot wasn’t me, but for a second I took ownership of him. I felt whiter than tissue paper, and a foot shorter than that five year old child.

The march ended at Southern Pines Primary School and the auditorium filled beyond capacity. Folding chairs were passed out to handle the overflow. There were choirs, speakers, a free lunch, stepping squads and a movie. The indoor celebration started at 12:00 and lasted until 4:00.

The speaker was a pastor with thunder for a voice. Like King, he is well known for his powerful sermons, and yes, King was special, but this speaker reminded everyone that great oratory is common in black churches. The preacher urged his audience, "Don't Give Up…Don’t Give In… Don’t Give Out." He spoke for half an hour and conducted the crowd like an orchestra. The crowd swelled to its feet, and when he finished the cheering was loud and sustained.

Outside the auditorium was a long table filled with Martin Luther King souvenirs. There were LP’s of recorded speeches, portraits, interviews in “Ebony” and “Jet,” several biographies, and even board games. At the far end was a copy of “Life” magazine covered with the picture of a widow grieving in a black veil.

That evening I told my friends about that bigot in the pickup truck. A few of them said marching was misguided, even risky. Actually the risk was zero, but their concern was real. To some, marching for King is still provocative, not entirely wise, and flat stupid for a white person.

Decades have come and gone, but King still remains controversial. He is a Rorschach test for those who remember him. Some see great reason to hope, but others see only fear. The fact is, I marched behind a squad car, was welcomed by singers, and then treated to lunch. No heroism was required.

But imagine marching with King in the hot of Alabama. Marchers heading out on “Bloody Sunday” for the Edmund Pettus Bridge were taunted by crowds. The hatred was electric and guns were everywhere. No festival waited for them at the bridge - only police, water hoses, and attack dogs.

A car backfire would be reason for a heart attack

I don’t have that kind of courage. I am not a brave man. The real heroes were people like King, Abernathy and Evers, who didn’t know the meaning of quit and lived without guarantees. Back then demonstrators suffered. Some were shot, some were hung and others just disappeared. Yet all of them made a difference. March today and crowds applaud, local business pays for your lunch, and the violent bigots are few.

The struggle still isn’t over, and probably never will be, for injustice is eternal. However, we live in a place where most people are good, and anything is possible.

Honoring that is reason enough to march.

Sunset on Thagard Lake

Thagard Lake - Whipering Pines, NC

I spend much of my time in a room with one wall of windows that look over Thagard Lake. It's true that weather, season and the time of day variegate the appearance of any landscape. However, a body of water seems to magnify that variability, and makes those changes appear with a suddenness and an intensity that can't be found in any other vista.

Yesterday my attention was riveted to a computer monitor when a sound distracted me and I looked over my right shoulder. The sun had just started to set. Colors that were vibrant shades of violet, blue and purple flooded through the windows. I picked up my camera, pulled open the sliding glass door and walked down to the dock - a distance of perhaps one hundred feet. It was from that dock that this picture was taken. I'm posting that picture one day later and now the sky is a nondescript gray. The light is blue, cold and hard, and the lake is entirely different.

Drain Pipe

Drain Pipe - Whispering Pines, NC

Today in Whispering Pines it is drizzley. Part way around the lake there is a fingerlike inlet that curves back around a peninsula of land. That inlet receives water from the golf course through a concrete pipe. The lake water is always brown from the tanic acid that comes from decaying pine needles. Where ever the water is agitated it creates a froth and the effect is something like a pint of Guinness. Unfortunately, the similarity is entirely visual.

Wheelbarrow of Flowers - Whispering Pines, NC

I had just about completed my walk around Lake Thagard today, and as usual I had my camera in hand. However, nothing had presented itself as worth having its picture taken. Winter often remains warm in our part of North Carolina, but like everywhere in the northern latitudes the light is oblique and the colors monochrome. That's what made this old wheelbarrow full of pansies so extraordinary. Caught in a ray of sunlight they seemed to radiate, as if they were illuninated from within. This picture catches the explosion of color against a background of muted tones, but it can't duplicate the brightness. The camera failed to capture how pyrotechnic those flowers appeared.

What's Remembered

Luning, Nevada - (restaurant far left)

Grand dad’s family blew around like a scrap of paper in a dust devil. Between 1931 and 1943 they moved fifteen times on a random course that started in Oshalata, Oklahoma and ended in Luning, Nevada. Looking for a job that could sustain a large family, grand dad took jobs selling magazines, tires, paint and insurance. Those jobs paid on commission and made the promise of a decent living, but they delivered little more than frustration and failure.

