The Resolution That History Brings  

 

Harry T. Cook
By
Harry T. Cook
5/30/14


In the decade or two before the commotion at Ft. Sumter ushered in the War Between The States (which I have always thought should have been called the War Among the States), there existed no national consensus to the effect that indentured servitude was a moral wrong.

 

Some thought it beneficial to the country's economy. White folk generally believed the arrangement served to maintain control of what they considered to be a not-quite-human species. Many a well-intentioned sermon was preached by many a well-intentioned cleric saying as much.

 

It took the evolving political ethic of Abraham Lincoln, his determination and that of Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman to put what they believed would be an end to lawful slavery and the policies that enforced it.

 

Out of the destruction wrought in and by that war and of the century-long smoldering of its ruins known bizarrely as Reconstruction emerged such heroes as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. who, through the practice of passive resistance, called the nation to repent.

 

Today the necromancers of racism clearly feel constrained to continue preaching their sermons and to conduct their musty rituals in underground environments more or less out of sight of the general public. More openly, citizens of certain states have dressed up their abiding wolfish racism in sheep's clothing, making democracy a burlesque by voting in referenda to prohibit affirmative action.

 

Even so, what is called political correctness has made such epithets as the vile N word taboo. Just ask the ex-police commissioner in New Hampshire.

 

The war against racism is far from over, but the battle Lincoln took to the Confederacy is won. History by and large has judged the latter and its inhumane social politics to be rotten.

 

That said, I am pondering how a century hence those forces now bent on denying women their reproductive rights will be judged. State legislatures goaded by the Catholic hierarchy and their otherwise unlikely allies in the evangelical orbit are busy crafting new laws that narrow the opportunities for women to exercise their constitutional rights under Roe v. Wade.

 

The strategy and tactics involved were revealed in perfect light last month by a member of Pro-Life Mississippi as she readily admitted that such new laws enacted there and in other states are intended not to make abortion safer but to end the practice altogether. "One day," she told The New York Times, "our country will be abortion free."

 

In one sense, such people occupy high ground, if not a higher ground. They seem to be convinced that ending the developing life of an as-yet-unborn human being is murder. Further, they understand that murder is frowned upon in most human societies -- at least officially -- and that, moreover, the several states have on their books a multiplicity of statutes against the practice, some of them requiring capital punishment for convicted murderers.

 

If you are familiar with abolitionist literature, you will concede that these latter-day opponents of reproductive rights are singing a similar song, albeit in a different key. The abolitionists -- especially the Protestant preachers involved -- brooked no challenge to their moral views that slavery was a scandalous evil not to be tolerated. Not here. Not anywhere. History judges them as having been both brave and correct.

 

Of course, there are those who cannot countenance the truth that the war against both slavery and secession was officially concluded in favor of emancipation and the Union in April 1865. Indeed, guerrilla action persisted in the violence of cruelly enforced segregation, church bombings and cross burnings for another 100 years, but even that is now pretty much tamped down.

 

Without yielding an inch of moral territory to those who would abolish reproductive rights, one really needs to ponder how they and their zealous campaign will be viewed a century down the road. Is it possible that abortion will be seen by more and more people in the same way slavery came to be seen and acknowledged not only as transgression of religious law but also as trespass upon a broad moral consensus that by then may have been reached?

 

I have friends whom I trust and love but who vigorously disagree with my take on reproductive rights. They are people of tender heart and spirit who give of themselves and their resources to their churches and to nonprofit agencies that serve the poor.

 

Come 2114, will they and their anti-abortion advocacy be widely regarded as having achieved the kind of moral triumph the abolitionists' campaign realized in the 1850s and 1860s?

 

Or putting it another way, will those who see the issue of reproductive rights as I see it eventually be found on the wrong side of history?

 

A final question: With the State of Tennessee now reverting to the use of the electric chair, I'm wondering if the pro-life cohort will be heard opposing capital punishment (surely a "life" issue) with volume equal to that spent on opposing reproductive rights. When the needle shows identical decibel levels on both issues, we'll know that at least one manifestation of the well-known hobgoblin called consistency is, in actuality, a blithe and generous spirit.

Copyright 2014 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
 

Readers Write 
Essay 5/23/14: Thinking Critically, Being Absorbed

 

Note:

Carol Lauhon's name was misspelled in last week's READERS WRITE section. 

