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Pym’s Cup

Some day an earnest young scholar in pursuit of a suitably narrow research topic may turn to the works of British writer Barbara Pym and compile an exhaustive index of the occasions when pots of tea are brewed and consumed in her 11 novels.

Such a project might well have appealed to Pym’s own sense of the comic. The centrality of the tea urn in Church of England parish life and the ability of scholars to fashion whole careers out of a tiny scrap of information or a corner of a field of study are themes which appear again and again in her detailed and witty portraits of little communities of Anglicans and anthropologists.

I discovered the cozy world of Barbara Pym about five years ago, in a stack of bargain books. It would be hard to find one of her novels on the remainder table today, for the small cult of Pym readers in the U.S. has grown, though she is still not as widely known as she deserves to be.

Her novels are addictive -- as palatable as a feather-light sponge cake baked by a canon’s widow for the dessert table at the church bazaar in one of Pym’s parishes. But inside the spun-sugar consistency is a tart or bittersweet filling. For the spinsters who populate Pym’s novels, romance may end ruefully, or never get off the ground.

Readers who have spent their share of time hanging around churches -- even non-Anglican, American ones -- will find something familiar in Pym’s truthful fictions: the suspicion of "Romish" influences; the pettiness of the disputes that erupt in parish councils; the resistance to new hymnals and other innovations; the tendency for bazaars and "jumble sales" (British for "rummage sales") to become one of the chief ends of the church rather than a means; the territorial disputes over who shall polish the brass on the lectern or arrange the altar flowers; the romanticizing of African missionaries "doing splendid work among the natives"; and the eternal debates over whether "high church" or "low church" is better. (Pym apparently shared her characters’ resistance to change. In a letter discussing new liturgies she wrote, "Oh, pray for the Church of England," and she once contemplated writing a novel on "the decay of the Anglican Church." In 1963 she included Bishop John A. T. Robinson’s book Honest to God in a list of disasters in a year of "violence, death and blows.") Pym’s world is inhabited by an eccentric cast of winsome curates, pompous vicars and canons, enthusiastic students, vague professors, badly dressed clergy wives, aging men who live with their cranky mothers, bored civil servants, crotchety librarians, "splendid spinsters," dotty retirees, professed agnostics, titled nobility, "distressed gentlewomen" and discreet homosexual couples.

Virtually all her books are available in Dutton hardcover editions and Harper & Row paperbacks -- from Some Tame Gazelle, which she began writing in the 1930s, to A Few Green Leaves, which she completed in 1979, shortly before her death. A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in Diaries and Letters (Dutton) , edited by Pym’s literary executor Hazel Holt and by her sister, Hilary Pym, was issued in 1984, satisfying the curiosity of readers who had previously known almost nothing about the author except what could be gleaned from book-jackets and autobiographical hints in the novels.

Pym was born in 1913 in Oswestry, England, into a home comfortable enough to have domestic help. Her father, a lawyer, sang bass in the parish choir, and her mother was the assistant organist. Thus, her familiarity with the life of Anglican parishes began in childhood, when her family’s social life included vicars, curates and organists; she would sometimes sit on the organ bench beside her mother during services.

At 12, she went to an all-girls boarding school, where she was an average student, but noted for her poems and parodies. In 1931 she went to Oxford to study English. In 1932 she began the first in a series of diaries she was to continue for the rest of her life.

Though one would not guess it from the novels, Pym was not prim, at least not in her youth. Some diary pages had to be burned or ripped out. In one surviving entry she records that "Jockie" (novelist Robert Liddell, Harvey’s housemate at Oxford) "came in and caught us reading ‘Samson Agonistes’ in bed with nothing on." (The several sly allusions to "Samson Agonistes" in her novels may have been intended to amuse friends who were in on this story.)

Pym was deeply hurt when Harvey married a Danish woman in 1937, but he remained her lifelong friend. For a time she wrote entertaining letters to him, his wife and Liddell in a style that Holt says parodied Ivy Compton-Burnett and Stevie Smith. And she got her gentle revenge on Harvey by including in her novels a self important archdeacon who ‘takes his texts from minor poets, preaches sermons his congregation doesn’t understand, and overuses Harvey’s favorite descriptive phrase, "remarkably fine."

Her novel-writing began at Oxford, but publishers initially failed to show an interest. "Be more wicked, if necessary," her agent told her in response to Some Tame Gazelle, in which she and her sister Hilary appear as two aging spinsters living together in a village, and the rest of her Oxford circle is transformed into members of an Anglican parish.