For my grandfather being a salesman was something of a stretch. He was physically slight, frail in appearance, and he was quiet… almost painfully shy. Even as a young man his hair was thin and as he aged only a few wisps remained to arc across his head. He wore rimless spectacles and had one glass eye that settled deep in its socket.

There’s an old family photograph of him sitting next to my grandmother. Grand dad is wearing a vested suit and he has the mirthless expression of a cautious banker. Originally that’s exactly what he was, a cautious banker, but during the Depression it was impossible to be cautious enough. In both Oshalata and Bartlesville he managed small banks that financed farmers who were caught up in the disaster of the dust bowl. Hard times ended grand dad’s career and he wound up impersonating a salesman with only slight success.

In 1943 his unhappy adventure in sales came to an end. With the war on and manpower in short supply the Southern Pacific Railroad was forced to hire someone with a checkered job record who was deep into middle age. That’s how grand dad became a freight agent. He was well suited for that kind of work - always careful, analytical and exacting. Grand dad must have hoped that the worst was now behind him, and his luck was finally changing.

His job with the railroad began in Luning, Nevada; a spec of habitation in a bare desert colored only by white alkali and red ferris dirt. The wind blew for a thousand miles with nothing to stop it, and the thin air shifted between oven hot and sudden cold. It took months before grand dad’s family was able to join him, and what his life was like during that enforced loneliness is hard to know. He never said much, and when he did talk he said nothing about himself.

From that period of being alone in the desert only one fact survives. He struck an unusual bargain with the owner of the town’s only restaurant.

One of Grand dad's few remarkable talents was exquisite penmanship. His hand produced the sort of calligraphy found on a diploma or a wedding license. Put a fountain pen in his hand and what flowed from his fingers made a grocery list look like The Declaration of Independence. In the midst of persistent failure and a thousand reasons to think little of himself, that one special aptitude became his only conceit.

When he first arrived in Luning, broke and with a month to go before his first paycheck, he sat down at the only place in town with a meal to offer. No one knows exactly what happened next, but the bargain is still remembered. Grand dad traded the cost of his food for writing out the menus in a careful long hand. Using a looping script, replete with curlieques and various decorative devices, he wrote “Milk 10¢”or “Substitutions 5¢ extra.”

This odd arrangement might have gone unremembered, like any of a thousand other artifacts buried in the desert. However, when grandmother arrived she noticed that the menus of the local café were written in a hand that was both extravagant and familiar.

She asked grand dad about it, but his expression remained blank. In the short hand of their relationship that look was neither an admission nor a denial. It was simply an invitation for grandmother to believe her own assumptions. The full story would have to be leaned elsewhere.

That single detail is the only marker left from six months of my grandfather’s life. Whatever else he might have done or thought is now swallowed up by time.

A year and a half later grand dad used his slight seniority to bump another agent and move his family to the more pleasant venue of Susanville, California. Grand dad passed away in 1958, and now Luning is only a ghost town. The tracks still pass by an abandoned restaurant with broken windows and boards worn raw from weather and the absence of paint. The train quit running decades ago, and the Southern Pacific Railroad no longer exists. A place that once looked like a fresh start is now almost entirely erased. What persists is a scrap of memory, and a wind that blows for a thousand miles with nothing to stop it.

Dad And The Nature of Art

Dad

My father is an exceptional man. I’ve never known anyone as patient, caring or responsible. He never talks about love, that language is unavailable to him, but he "lives" love with absolute fidelity, and that thought brings me to a discussion of art.

I've been told that art is entirely a collaborative process. It includes what the artist intended as he created the work of art, then what the work of art actually communicates apart from the artist's intentions, and finally art becomes what is interpreted through the lens of the observer's experience and personality.

However, we seldom look at art that way. Almost universally we give pride of place to the artist as the genius who transcends the experience of art. Somehow we fail to realize that "War and Peace" is not the same book for any two different readers, and it's possible that "War and Peace" conjures truths for a gifted reader that Tolstoy himself never fully appreciated. That prejudice in favor of the artist turns the work of art, no matter how exquisite, into simply a medium, while it makes the observer of art derivative – someone whose capacity for art is judged solely by how well he appreciates the original intention of the artist.

