Remember the Romanovs

By Harry T. Cook

11/15/13

Few Russians -- among monarchists and peasants alike -- could have imagined 100 years ago right now that Nicholas II would have been forced to abdicate less than four years later, thus ending the long rule of the Romanovs with the rise of the Bolshevik state.

It turns out that Nicholas II was not a cruel tsar, just an ill-informed emperor living in a bubble of splendor. He was likewise ill-equipped to fathom the abysmal poverty and suffering that bore down upon the millions of his subjects. As urban populations grew rapidly in early 20th-century Russia, formerly rural peoples began to perceive the material disparities between themselves and the royal elite with all of its hangers-on.

The Russian people generally were not enthusiastic about the tsar's decision to enter the Great War, leading his troops into disaster after disaster. "For what?" they asked. And so the rebellion got it legs.

Then suddenly in March 1917 came the Provisional Government demanding Nicholas' abdication and his house arrest along with that of his family, then the October revolution and finally the murder of the ex-tsar (Citizen Romanov, he was called with a sneer) and all his family on July 16, 1918 -- just short of four months before the end of the Great War.

The war, long in the making politically, got its start with the surprise assassination of a superfluous Austrian archduke on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo. Exactly a month later the first shots were fired. The guns in Europe would not fall silent until November 11, 1918, leaving 8.3 million people dead -- nearly 3 million of them Russians.

An unforeseen byproduct of the war was the Soviet state with Lenin at its head, supposedly a government of workers in a workers' state. As we know, it did not turn out that way. But it was a revolution.

It would seem impossible here in the middle of November 2013 to think that four years hence a major revolution could be mounted in the United States of America -- a revolution that would pit the masses of the forgotten middle class together with the growing number of the poor against the establishment. To predict such a thing would bring down scorn and obloquy upon the head of him or her who hazarded such a forecast.

Yet, the tinder is there, and like any tinder, it waits patiently for ignition.

A little taste of what could occur is seen in the political madness of rabid Tea Party ideologues that are clearly bent on the destruction of government as we know it. I compare them to the early and most zealous National Socialists of Germany of the 1920s. We know who and what they became. We know what chaos and old night they unleashed upon themselves and the world.

We should devoutly hope that the poor and disadvantaged in America are waiting -- rather than for a corps of thugs -- for a latter-day Saul Alinsky to help get them at least within shouting distance of joining the middle class before it, too, is swamped.

The thing is that the poor do not know how many of them there really are. That is due, in some certain part, to the overemphasis by the media on such crucial news as Jennifer Aniston's new coif or one of the Kardashians doing whatever it is Kardashians do. Names of the celebs make news, not the invisible poor.

But what if America's poor learned that, at any given time, 40 percent of the nations' families experience poverty through job loss, or job scarcity, or cancelled health insurance just in time for the onset of a major illness or the withdrawal of public benefits such as food stamps?* What if they knew that nearly half of America's 50 million public school students come from families living below the poverty line?**

What if they were told that the federal government paid millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded farm subsidies to 50 billionaires who had interests in megafarms*** at the same time that Congress was preparing to cut 5 million people off of food stamps -- and did, in fact, do so?

What if another set of facts concerning the 1% were to be made plain to those families trying not so much to get ahead as simply to keep themselves out of homeless shelters? What if they were to see clearly that over the past 40 years the rich have gotten richer in some significant part on their backs and that, absent some kind of political upheaval, poverty may be theirs for life?

What if the next Saul Alinsky were to emerge to catalyze and organize the newly educated poor? What if he were to remind them of the Reagan era of a generation ago when greed became virtue and the gospel deliberate government retrenchment enabled by cutting taxes for the wealthy? After all, The Man Himself said government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem. What if he was full of crap up to his ears?

What if this new Alinsky-type were to connect the dotted lines criss-crossing the map of our recent history from the Reagan political analysis, to the federalist enthusiasm in jurisprudence, to the Ayn Rand-ish movement in economics and to the racist and classist making of laws in the legislatures of the several states and in Congress? Broad knowledge of such information could turn the what-ifs into a what-now.

Should that come to pass, a person could be quite surprised at what might unfold over a very few years in this smug and willfully ignorant country. It would give what we call "terrorism" a brand new face -- maybe that of a neighbor or of a guy you used to know before he became a victim of the bottom-line economics of the vaunted American way of doing business to the sole advantage of the 1%, letting the 99% take the hindmost.

I asked my friend Frank Joyce -- one-time director of communications for the United Autoworkers -- to read this essay prior to its posting. Joyce -- one of my '60s mentors in bucking the system -- had this to say about it: "I applaud the spirit of what you wrote, but we can do better that the 'old paradigm' alternatives of Lenin or Alinsky. And we must do better because, among other problems, either of those approaches will get squashed like a bug. My favorite slogan from the Occupy movement is: 'The Beginning is Near!'"

