Declaration of Independence

The bully, the Friend and the Christian

Martin Kelley — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 15:51:13 +0000

Lazy guy I am, I’m going to cut-and-paste a comment I left over at Rich the Brooklyn Quaker’s blog in response to his post “What This Christian Is Looking For In Quakerism”:http://brooklynquaker.blogspot.com/2006/04/what-this-christian-is-looking-for-in.html. There’s been quite a good discussion in the comments. In them Rich poses this analogy:
bq. During the Great Depression and World War II, I have been told that Franklin Roosevelt rallied the spirits of the American people with his “fireside chats”. These radio broadcasts communicated information, projected hope, and called for specific responses from his listeners; including some acts of self-sacrifice and unselfishness… Often people would gather in small groups around their radios to hear these broadcasts, they would talk about what Roosevelt had said, and to some extent they were guided in their daily lives by some of what they had heard.

Rich then supposes what a listener sitting in front of the radio might by thinking. I thought it was an interesting analogy and thought it provided another way of thinking about the relationship of Quakerism and Christianity and especially of a Quaker-styled Christianity. Let’s start with a listener who’s figured out that the speaker’s a real person and not just electronic fuzz

The year is 1933.
Twelfth day Third Month.
“Cue Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first fireside chat”:ftp://webstorage2.mcpa.virginia.edu/library/nara/fdr/audiovisual/speeches/firesidechat_01.mp3
Our listener sitting in front of the radio would hear FDR’s voice without knowing who he is. The information would be there but there would be no particular weight attached to it. They might listen to it but they’d be just as likely to turn the knob and catch the much more entertaining Bob Hope special.
A bully sitting nearby in the room might rebuke the listener: “Don’t touch that dial! Listen to what he’s saying! That’s the PRESIDENT!” The listener, knowing nothing about our political system, would just hear a call to unearned authority. The bully’s rebuke would have the weight of fear–what might the bully do if I don’t listen?!?–but it will have taken the listener’s attention off of FDR and onto the bully.
Let’s say that instead there’s a gentle soul in the room who gives testimony. They share with our listener how valuable they’ve found FDR’s advice to be in the past. They’re simply saying, “it’s worth listening to this guy, he says some good stuff.”
As the listener starts appreciating FDR’s counsel, our nearby friend might start teaching about the role of the Presidency in American history. They could introduce concepts like checks-and-balances, they could tell stories of past Constitutional crises, they would talk about other types of political systems. Our listener would slowly gain a vocabularly that wouldn’t change the message but which would provide a way of talking about it. The friend would be tapping on the social history of generations of Americans who had struggled to understand how to organize themselves: the friend would be teaching our collective wisdom. By understanding it our listener would be in a better position to effectively act on FDR’s advice (perhaps they’d realize they need to lobby their senators to get FDR’s next budget passed).
A deconstructionist might argue that “The United States of America” is a social construct, but that doesn’t mean the Declaration of Independence isn’t an amazing, inspiring document that says something profoundly truthful about human existance.
Taking the analogy full circle, it’s almost as if liberal Friends today are afraid of teaching the Declaration of Independence because it might offend the Russian, Italian and Korean immigrants. We still believe in it and most of the immigrants are figuring out pieces of it hit-and-miss, but we’re just incredibly awkward talking about it since we’ve lost our language. If we just started speaking plainly again, that would give the immigrants a chance to say “hey that’s interesting but you know we did it this way back in the old country.” I wonder if we’d open up the conversation to a richer level of sharing?
The beauty of Quakerism is that we know that the quiet testimony and humble invitation are gifts we can share with one another and with all we meet. I’m thinking again of the Brian Drayton’s formulation:
bq. We are also called, I feel to invite others to share Christ directly, not primarily in order to introduce them to Quakerism and bring them into our meetings, but to encourage them to turn to the light and follow it.
The message we share matters not simply because it’s Christ’s but because it’s wise. We have much to share.
*Naming the Church*
The meeting I attend, “Middletown”:http://www.pym.org/pym_mms/middletownpa_cdq.php, is going through Acts in Bible Study and today the clerk forwarded some fascinating commentary from “1863 by a fellow named J. W. McGarvey”:http://www.ccel.org/m/mcgarvey/oca/OCA11.HTM. He talks about the names we give one another and the Source and it reminds me of the discussion over on Rich’s blog. Here’s a sample:
bq. The New Testament usage in reference to names is this: When the followers of Jesus were contemplated with reference to their relation to him as their great teacher, they were called disciples. When the mind of the speaker was fixed more particularly on their relation to one another, they were styled brethren. When their relation to God was in the foreground, they were called children of God. When they were designated with special reference to character, they were called saints. But when they were spoken of with the most general reference to their great leader, they were called Christians. A practical observance of the exact force of each of these names would soon conform our speech to the primitive model, and would check a tendency to exalt any one name above another, by giving to each its proper place.
The rest of the article is worth a read, though I can’t whole-heartedly endorse it. It ends up arguing for the kind of non-denominational Christianity that I find kind of shallow (maybe I just watch too much of “Marcus Grodi”:http://www.chnetwork.org/ewtn.htm Catholic conversion shows to buy into this simplicistic Protestanism, though I suspect Fox would have been more sympathetic to McGarvey than to Grodi).
*Coming together as church*
I’d like to give a shout-out to the Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) ministers who came together a “worship opportunity last Sixth Night”:http://www.localquakers.org/Ministers.htm (Saturday to you worldly folks) at “Marlborough Meeting”:http://www.localquakers.org/Marlborough.html. The email invitation from Chip Thomas got wide enough circulation among Philadelphia Friends that I saw it three times. The ministry was tender and the fellowship afterwards very welcoming. It was nice to see this form of outreach from Ohio, I’d love to see more. Friends in the Philadelphia area will get another chance when Marlborough hosts another gathering of ministers on Sixth Month 24.