I remember taking a class in art history years ago. The students sat in darkness while our instructor clicked away with a device that controlled a slide projector. There would be a short mechanical sound followed by an image projected on a screen. Early in the semester we viewed slides of Egyptian jewelery, Greek statues and Renaissance paintings which combined art with obvious craftsmanship.

It was easy to see the craft, even if the more subtle reality of art went completely undetected. After all, we were beginning students, and craft was much easier to appreciate than the more subtle characteristics of "art." It was only with time that we began to realize that craft was simply a sort of expertise - a manual aesthetic competence. Genuine art, on the other hand, was a spiritual vocabulary that expressed something true and original about being human.

Late in the semester, when we got to the modern period, the images became ever more abstract. These modern works had everything to do with art, and very little to do with craft. Beyond the ability to pair a name with a particular work of art, it was this sensibility that our instructor was hoping to inform. And so, for our final examination, we were shown a series of slides; some were of well crafted objects, and some were of objects that were haphazardly abstract. The question we were expected to answer was, “Which of these objects are art, which are not, and why?”

For me it was a revelation that in most instances I could see the difference. I understood that while craft and art often went hand in hand, on many occasions they did not. Some objects might be well crafted, but have absolutely nothing important to say. They could be a fine representation, well sculpted or well painted, but they certainly were not art.

Then there might be a painting by Miro or Pollock, something that didn't require very much technical skill, but these works had something astounding to say. They communicated a profound truth that was beyond my ablility to fully understand. Yet while their art was immune to easy explanation, it could be put on a wall and I would never tire of looking at it. What they did was art.

Eventually I asked myself, “How is art defined? What are the rules that allow you to point to one thing and say this is not art, and point at something else and say this is art?”

It didn't take long for me to give up on that quest. If there is such a set of rules, I have no idea what it might be. Maybe the only real answer is that “Art is whatever an artist does.”

This might sound silly and almost tautalogical. However there is a kind of truth in that statement that has become ever more real and obvious to me with time.

Yet, there is one other thing I 've leared about art that isn't quite so oblique. That truth is that there is a huge difference between creating art, appreciating art, and living art.

A person like Picasso could create art, but he couldn't live it. Great artists always have a sure grasp of what is true and human, but they often live lives of narcissism and self involvement. Picasso could paint a woman using techniques that were elementary, but what he rendered was the portrait of something wonderfully intangible. He found a way to desribe someone's soul. Still, even with all that artistic grace and astounding insight he treated the women in his life with unthinking cruelty.

Ultimately his life became a sad contradiction to his art.

By way of a long metaphor, this brings me back to dad. Perhaps living a good life - a life that is characterized by love - is very much like what art seeks to emulate. There are those who can exquisitely describe what love means with well chosen words, a musical instument, or a brush and a palate of paint. And then there are those who can appreciate and understand love, even if they can't describe what it is that they see. These are the fortunate legions who are affirmed and redeemed by love.

And finally there are those who actually are the music. These are the people whose lives are a pure expression of love in all its routine majesty.

Yet it is a sad fact that all these qualities are seldom packaged in the same person. An artist with a palate of colors is seldom an artist with life.

So ultimately this is the question, "Is the most important actor in the experience of art the artist himself?"

I don't think so. At the end of the day, the world might be a less rich and interesting place without poets, but the world could do just fine without them. However, it would less easily survive without those whose hearts can be moved by what poetry has to say, and it would be lost forever without those people whose exquisite lives are the very reason that poetry exists.

Bishop John England 

Seperation of Church and State

Today I was perusing the The Library of Congress website. If you haven't been there yet I recommend it. It is rich, extensive and endlessly facinating. Currently they have a special web exhibit entitled "Religion and The Founding of The American Republic."

There was much to learn there that I didn't know. For instance, church services were held in both the House of Representatives and in the Old Supreme Court Chamber from the time of the Capitol's construction until well after the Civil War. Among the Presidents who regularly attended those services were Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Adams.

Perhaps the library staff is sensitive to the religious opinions of the current adminstration, and that accounts for the presence of this particular exhibit. Still, it seems obvious that the constitutional seperation between church and state was less rigorously understood back then. Can you imagine church services being held in government buildings today? Even the most conservative among us might find that practice problematical.

However, those arguing for airtight seperation between church and state won't find much support in the practices of the people who founded our republican government.