Joyce tells me that he and others are working on that new beginning. Alexander Kerensky, perhaps intending something similar, tried to blunt the all-out Bolshevik initiative in 1917 with his own new beginning. He came with too little too late. That could turn out to be the case now. There may be too many bugs to squash.

Meanwhile, in the larger picture, the ravages of human-induced climate change, possible crippling cyber attacks on the electrical grid and collapse of federal and state governments at the hands of neo-fascists masquerading as Republicans could be game-changers, making any revolution a sideshow.

The question then is "What beginning is near?"

*Mark R. Rank, Ph.D, professor of social welfare, Washington University, St. Louis

**The Southern Education Foundation
*** The Environmental Working Group

What a Friend They Had in Jesus: The Theological Visions of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Hymn Writers

Have you ever found yourself humming a favorite childhood hymn, only to realize you could no longer embrace its message? Harry Cook explores how hymns reflect the religious beliefs of their times. He revisits the texts of popular hymns, posing such questions as: How true are they to the biblical texts that seem to have inspired them? What aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century piety have persisted into the twenty-first century through the singing of those hymns? And, how does one manage the conflict between the emotional appeal and the theological content of such hymns?

Available at:

Polebridge Press

Amazon.com

* * * * *

What reviewers said:

"Important and heart-warming ... Cook's keen insights into the most familiar of old-time gospel hymns ... help you do theology like a grownup."
--Robin Meyers, author of Saving Jesus from the Church

"A compelling look at centuries of Christian theology and practice, at how particular hymns have shaped American faith and religious thought."
--Richard Webster, Director of Music and Organist at Trinity Church, Boston

"A call to integrity in worship ... This exciting, penetrating and provocative study explores the theology we sing, which re-enforces the dated and pre-modern theology from which the Christian faith seeks to escape."
--John Shelby Spong, author of Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World

Readers Write

Essay 11/8/13: Eternity Is Now or Never

Dick Schrader, Jacksonville, FL:

Your thoughtful essay on death without immortality assumes a beginning and an end of the universe, and that time is a straight line moving forward. That would leave us comfortably in our four dimensional world: (1) A Line, (2) A Plane, (3) Three Dimensions, and (4) Since Einstein, Time. Those who study "string theory" mathematics (myself, totally excluded) claim that there are at least eight dimensions and possibly more. That leads to the crazy observation: That, if time moved backwards in another dimension, it would be possible for a person to kill one's great- great grandfather before he could produce either his great grandfather or his great grandmother. The basic imagery of string theory is that a singular line becomes a cup. Thus, we could be living in multiple universes in which time, usually thought of as a straight line with a beginning and an end, could be like an endless rubber band, stretching, shrinking, twisting and vibrating. That said, there appears to me an interconnection with being, rationality and consciousness. Last year at CERN, a subatomic particle with immense weigh indicated that it could be at two different places at the same time. This would indicate we know little about space, and the "grey matter" that comprises 90% of Space. There are a number of highly regarded physicists who think that the "grey matter" of the universe is consciousness. From that conjecture of consciousness, the link to religious mysticism could follow. Thus, it is not that we are without hope of immortality; it is just that we do not know.

Lois Leineke, St. Clair Shores, MI:

I have no trouble with the grass turning brown and dying or with the flowers fading until they can be cut back or saved some place out of the cold to replant when the days change and stuff starts to bloom and grow. I also have no problem when it comes to trying to comfort people who have lost a family member using these words, " the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God." I know that offering comfort is not a bad thing to do, as our family recently went through such a loss when the Reverend Frank R. Leineke could not recover from a fall inside his home. My problem with some folks is when they say: "She's in a better place." They cannot begin to know the pain of the loss of a daughter -- too soon, too soon.

Hershey Julien, Sunnyvale, CA:

I am glad to have read in your essay of and to note your recognition of humanity trashing the earth by burning fossil fuels. If you think it appropriate, please tell your readers that they can help save the earth by backing liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR) and molten salt reactors (MSR) to provide energy in electrical generating plants as replacement for fossil fuels. I have been told that not all power plants burning fossil fuels need to be replaced by completely new plants, because the energy source in an existing plant can be replaced by LFTR without building a new plant. See Richard Martin, Superfuel: Thorium, the Green Energy Source for the Future (PalgraveMacMillan, 2012). Thanks for your weekly essay

Charles Montgomery, Madison, WI:

You and Bishop Spong are among the few clergy types that I trust to speak the truth, which is sometimes "I don't know." How refreshing!

