An Interesting Question
Harry T. Cook


By Harry T. Cook
10/16/15
 
 
As I recall, the breakfast-time conversation began with my recital of the daily carjacking report from an online news source. A woman had driven into an all-night gas station on Detroit's west side not so far from where we lived in the 1980s. In full view of the attendant inside, she was mugged and beaten and her car driven away by an armed thug.
 
I said aloud, "Why ever would a woman stop at a gas station in that part of town in the middle of the night?" Answer from my spouse: "Why shouldn't she or anyone be able to stop at that or any gas station at any hour and not fear being harmed?"
 
My wife is anything but na�ve and is well acquainted with life in the big city. But I had to ask her what the hell she was talking about. So I said, "What the hell are you talking about?"
 
Thus ensued a somewhat lengthy exchange. Out of it come the following observations:
  • The population of Detroit in 2015 is about 688,000, of which African-Americans make up 85%. A generation ago, that percentage was 17% of 1.85 million, meaning that whites then made up 83%. The city, now as then, covers 139 square miles but with 63% fewer people living in it. The Lorelei of verdant suburban bliss and the consequent erosion of the tax base as manufacturers and retailers moved out of the city were major factors in driving the city to the precipice of bankruptcy at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century.
  • Following the downward arc, the school district of Detroit -- rated among the best in the nation as late as 1960 -- began its trip to the bottom following the busing controversy in the early 1970s. Whites, traumatized by the 1967 rebellion and unwilling to have their children bused to schools far from home to achieve court-ordered integration, either moved to the suburbs or sent their children to private schools. Slowly but surely the system began to collapse of its own weight. Education in what was left of Detroit schools was replaced over time by something that looked for all the world like day care in a reformatory.
  • Poverty's cancerous takeover of neighborhood after neighborhood, coupled with chronic unemployment, forced many families into near destitution, especially those in one-parent homes. The pushers of illicit drugs moved in along with gun merchants, and the proverbial fat was in the fire. Young men, both truants and dropouts, saw the good life on television and figured out how to appropriate it without working at jobs they couldn't get or hold due to their marginal education.
  • The Detroit Police Department is overwhelmed. 911 calls, if answered, pile up in a given night, lengthening response time in a kind of triage arrangement. There is no such thing as a cop at every corner, though amazingly enough -- given the challenge at hand -- a lot of good police work seems to be getting done. There are, of course, alleged incidents of police brutality that, true or not, end up giving the force a bad name.
Unless and until the miracle of downtown Detroit's renascence moves outward to encompass the much-neglected neighborhoods in which crime and poverty have woven their dread tapestry, hopelessness will reign across much of what's left of the city's forlorn landscape.
 
Those given to the grim task of razing abandoned homes -- many of them undone in their decrepitude by arson -- have a long slog ahead of them. Until that seemingly impossible task is completed, certain areas of what was once at its height the fourth-largest city in America -- an urban jewel however wreathed in smoke from the stacks of its ubiquitous automobile factories -- will be off-limits to anyone who wishes not be mugged or carjacked.
 
Notwithstanding, my wife is absolutely right. Anyone should be able to do that anywhere in any city without fear. Yet the psychological and material distance between should be able to and can, where Detroit is concerned, has become an unnavigable strait, at least for now.


Copyright 2015 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
 


Readers Write
Re essay of 10/9/15 The Bible Beyond Its Gild-Edged Pages
 
 
Blayney Colmore, Jacksonville, Vermont:
My seminary in 1963 still operated under the old German design that required you to pass a couple of exams on the basic material one was supposed to have mastered to do graduate work, before you could matriculate. In this case the exams were in the content of the Bible, and content of the Book of Common Prayer, the darling of the Anglican Communion once upon a time. Knowing nothing of either, I spent the summer with the Oxford Shorter Bible, The College Outline Series, and the Prayer Book, hoping to be able to do what I had done in Symbolic Logic as an undergraduate: memorize enough to get by. The Prayer Book was straightforward enough, and having been brought up in a church going family, it was familiar. The Bible was another matter. Intertwined in my unconscious were stories and people from the Bible, Grimm's Fairy Tales, and a few legends of the American frontier. I memorized enough to begin classes on schedule, not required to join several of my classmates in the tutorial known as The Upper Cambridge Bible Society. But it was while scouring the library the first week of classes, to find material for the first assigned paper -- The Sources of the Pentateuch -- that I realize I not only was unfamiliar with the Bible, but was astonished to find that for 100 years scholars had been deciphering it, layer by layer, like a geological formation. It was a revelation, one I never found a way to introduce to pious members of the parishes I served. Whatever ability I may have to think, I attribute to the process that began then. I would covet that for every curious, eager seeker.
 