Also of interest was mention of the very first Catholic clergyman to preach at these services on capitol hill. That clergyman's name was Bishop John England and his sermon was delivered on January 8, 1826. In part his remarks were a rebuttal of one passage in John Quincy Adams' oft quoted speech of July 4, 1821 that called the bonds between American government and Christianity "indisoluable." Those words would warm the heart of most Christian clerics, however, the section that caused Bishop England's distress was Adams' claim that the Roman Church's intollerance made it incompatable with republican government. As it happend Adams was in attendance that day to hear Bishop England say...

"we do not believe that God gave to the church any power to interfere with our civil rights, or our civil concerns. I would not allow to the Pope, or to any bishop of our church, the smallest interference with the humblest vote at our most insignificant balloting box."

Those are very republican sentiments indeed, yet in light of the role that many Catholic Bishops played in opposing the candidacy of John Kerry, I wonder if Bishop England spoke in error and Adams was right all along?

Mr. Reynold's New Position

Recently President Bush appointed Gerald A. Reynolds, a black Republican, to become the new chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Formerly Mr. Reynolds served in the Education Department under Bush, and he is taking over from Mary Francis Berry who is also black, quite liberal, and famously outspoken.

Ms. Berry is no president’s idea of a team player, but given her position that wasn’t such a bad thing. The U.S. Civil Rights Commission has little real authority and it derives most of its importance from being the government’s official conscience in matters of race. The commission's main role is to make those in power believe that someone on the inside is watching. After the 2000 election in Florida, when there were widespread accusations that blacks had been excluded from the polls, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission launched an investigation.

However, in Washington they play hardball and in these times loyalty is highly prized. The Washington Post reported that upon assuming his new role Reynolds said that “…the first order of business at the commission will be fiscal: ‘One of the first things we're going to do is have an audit,’”

In other words, Ms. Berry best be looking for a good lawyer.

All that political blood sport aside; Mr. Reynolds’ resume is an impressive qualification for his new office. Prior to his stint at the Department of Education he was Senior Regulatory Counsel for Kansas City Power & Light Company, and before that he practiced law with Schatz & Schatz, Ribicoff & Kotkin, a Connecticut-based law firm.

However, even as he was joining the Civil Rights Commission Mr. Reynolds made a statement that attracted controversy. He suggested to a New York Times reporter that he himself had never experienced racial prejudice. When pressed on the issue he back peddled a little and then explained, “I just assume somewhere in my life some knucklehead has looked at me and my brown self and (then) given me less or denied me an opportunity. But the bottom line is, and my wife will attest to this, I am so insensitive that I probably didn't notice.”

Two questions occur to me - the first is, how important is sensitivity in the person who serves as the government's conscience in matters of race?

The second question - are he and my friend "Daniel" living in the same world?

Different Worlds

My friend Daniel (not his real name) was driving in from out of town and we had arranged to meet each other at a local pub. I entered the restaurant a few moments before he did, and as soon as he arrived he scurried to the men’s restroom at the end of a narrow hallway. Just as he reached for the door handle a man bolted out of the restroom and the edge of the door intersected with Daniel’s forehead. You could hear the crack from fifty feet away.

The man was apologetic, but short of driving Daniel to the emergency room there wasn’t much that he could do. Daniel suggested that he was alright and the man repeated his apology before walking out to the parking lot. Daniel took the few short steps to our table and sat down in the midst of a vacant bar. It was about 4:00 in the afternoon - a slow time for restaurants catering to a lunch and dinner crowd. The place was hollow.

The knot on Daniel’s forehead grew instantly larger and a cut that divided his eyebrow began to bleed. He was woozy and disoriented. We needed a towel and some ice, but there was no help available. I told him that I’d look for a waiter or a bartender, but after searching the place I didn’t find a soul… no one.

Taking the initiative I went behind the bar, found a white cotton towel, and I loaded it with ice. Returning to the table I handed Daniel the cold lump of terrycloth and he applied it to his face. As relief took effect he glanced up at me with his one un-swollen eye. In a cheerless voice he admitted that I had done something that he could never do... which was slip behind a counter without permission.

“No matter the circumstance,” he said, “that would be reckless… at least for someone like me.”

That comment didn’t really fit Daniel. He’s a former councilman of a sizeable city, and he’s the newly elected chair of a statewide political caucus. He’s an operator, plugged in politically, and the governor takes his calls.

Daniel didn’t make his point to say that I have chutzpah, or admit that he doesn’t. And he wasn’t saying that what I did was wrong or presumptuous. Daniel's point was a simple admission that the two of us live in different worlds, and the rules for each of us are not the same.

Did I tell you that my friend is black?