Imagine the Quaker
an erstwhile mirror site for weblog on newquaker.com
archives | newquaker.comFriday, November 26, 2004
The how of thanksgiving. My daughter and I ate Thanksgiving dinner yesterday at the house of a friend from the Caribbean island of Nevis; we were joined during the meal by her cousins who were living and working in Ottawa, Canada. We ate split pea soup, curried lamb, buttered rolls, sweet potatoes, vegetable casserole, turkey, collard greens, mashed potatoes, and any of several pies (pumpkin, strawberry, rhubarb, apple) with whipped cream. I didn't gorge myself, but we all ate well. I think Thanksgiving must be the quintessential American meal, as it forces us to confront our tremendous abundance by the sheer exuberance of feasting. And we do it without guilt.
Yesterday Christopher D. Cook's new book Diet for a Dead Planet (New Press, 2004) was released. His argument, purely from a secular viewpoint, is that we not only have let five corporations own 42 percent of the retail food market,[1] also giving four beef producers 80 percent of the US meat market, but we have completely alienated ourselves from the source of our sustenance. There are no real seasons to the food we eat, for it's a cornucopia that flows continuously, often away from the neediest to the those who already have much, by means of an industrial farming process that also poisons the soil, the air, the water, and, yes, the food.
It is not merely ironic that Jesus could feed 5,000 people with a mere 5 loaves and 2 fishes [Mark 6:30-44]—it is also iconic in the depiction of our Lord as sharing the disciples' meal with a multitude, so that no one among them went hungry. I think on that day we should not ask to whom we should give thanks for our enormous bounty, but how should we thank him.1. That would be Kroger, Albertson's, Wal-Mart, Safeway, and Ahold USA (the last being a multinational corporation based in the Netherlands).
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 11:06 PM
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Steven Williams, a Christian public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay area, is suing the Cupertino Unified School District over what he says are acts of religious discrimination and violations of his First Amendment right to free speech. Williams, who teaches fifth grade at the suburban Stevens Creek School, apparently has been discussing the beginning of the United States in his classes and has handed out course materials that contain references to God or Christianity. Since May he has been required to submit his lesson plans and all handouts to his principal for approval. Among the handouts his principal has rejected are excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, George Washington's journal, John Adams' diary, Samuel Adams' "The Rights of the Colonists," and William Penn's "The Frame of Government of Pennsylvania."[1]
I'm sure more is going on here than merely the giving of handouts of writings by a few of America's Christian forbears, but it does underscore again the tensions still present in our public schools, between the historical fact and how that fact is presented in a classroom to students who are critically underprepared. It's a social truth that historical facts themselves often express values that are not shared by those who later study history. Has Williams been teaching the facts or has he been using the facts to promote a contemporary evangelical Christian viewpoint? I don't know the answer to that, but his administrative supervisor obviously thinks something religious is going on in the classroom and has jumped in to limit what materials he gives out in his classes. Comments from Williams' lawyer suggests that this may well be what's going on in the Cupertino suburb. "Williams wants to teach his students the true history of our country," said attorney Terry Thompson. "It's a fact of American history that our founders were religious men, and to hide this fact from young fifth-graders in the name of political correctness is outrageous and shameful."[2]
The classroom in a public school is really a public forum, so Williams shouldn't be using it to evangelize underprepared youth, nor to promote an American-Christian political viewpoint, if that's what he's up to. Now it may well be that he's just trying to be thorough as a teacher of American history; if so, but he would do well to re-read this paragraph from Penn's preface to his "Frame of Government":But, lastly, when all is said, there is hardly one frame of government in the world so ill designed by its first founders, that, in good hands, would not do well enough; and story tells us, the best, in ill ones, can do nothing that is great or good; witness the Jewish and Roman states. Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But, if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn.[3]
Penn's point at least is that, while government is a gift to us from the Father, the many forms of civil government, including the American system, are really human creations and ought not to be worshipped. It is an important historical fact that the many founders of the American system were Christian, although equally important is that many were not. Some were Deists and some were among those who, like David Hume, did not "desire to be known by that appellation."[4]
We may extol the religiosity of our country's founders, but the system itself was designed specifically to be irrelevant to that fact. Going so far as to say that our nation is a "Christian nation" is not just misleading but a lie. Its structure was framed to prevent the establishment of a national religious system. Contemporary efforts to "acknowledge God" and to write the Ten Commandments into public spaces serves more to satisfy an unconscious human itch, at the same time pointing away from Christ's place in the lives of men who, like Penn, believed that a collection of genuine Christians required minimal civil ordinances in order to live together.1. "Declaration of Independence Banned at Calif School," Reuters, Wednesday, November 24, 2004.
2. Reuters, Wednesday, November 24, 2004.
3. William Penn, The Frame of Government of Pennsylvania, April 25, 1682.
4. See James Boswell, Life of Johnson.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 2:05 AM
Sunday, November 21, 2004
My fiction collection The Man Who Rowed Lake Pontchartrain and Other Stories (New York, 2004) is now available at Amazon.com. You can also get more information about it here.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 3:28 PM
© Merle Harton, Jr. All rights reserved. Biblical references are NIV® unless otherwise noted.
