Great Is Diana of the Americans!

This morning I had the book Wise Counsel with me as I sat down at my computer to write this posting. I intended to quote John Newton on page 85, “When I hear the cry about liberty I think of the old cry, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” Newton is quoting from Acts 19:28, 34.

When I turned my computer on, I saw my friend Michael Daily’s comment on the previous post, in which I also quote from this collection of Newton’s letters. And just what does Michael write? “In this same vein I appreciated Newton's comment in one of his letters that the Americans were shouting "Liberty, Liberty" the way the Ephesians shouted "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!"” This is from the same letter as the quote used a few days ago.

In this letter, as Newton surveys the attitudes of England and the American colonies, especially the attitudes of professing Christians, he also writes, “It seems to me one of the darkest signs of the times, that so many of the Lord’s professing people act as if they thought he was withdrawn from the earth…” Newton then writes of Christians railing against those with whom they disagree and indulging in “unsanctified passions instead of taking that part which is assigned them Ezek. 9:4.”

“And the Lord said to him, “Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.”” (Ezekiel 9:4).

It doesn’t appear to me that we, in this nation, and especially we in the professing church in this nation, are “sighing and groaning” over the abominations in the professing church and in our nation. We may shout. We may engage in vitriol, or bow down before the talking heads that do – letting them be our proxies. We may wield sarcasm and intimidation. But we do not sigh and groan over our personal and familial sins and the sins of the church and the nation.

We talk of liberty but we mean rebellion; we mean that we insist on doing what we want how we want both in the professing church and in general society.  The Bible is nothing more than a useful tool to further my own enjoyment, it is not God’s Authority in my life. Let us manipulate the Bible to further our political, economic, and social agendas; but let us not submit to the Scriptures. Let us form the Bible into our own image, let us not submit to the Bible so that God through His Word may form us, by His mercy and grace, into the image of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Look around you, if you live in the United States you are living in a nation that is repudiating the image of God; you are living in a nation that is forcibly imposing this repudiation upon its citizens, on its children, in its education system, on its businesses, and on its churches. Western civilization and the Western church is committing an incredible spiritual, moral, political suicide – one that I think is without precedent. We are eradicating humanity from humanity and are giving ourselves over to the demonic – the Tower of Babel looks fairly innocent when compared to us; Sodom and Gomorrah [Mathew 10:15; 11:20 – 24] will perhaps stand and accuse us, you and me and our leaders and our neighbors and the leaders of our churches on the Day of Judgment – for we had the Gospel, we had the Light of Christ, we had some understanding of the image of God – and we not only rejected it ourselves, we forced others to reject it.

But as long as we have our LIBERTY, as long as “I can do it my way,” as long as we can shout, “Great is Diana of the Americans!” – we really don’t care do we?

A Hand I Had To Shake

Yesterday one of the apartment communities I manage had a “community day”; it included a yard sale, blood mobile, vendors, face painting, activities for kids, a fire truck, martial arts demonstrations, music, and food. Every year Vickie and I try to make sure we stop by and show our support to the staff.

Shortly after we arrived yesterday, Jennifer, the assistant manager, came over to me and handed me a business card which read, “Tuskegee Airmen, Inc., Howard Baugh Chapter, Howard L. Baugh, President.” She said, “I got Mr. Baugh to come here today, his father was a Tuskegee Airman.” She pointed to a distinguished-looking man in a red jacket (who looks very much like his father in the painting below). I said, “I’ve got to talk to him,” and I headed in his direction. I also wanted to shake his hand.

As I shook Mr. Baugh’s hand I told him that it was an honor to shake the hand of the son of a Tuskegee Airman, and that I admired their courage, not just in battle but in enduring and overcoming the racial harassment and barriers and hatred that they experienced in society and in the U.S. military. Theirs was a unit expected to fail, not to make it through flight training, and certainly not to make it through battle – it was thought that blacks couldn’t learn to fly and that blacks couldn’t stand up to battle, especially battle in the skies. This group of men, both the aviators and ground crew, proved the naysayers wrong with an exclamation point! Known as the Red Tails for their distinctive red markings on the tails of their fighter aircraft, they quickly gained the respect of the Luftwaffe and were in demand as escorts by U.S. bomber groups – white bomber groups wanted to trust their lives to the Tuskegee Airmen.