Constituting Mediocrity: the new National Constitution Center

Martin Kelley — Fri, 25 Jul 2003 00:00:17 +0000

It’s obvious that the Center is just a holding pen for big bus trips. It’s not as much a museum or national shrine as it is a highway rest stop. On your left’s the super-sized cafeteria, on your right the store for crappy hats and t‑shirts. And for this we rip up Philadelphia?

So today my mother and I decided to walk over and see the new National Constitution Center on Independence Mall. It’s opening day was a bit famous for a large prop crashing down on the heads of the assembled dignitaries and we wanted to see if the Center itself lived up to such an auspicious start.
It’s a particularly dismal walk from the main downtown part of Philadelphia to Independence Mall. For those of you who don’t know the city or the history, whole neighborhoods were razed in the 1950s to create a park-like atmosphere with long vistas gazing onto the old state house where the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution were both drafted and signed (it wasn’t until much later that the attractive but unassuming brick building was renamed “Independence Hall”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Hall). This was a thriving area with lots of funky nineteenth century buildings, some of them of architectural interest, and if they had been left standing the buildings and location would have made this one of the most exciting and happening neighborhoods of Philly. Instead it’s all asphalt parking lots and oversized institutional buildings. Lived history was ripped out to make room for a pre-packaged “History” that never was. It would have been much easier to imagine the bustle and hum of the 1776 streets of Philadelphia if they were still lived-in and thriving, but adventurous tourists have to walk a half mile west into Chinatown to get a taste of the chaos of real city life, now and then.
The “Mall” concept surround Independence Hall has always been a big flop. Grand vistas became long and sketchy parks which you didn’t want to visit after dark, filled with fountains where few kids ever waded. It’s largely because of the failure of the past rip-it/flatten-it/sod-it mentality that the new Constitution Center was built. It’s nicer than the barrenness that was there, but it’s still a giant pavillion air-dropped in the crater of what was a city, the whole thing surrounded with oversized institutional office boxes (the concrete-barricaded federal building and mint, a few TV studios). There’s little real connection to the vibrant city a few blocks away. (It’s like nearby Atlantic City, another real city that was turned inside-out to market to tourists, who are now brought in on air-conditioned buses and deposited directly onto the windowless casino floors, never to know there’s a real city outside.)
When my mother and I walked along the entry way to the Constitution Center we gazed into the windows to get a sense of what we were about to see. All we saw in there was a generic cafeteria. We should have gotten the hint but we carried along inside anyway. After being checked by security we walked into the Center to find… nothing.
It’s empty. The most prominent feature upon entering is the list of corporate sponsors. Then there are the auditoriums arranged around the central hall, all named after benefactors like Walter Annenberg. My mother and I sort of piroetted around the main area trying to figure out where to go. There was a curving staircase welcoming us to the second floor so we walked up. There we saw a empty balcony. We glanced right and finally found something–a room with life-sized bronze statues of the founding fathers. Cheesy and kind of stupid but we’re here so we walk in.
Bad idea. Some young staff person rushes up to us and says we can’t go in. We need tickets to go in there. Tickets are sold downstairs. We can’t see a statue of Thomas Jefferson without paying $6. Here we are in a federal museum plastered in corporate names and we have to _pay_ to see some _statues_? We turn to walk around the long balcony to see if there’s anything in the non-ticketed area on the other side. It’s only a second entrance to the statues. The young woman rushes up to us to tell us we can’t go in that way either, we need the tickets, etc., etc. I ask one of the other staffers if there’s anything here worth seeing that doesn’t need a ticket but he has no answer. Sigh…
We do find something free however. As we walked out we noticed that the gift shop is free. Thank you Uncle Sam.
It’s obvious that the Center is just a holding pen for big bus trips. It’s not as much a museum or national shrine as it is a highway rest stop. On your left’s the super-sized cafeteria, on your right the store for crappy hats and t‑shirts. And for this we rip up Philadelphia?
Further reading:
Travels in Philadelphia by Christopher Morley. Morley’s more known for the vignettes he wrote of New York City life in the 1920s, but he started out in Philadelphia. He had an eye for seeing the colorful explosion of life being lived where politicians saw nothing but tenements and flop-houses. Some of the neighborhoods he profiled so lovingly are underneath the sod and asphalt of Independence Mall and the nearby interstates.
(Personal note: my great-grandfather owned and managed a hotel in the area back in the late 1800s. I once got the street number and tracked it down, only to find an offramp for the Vine Street Expressway. So much for family history. So much for Philly history.)