Harvey H. Guthrie, Fillmore, California:
Hey! Your faith is way deeper than your friend's.
 
Bernard Kittle, Oshkosh, Wisconsin:
About as clear an explanation of the Bible as I have ever read. And you are so right about the conditioning process. I am one of its products. I grew up in a Methodist church.
 
Aud and Cathy Petroelie, Zeeland, Michigan:
You are one poor excuse for even thinking you were a minister, whatever your church called you. What you say is so horrible. The Bible is the only true book, and keep praying that someday you will see God and Christ as we do, maybe follow Jesus also to heaven. Sounds like we will not see you there. What a shame. Never knew there was someone like you. You are a true atheist for sure. So sorry, hell is hot. God bless you and we will pray for you.
 
Peter Lawson, Petaluma, California:
I would like to join Faith Killers Anonymous. If we can get a group of us together we can share stories about our addiction to truth and honesty undergirded by the notion that saying we know something means we do not know.
 
Frieda Cousens, Worcester, Massachusetts:
Thank you! Thank you! Your essay about the Bible helped me more than I have ever been helped to see through the fog that was deliberately laid down by generations of preachers and Sunday school superintendents. I wish I had caught up the way you caught me up years ago. At least I know now that I will not go to hell for doubting.
 
Doreen Lawton, Northville, Michigan:
Thank you for the time and effort you put forth in writing your essay each week. Your writings continue to give me hope for the future in a time where watching the evening news and the religious conflicts around the world could lead one to despair.
 
Morgan Perlmutter, Arlington, Virginia:
I tuned into you at just the right time. The essay about the Bible's gilt-edged pages came along just as I have a granddaughter living with me who, in my opinion, has been abused by her Sunday school teachers. You article will serve me well, once I understand it better. Thanks for being there.
 
Diane M. Clark, Traverse City, Michigan:
If I had been born in a later generation, I might have become a minister (Presbyterian), but that option was not open to women when I was younger. So I took the other option and became a Certified Director of Christian Education. I served full-time in this field for 6 years, and continued to serve freelance as a teacher and consultant in the Memphis Presbytery for many years thereafter. My main career path, however, was university teaching (35 years), and I taught music for 32 years at my alma mater, Rhodes College (Presbyterian school), in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. I also taught for 10 years in the Rhodes humanities course, "The Search for Values in the Light of Western History and Religion." So I have a strong background in scholarly-critical Bible study and church history. I was also a professional church musician for 36 years, so I have sung and worshipped with just about every Christian denomination, as well as in several synagogues.
 
As you can imagine, since I celebrate my 75th birthday next week, my attitudes about religion have changed greatly from where I began (the party line). I'm not even sure what to call myself any more, though God/dess and I are closer than ever. I have always believed that God is bigger than any human understanding, so I try to keep an open mind, and I have certainly learned much from many religions. At any rate, I just wanted to let you know that I am enjoying your writings, and I enjoy sharing them with my Facebook friends (some of whom are extremely conservative). I hope it helps them all to ponder.
Perhaps I will have the pleasure of meeting you in person someday. Keep up the good work!
 
Alta May Jenkins, Spokane, Washington:
Good for you! It's about time somebody dealt with the scriptures the way you did. It is clear that you prize them for what they are and what they're not and know a lot about them. Come to this city and preach in some church, please.
 
Fred Fenton, Concord, California:
You make a profound point about the power of religious conditioning. This applies not only to the innocent believer who takes the Bible literally, but also to esteemed academics that accept and practice biblical criticism while continuing to believe in the divinity of Jesus and his resurrection from the dead, ideas not supported by critical study of the texts involved.
 
Richard M. Schrader, Jacksonville, Florida:
Think of how effective Bible studies would be if they included a good dose of history. For instance, how many Roman legions were stationed in and around Jerusalem and in all of Israel in the early first century? How many men were in a legion? How many slaves, camp followers, etc. ("Impedimenta") could be added to each legion. What was the native population of Jerusalem? Of Israel? And how many non-natives (traders, travelers, slaves) were there? There must have been huge clashes of culture far greater than anything we are experiencing today. These clashes influenced what little documentation survived. And that documentation, as you pointed out, was altered in translation, careless copying, personal and cultural bias, and an inability to sense the past.
 

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