 

Mark Bendure, Grosse Pointe Park, MI:  

I share your view that both critical thinking and absorption are necessary. I would not have been so impressed with the importance of absorption until the Pythagorean Theorem played a prominent role in an airplane crash case I tried. My greatest lament about the current trend in education is that critical thinking seems to have gone by the wayside, at least at early levels where the focus is on the almighty MEAP scores that reward successful regurgitation of absorbed factoids (as an aside, I was told of a school district that led the State in scoring two consecutive years and receivd a demerit the second for failing to satisfy the "improvement" criterion). Even absorption has lost its importance now that computers and cell phones are available to provide a ready answer to virtually any question that earlier generations were required to absorb. (Any bets on how many modern 6th graders can do long division competently?) While those gadgets are truly awesome, I worry about the future of our democracy in a world where students may neither have absorbed such subjects as history nor learned how to critically analyze those events and avoid repeating past mistakes. Glad that I have a fellow curmudgeon to grouse with.

 

Blayney Colmore, Jacksonville, VT:
Your new photo and your recounting of your fierce pedagogy make me look forward to reading your memoir. I was a poor student until a history teacher my sophomore year in high school awakened something in me that alerted me to school as something other than the equivalent of adults who had been required to sit on ice cakes, requiring the same of their children. I am grateful for nothing more than having been equipped for lifelong learning, which, during the past 50 years, has made life more fun and interesting than I ever imagined. I don't think it's much about IQ, but it does help to have vast parts of reality taking place in your head. 


Nicholas S. Molinari, Brick, NJ:

Sorry, I'm forced to employ "awesome" to describe the power of your memory. I'm reminded of your dissertation about the Hebrew word meaning "to remember." Another personal and powerful essay! Thank you.

 

Rt. Rev. Alden M. Hathway, Dataw, SC:

Though we stand on opposite shores of the great divide intellectual that sets us at odds church and society, the culture wars, I so honor you and your writing. You always help me to think through my poor efforts to make sense of the biblical witness and the faith that I am called to proclaim. Over the years I enjoy thinking about our relationship, when we were young clergy together in Detroit in the '60s. And lately through this teaching site of yours. Especially am I moved by your essays describing your personal life and formation. On surface we are formed alike, we both grew up in the same era: the great war; the social tumult of the sixties; Vietnam and the Age of Aquarius; the great liberations, race, gender sexuality; And the station events of life, marriage, children, professional church career. But at the middle ground we part company; the conservative-liberal split. However you want to describe the ideological pathways we have chosen to follow. And now at the summit of our years; age and physical infirmities leveling our perspectives to the great questions that can never be answered fully yet define our souls, we are brothers along the way, the paths that inevitably converge. Thank you for your personal reminiscences: your family, your teachers, the reading that shaped your mind and thinking. And your station master friend who involved you in the Pere Marquette line. Its trains stopped at Interlochen (134 KN). I remember as a 10-year-old homesick boy the overnight train to summer camp there. 

 
Barbara Sorlie, West Bend, WI:
Thank you for all your interesting and informative essays. Over the years I have shared them with ministers, book and discussion groups, and other friends. I have read all of your books, and your books are on the same shelf along with books by Spong, Crossan, Borg, Weatherhead, Ehrman, Armstrong, Funk, Geering, Cupitt -- all having an impact on my understanding of scholarly and liberal interpretations of Christianity, the Bible and Jesus. Live long, Harry Cook. Live well. 


Barby Reider, West Bloomfield, MI:

Enjoy your article so much.

 

Cynthia Chase, Laurel, MD:

I don't think I began to think critically until middle age. My husband says that when he first met me, I seemed to be looking for an authority figure, but that later I abandoned that quest. As a child, with my own library card and a library within walking distance, I read all kinds of books, including every available Nancy Drew book. Being a child of the '40s, I had no idea what a "roadster" (Nancy's car) looked like. When I was 12, my grandmother gave me a beautifully illustrated edition of Little Women. How I loved that book. I still revisit favorite chapters occasionally.

 

Euni Rose, Southfield, MI:

A pox on those who didn't see the "you" when you were a fat kid with his nose in a book.

 

Fred Fenton, Concord, CA:

Thinking critically did not come naturally to me. It came from exposure to some hard schoolmasters who demanded nothing less. The absorption in subjects of interest, from magic as a boy to American history in college, came easily. You are right that it is the combination of the two that creates a scholar or a well-informed person. I, too, have always enjoyed memorizing favorite writings, from the Gettysburg Address and The Cremation of Sam McGee when I was young, to On First looking into Chapman's Homer and La Marseillaise (in French) when I was older. Although my notebook of contemporary quotes keeps growing, I fail to find anything to memorize, nothing, certainly, that could rival your quote from The Tempest (or anything else Shakespeare wrote.)

 

Frieda Kunzel, Cincinnati. OH:
Would love to have been one of your teachers. You sound like the student we teachers dreamed of having. I don't know how teachers do it today. Thank you for your stimulating essays. Keep them coming.

 


What do you think?
I'd like to hear from you. E-mail your comments to me at [email protected].