As Mr. Baugh pointed out to me, the Tuskegee Airmen were among the pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement. The man whose hand I shook, after his own service in the U.S. Air Force, enjoyed a career as a pilot with one of the big U.S. carriers; sadly, when his father – who had defended our country – tried to obtain a pilot’s position with U.S. carriers he was rejected because of his skin color.

When white people say to me that they wish our country would return to “the way it used to be” in terms of prayer in schools and moral values and people going to church – I often ask them if they would say the same thing if they were African – American. I’m not denying that we are in a moral and spiritual mess today, so don’t misunderstand me. But isn’t it also a moral and spiritual mess when our fellow citizens are not treated not only as citizens, but as human beings made in the image of God?

Prayer in schools didn’t eliminate racial hatred – sadly the mix of religion and politics can make us self-righteous and we are all dangerous when we are self-righteous. What kind of morality did we really have when there was segregation and violence…including lynchings and fire bombings and bus burnings? It breaks my heart when I think of the way returning African - American airmen and soldiers and sailors were treated after they had defended our nation in WWII and seen many within their ranks die.

This is why I wanted to shake Mr. Baugh’s hand. It is the only time in my 67 years that I’ve wanted to shake a man’s hand the way I wanted to shake Mr. Baugh’s hand.

Here is a link to the Howard Baugh Chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen

https://www.hbc-tai.org/home.html

Don’t Need No 1964

I like American Experience on PBS, I don’t watch everything on the series but I watch a lot of it. I like it because I like history, I like people, and I like to think about the flow of culture and ideas and also of the little known and the obscure.

The other day I noticed that American Experience had a presentation titled 1964; I decided to record it. Last night I decided to watch it, I watched the introduction and I turned it off, I told Vickie, “It’s too heavy for tonight, I’ll watch it another time.” The introduction pictured the assassination of President Kennedy in November of 1963 (setting the stage for 1964), civil unrest, racial conflict, the Beatles, and the Johnson – Goldwater presidential campaign.

This evening I deleted the show from the DVR and thought, “I lived through that and I don’t want to watch it; I don’t need to listen to an analysis of how the country started going to pieces that year; I don’t need no 1964.”

Maybe it’s kind of like watching Saving Private Ryan or reading Flags of Our Fathers; I can never watch the movie again and I can never read the book again (I watched the first minute or two of the movie Flags of Our Fathers and turned it off) – the images and pathos are just too much; I had bad dreams when reading Flags of Our Fathers.

Now it isn’t that I don’t read and watch some things about 1964, or about the 60s and early 70s, but when I do I tend to focus on one of two areas; baseball and civil rights; the former because I love the game, the latter because it challenges me to this day in many ways.

The 1964 St. Louis Cardinals are one of my great all-time teams; they were 11 games behind first place Philadelphia on August 23, and on September 20 were 6.5 games behind the Phillies and tied with the Reds with 12 games to go. The Cards not only won the National League pennant in one of the great come backs in baseball history, they went on the beat the Yankees in the World Series in 7 games. What a series it was, brothers Ken and Clete Boyer playing against each other as third basemen for the Cards and Yanks; Bob Gibson emerging as a Hall of Fame pitcher, Lou Brock, Curt Flood, and the rest of the St. Louis team finding ways to beat the dominant Bronx Bombers – who all too often came to D.C. and beat up on my hapless Senators. I loved the persona of that Cardinal team, the drama of the pennant race, and the intensity of the World Series.