Michael Fultz, Clarkston, MI:

Your essay made me realize that our problems are largely caused and made worse by our tendency to rely on faith instead of logic, which we've done throughout history. So, today, we're paying for the bad thinking of the past. We have a peculiar form of Christianity in the US which is disgusting, to say the least. This form of Christianity requires nothing from its adherents other than an occasional statement of faith; there is no mention of helping others or making the world better. All these folks care about is the pearly gates. In other words, they are useless, just like those relatives of mine who wear crosses around their neck but who turn their nose up at my 14-year-old son, who is autistic. I am afraid that we are going to reap what we have sown.

Jessica Monroe, Evanston, IL:

After reading your "Eternity" article, I Googled you and found that you did your graduate theological work on the same campus where I now study. I'm a young person from a foreign country not thinking much about dying right now, but your words on the subject of an afterlife are important to me. You help me realize that I have that one life. I intend to use it wisely. You are a wise man.

John Bennison, Walnut Creek, CA:

Whenever I would recite the Burial Office for the Dead from the same Book of Common Prayer I presume you used in your ministry, I would simply skip the incredible line about that future day when the deceased would be "reunited with those who have gone before." In over a quarter century of parish work no one ever called me out for the omission. Either no one was paying attention (quite possible), or the majority of post-modern rationalists to whom I pastored knew better themselves. Only in their rawest moments of grief and separation would they cling to the sweet notion that eternity was in any way the same as the endless perpetuation of ego and finitude. Even those who clung to such a vain hope could not see very far down the literal path to which such reasoning led. Would they be reunited with their loved ones in the same shape they "left this world?" In most cases, I can't imagine it would not be a pretty sight anyone would want for all eternity. Or would they get to choose the time and place for an eternity of their own, say, at the height of their own once-beautiful or virile self? The better path? I prefer Wordsworth: "Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower, we will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind."

Tom Hall, Foster, RI:

Lovely! This is one of the rare contexts in which I find any real validity in the honorific "Christ."

Brian McHugh, Silver City, NM:

Dennis and I both know that this life is it, and that we had better get on with being "Christ-like" and loving right here and now. And, of course, enjoy the gift of life as fully as possible and try our best to help others around us do the same.

Fred Fenton, Concord, CA:

I enjoyed your reinterpretation of the line from an old Methodist hymn, "Only what's done for Christ will last." In your reading, "Only what's done to preserve the earth will last." I am reminded of what a wonderful friend and colleague of mine used to say, "You only have what you give away; not what you keep, but what you give away." Belief in a life after death is an attempt to hold on to something. If, instead, we spend our life giving to others, the final surrender of life itself can bring peace and a feeling of completion. My friend woke his wife in the middle of the night to say, "I'm about to die. I don't want to stay in this bed so you'll have to sleep where I died." He got up, shared a pot of tea with her, and died peacefully.

Blayney Colmore, La Jolla, CA:

For the longest time I bit my tongue when families and friends of someone we'd just buried, said, "He's smiling down on us now." At least one of my clergy friends took issue with my denial of our surviving death, saying, "But you don't know." Which I don't. I gave up either quarreling or maybe even fretting about it, because I think we all speak in metaphor when we speak of what may be beyond this dimension, even when we think we're speaking literally. What perplexes me most is why people think they want to live forever. Even in some sort of heaven. I have been accused of being depressed for saying I find this life quite enough -- in fact much more than reason would consider likely -- and while I am grateful for every day added to my span, I am quite ready to release that final breath when the moment comes. Surely it is ego that causes us to be unable to imagine a world without us, whether individually or as a species. But one of the attractions of Zen insight is that ego/self is a trick we play on ourselves when we don't trust reality. The willingness to be embraced by that reality is a blessing more than a moral requirement.

Bruce van Voorst, Alexandria, VA:

I write to express my admiration for your piece. It is a clear-headed analysis distinguishing fact from wishes and illusions. I must say I agree totally with everything you write. I do have one question: Given your views, how could remain a parish priest? Seems to me you discredit several doctrinal issues central to Christianity. I, too, reject them, but I'm not a priest. I never could abide this talk about heaven and the life hereafter. I recently experienced a life and death situation myself. I fell on our stairs, breaking six ribs -- badly. I couldn't breathe, and had to undergo a tracheostomy. I had the option --clearly spelled out by the doctor -- of not undergoing the procedure -- in which case I would die. Despite my years of study in theology and philosophy, none of this played a role in my decision. I simply wanted to remain with a wife whom I deeply love and my adult children. No question of heaven or hell entered my mind. Again, congratulations for a first-rate reflective piece.

What do you think?

I'd like to hear from you. E-mail your comments to me at revharrytcook@aol.com.

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