The Seductiveness of The Familiar
Professor Erskine ClarkeProfessor of American Religion
Columbia Theological Seminary
Decatur, GA
I must admit that I am no better than my colleagues. Whatever the subject, I will try to turn the conversation to the 19th century and the American south. And to not just any part of the South, but to the and
So on this occasion, this is exactly what I am going to do. As we think about the challenges before you as seminarians, I want to turn, not to Hosea and Gomer, but to two white young seminarians in the 1830s, both of whom were intimately connected to After briefly telling the stories of these two 19th century seminarians, I will concluded with some reflections on 21st century seminarians and the seductive power of the familiar.
I am honored by the faculty's invitation to deliver this Opening Convocation address. It is an important occasion in the institution's life and the service helps to set the tone for the early days of the term. So I am genuinely grateful for the invitation.
I am aware, however, from long experiencevery long experiencethat when the faculty invites a colleague to deliver such an address it is a way of saying kindly: "Retirement looms! Prepare to abandon faculty meetings!" This Opening Address is consequently given with gratitude, with an awareness of this gentle reminder of my looming retirement, and with an awareness of the focus of this Convocationyour preparation for ministry.
Now for those of you who are entering the 1st year class or who are beginning your studies at
I am, moreover, undecided whether I ought to continue to hold slaves. As to the principle of slavery, it is wrong! It is unjust, contrary to nature and religion to hold men enslaved. But the question is, in my present circumstances, with evil on my hands entailed from my father, would the general interests of the slaves and community at large, with reference to the slaves, be promoted best, by emancipation? Could I do more for the ultimate good of the slave population by holding or emancipating what I own.
Charles knew deep in his bones that his comforts were drawn from labors and sorrows of slaves. "How often do I think," he wrote, "of the number of hands employed to furnish me with those conveniences of life of which they are in consequence deprived--how many intellects, how many souls perhaps, withered and blasted forever for this very purpose!" As he struggled with his decision, he visited with a number of leading abolitionists in the North and talk long and hard about his looming decision.
And so Charles Jones, the young seminarian, made his decision. He would return to and seek to be both a minister to the slaves and their strong advocate, working for the humane treatment of slaves. In time, he would become known among whites as the "Apostles to the Negro Slave," and no Southern white would be more vigorous in calling for the humane treatment of slavesgood houses, good food, marriages and families kept together, time on Saturdays for their own gardens, and Sabbath rest.
A generation ago, a distinguished historian wrote of Jones: "This exordinary man,...was a rich planter, a gentleman of liberal education, and a Presbyterian clergyman of radiant Christian character, aptly described by his son-in-law [a CTS graduate] as one of the nobles men God ever made.'"
And yet as one studies his life and ministry a chilling development slowly unfolds. We see that he never really challenged the system of slavery. And equally chilling, because he loved good thingsthat is noble things: his family and a particular part of God's good creation, the lowcountryhis early vision began to fade. Family and love of place began to blunt his moral vision and began slowly to lead him to a support of slavery.
When Harriett Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, she was accused of slandering the white South. Many in both the North and South said slavery was not as cruel as she had portrayed it. So Stowe wrote a Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin in which she quoted Southerners themselves about the horrors of slavery. And one whom she quoted frequently was Charles Jones. She wrote this about Jones:
"The Rev. Charles C. Jones" is, she wrote, "a man of the finest feelings of humanity, and for many years an assiduous laborer for the benefit of the slave...." She called him an "earnest laborer for the good of the slave," and she thought his book Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States "manifests a spirit of sincere and earnest benevolence, and of devotedness to the cause he has undertaken, which cannot be too highly appreciated." Yet for Mrs. Stowe, Charles's sincerity and benevolent spirit made his support of slavery all the more deplorable. After declaring that he possessed a "sublime spirit," a "mind capable of the very highest impulses," she lamented: "And yet, if we look over his whole writings, we shall see painfully how the moral sense of the finest mind may be perverted by constant familiarity with such a system."
So there we have it. The high moral convictions of the young seminarian had been gradually eroded over time by his love of family and place and by his constant familiarity with the system. It was his daily living within the system of slavery that slowly seduced him and gradually eroded his abhorrence of a brutal system.