I recall the presidential campaign, it was the second presidential race of which I aware as a boy, the first being the Nixon – Kennedy contest of 1960. My Mom took us to hear the Republican candidate for vice-president, William Miller, speak at a shopping mall in Wheaton, MD. It is ironic that Goldwater was portrayed as someone who would involve us in world conflict and that a vote for Johnson was a vote for reasonable military policy – Goldwater was portrayed as a warmonger. Well, probably neither man could have saved us from the slippery slope…I don’t know.

The 1960s into the 70s were fast years for me, too fast and often too thoughtless; I guess they were like that for the country too – fast and thoughtless. They weren’t fast and thoughtless for my friend and neighbor in Rockville, MD. Bobby Mentzer, he was killed in Vietnam (Marines) on April 1, 1968; he was born December 8, 1948 – he didn’t make it to his 20^th birthday; a quick check indicates that 1,014 Marylanders were killed in Vietnam and that of 58,220 Americans killed in the war that 11,465 were under 20 years old – what was that all about?

On April 4 Doctor King was killed and American cities exploded in riots; I was stationed in Germany (Army) at the time and read about it in the papers; it didn’t seem real.

My Mom died in June of 1968, watching her being wheeled from her hospital room (heart disease) to an intensive care unit or operating room (not sure which it was) is an image burned into my mind, it was a flash…then a few hours later she was dead. Lots of unanswered God questions on that one, lots of regrets, lots of things I wished we’d talked about.

The Cards beat the Red Sox in the ’67 Series and lost to the Tigers in the ’68 series; it would be awhile before they were back in the Word Series, but nothing to me equaled the ’64 series – maybe because after ’64 my own life got too fast, too thoughtless, and too crazy.

When I took what is known as AIT (Advanced Individual Training) at Fort Dix after Basic Training in 1967, among other things we were trained in riot control. While we were mostly trained in combat for Vietnam (I was stationed in Germany and then in Maryland after Mom died), we were also trained for riots…now ain’t that something?

When I was reassigned to Fort Meade, MD from Germany in June 1968 I was likely going to a unit that was on 24/7 riot alert; knowing that and wanting to be able to go home to Rockville on weekends to see my family I volunteered to be a cook at a large mess hall (the 24/7 unit allowed virtually no passes on weekends). Now I didn’t know much about cooking but I figured I could learn and I guess I did okay because nobody died or got sick as far as I know.

After I’d been working at the mess hall for a while the mess clerk was discharged from the service and they needed someone who could count and type, so because I knew how to use one finger in typing I volunteered and got the job.

There was a lot of turmoil in the land in those days, turmoil I don’t care to relive except to challenge myself at times, and at times to question societal assumptions. I know Doctor King wasn’t perfect but I think he was a great man, a man of great courage. Those Civil Rights workers, Freedom Riders, and those who supported them in nonviolent fashion had amazing courage and conviction…not much of that around today…they were self-sacrificial…not much of that around today either.

Well, I could go on but I need to close…no need to watch 1964, I don’t need no 1964…I’ve had enough.

The Parson’s Cause – A Tip For Richmond Locals

Here’s a tip for something neat to see if you live in the Richmond area.

On Saturday, June 19, Vickie and I went to the Historic Hanover Courthouse to see a reenactment of the damages portion of the Parson’s Cause trial. It’s a historic case that was argued in 1763 – in that very courthouse - and which some view as fanning the flames of revolution. 

If you’ve ever been to St. John’s Church for the reenactment of Patrick Henry’s, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech, this is just as good. In fact, the man who played Patrick Henry (Mike Wells) in the Parson’s Cause trial also plays Henry at St. John’s.

Admission is FREE, though you are given an opportunity to drop contributions in a basket on the way out. I think the production lasted about 45 minutes, but it seemed like only 10 because it was so well performed and the legal issue was interesting. In fact, I’d read about this case previously but couldn’t quite understand it prior to seeing the reenactment; now it is much clearer.

Additional presentations are scheduled this summer, you can go to this link for more info:

http://www.parsonscause.org/