The second young seminarian was John Leighton Wilson, a member of the first graduating class of CTS. He and his wife, Jane Bayard Wilson, also inherited a number of slaves. They too faced a decision of what they would do. They too found slavery abhorrent. But their decision was to free their slaves and take them with them to West Africa, to the young colony of , where they helped them to become established as newly freed people. The
After those years, the
So we have two young seminarians from the 19th century. We watch their lives with respect as they struggle to decide the path of duty, of Christian discipleship, in the face of the great crushing evil of human bondage. They both thought, as their theology taught them, that they could make a decision free from the contingencies of their lives, free from the social and cultural and familial forces that shaped their hearts and their worlds. Yet the American South was a social and moral universe for them that they could not escape in spite of wide travel . For them history, locality, and self were tightly interwoven. And the result of this interweaving was precisely the familiar, the ordinariness of daily life lived and remembered, that drew them away from the moral vision of their youth and made of them white Southerners who supported the Confederacy and its system of slavery.
I made no claims about the inevitability of such a course for these two young seminarians. I simply want to point to them as people of the highest character and deepest Christian piety, whose good intentions went badly astray. They serve for us, I think, especially for you seminarians, as warnings voices from the past about the seductive power of the familiar and about how easily good intentions can go astray, about the pressures that shape our choices, our lives, and our ministries.
So in conclusion, I want to reflect very briefly about the contemporary cultural and social world of which we are a part and one of the challenges of such a world. There are many ways, of course to describe contemporary North American culture. For the literary minded, we could speak of Post-Modernism, although some are now saying that Post Modernism is history, that we are living After Post-Modernism. What ever.
If we take the commitments and choices that many of you have already made, however, we would see your own struggles against a consumer society as you seek to follow Jesus Christ. Many of you have come to seminary committed to simplify your lives and have made significant financial sacrifices, especially those of you with families. You have known and named the emptiness of constant consumption and you are committed to breaking its hold on you just as Jones and Wilson were committed to breaking the hold of slavery on their own lives.
Let the stories of these two 19th century seminarians and this new archive remind you that the warfare is long and the enticements to abandon your vision are great. You are studying at a theological seminary marked by significant criticism of the consumer society. Yet it is also a community struggling daily in the midst of good and amazingly generous gifts given Columbia over the generations, gifts that have made Columbia now stronger than ever before, able to serve the church in remarkable new ways. But our growing strength also makes us vulnerable to the enticements of a consumer society. What does it mean for us as a community, for
Be warned also by the example of those of us on the faculty who have struggled long over these enticements. Go beyond what we boldly say to look at our homes, especially the homes of those of us who are tenured and have been around for awhile, look at our places of familiarity, with all of their indications of consumption, and know that the warfare is long and that the seductions of a familiar consumer society have been at work on us. Be warned.
And be warned as well as you look around at today's student expectations and how those expectations reflect the influence of a consumer society. Look at student expectations in regard to comforts and know that the warfare is long and the enticements to abandon your vision are great.
The consumer society provides for us all, in other words, a social and moral universe that is familiar and that makes up the ordinary character of our daily lives and is therefore powerfully seductive to a moral vision that sees the emptiness of constant consumption.
Neely McCarter, who taught Christian Education at
In the midst of such warnings, we do well to end this Address by listening again to the writer of the letter to the Hebrews in the scripture lesson read this morning. After pointing to those who had gone before, to those who had known faithfulness and failures, to those who like David had known in their lives deep moral ambiguity, he said:
Let us therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right of the of the throne of God.
And so you seminarians, you too are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, of those whose lives are marked by faith and failures, and by deep moral ambiguity. Included in that cloud of witnesses are Charles Jones and Leighton Wilson and others who have been a part of this CTS community in the pastLudwig DeWitz and Will Ormond; Lucy Rose and Shirley Guthrie; John Bulow Campbell, Claude Clopton and Mac Richards; Ann Titshaw, Elsie Urie and Bonneau Dickson. There they are, all around you, cheering you on as you take from them the baton to run with perseverance the race that is set before you. And they are pointing you, as you begin this race, to Jesus, the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith, the perfecter of your faith, who goes before you. Dear seminarians, as you face the challenges of the familiar, may you know courage, wisdom, perseverance, and joy as you follow him who is the perfecter of your faith.