World War II interrupted her writing. She worked in a government censorship office and lived near Bristol in a household of BBC employees and their families. During this time she had a brief but intense love affair with the estranged husband of one of her housemates and close friends. When the aftermath of the affair became too painful, she joined the Wrens (Women’s Royal Navy Service) and remained with them for the duration of the war, serving in Southhampton and then Naples. Her off-duty hours were filled with rather more social activity than she wanted. A fleeting romance with a naval officer provided the basis for a memorable character in Excellent Women. "I suppose every man I have ever known will see himself as Rocky," she said of the character who spent the war in Naples arranging the admiral’s social life and being "charming to a lot of dreary Wren officers in ill-fitting white uniforms."

Pym felt that her "Wrennish façade" was false and that she was out of her element in the service. She wrote, "I’m doing my best, trying to see the funny side," and tried to view it as "a great chunk of experience, an extraordinary bit of life" useful for her writing. And as always, she looked for churches to visit -- for worship, architecture or atmosphere. But she missed the music, intellectual stimulation and friendships she had had in the BBC household. At age 31, after yet another romantic entanglement, she began to realize that she probably would not marry. She wrote to Harvey, "It looks as if you and Jock may get your way and have me as Miss Pym all my life."

After the war, she went to work at the International African Institute as an assistant editor of anthropological journals, seminar papers and monographs. She was to spend the rest of her career there, writing novels only in her leisure time.

Pym never went to Africa and did not have much interest in the continent, but she was fascinated by the anthropologists in whose writings and quirky personalities she discovered a rich lode of comic material. Holt, who was her colleague at the institute, recalls that she would create fictions about anthropologists based on the few facts she had about them. It became hard "to remember what was real and what was not," Holt said. She quotes Pym as saying once: "I couldn’t ask W. if his mother was better because I couldn’t remember if we’d invented her."

Pym shared a home with her sister Hilary and various cats that occasionally showed up in her novels. One was the model for Faustina, surely the most finicky and temperamental church-related cat in literature. Another, Tom Boilkin, she dubbed "president of the Young Neuters Club."

In 1950 Some Tame Gazelle was finally published. Five more novels followed between 1950 and 1961. During this period her journals were filled with observations of life -- particularly Anglican parish life -- that furnished the raw material for the novels. "The distinction between animals’ and humans’ dishes," she remarked, "is a very narrow one. One feels that when we aren’t there, there is no distinction." In another entry she writes: "It seems rather dangerous, after we have been praying for the unity of the churches, to have a hymn by [Cardinal] Newman" (an Anglican convert to Roman Catholicism)

After her publishing successes, it came as a cruel blow when her publisher rejected her seventh novel in 1963, and no other publisher would take it. Her fiction seemed too mild for a market in which Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer sold 60,000 copies on its first day of publication. "I wonder what could possibly be too daring to publish nowadays?" she wondered. Thinking of her own brand of fiction, she wrote, "The position of the unmarried woman, unless, of course, she is somebody’s mistress, is of no interest whatsoever to the reader of modern fiction." But she continued to write, for herself and her friends, and she insisted on creating her own kind of book -- in which people kept all their clothes on and lovers seldom went further than a chaste kiss. Her publishing drought continued until the Times Literary Supplement carried a feature in January 1977 in which she was the only living writer cited twice by prominent literary figures naming the most "underrated" writers of the century. (One of her eminent fans was the poet Philip Larkin, who died last year; she also admired his work and in her later pears they frequently exchanged letters.)

Pym was then rediscovered by the British reading public and she gained new popularity in the U.S., where some of her books began to be studied in universities. Her out-of-print works became available, and two more were published before cancer, which she had first contracted in 1971, slowed her down. She managed to finish one more book -- A Few Green Leaves -- before her death in January 1980. That work and three others, plus the letters and diaries, have been published posthumously.

Pym’s novels should be read in the order they were written; otherwise one misses a Pym trademark -- oblique references to characters in earlier stories. These references are a kind of private joke, and sometimes a way to tie up loose ends of an old plot or announce a marriage or a death. Referring to this practice in a letter to Larkin, she wrote, "Perhaps really one should take such a very minor character that only the author recognises it, like a kind of superstition or charm." Each of her books stands on its own, but their linking by these offhand references to characters the reader recalls from another context gives her whole body of fiction a special texture -- rather like the kinship tables to which her anthropologists are so devoted.

Church fund-raising events provide another, seemingly inexhaustible source of humor for Pym. The annual bazaar is always the first Saturday in December and thus "not a moveable feast." In Excellent Women, Mildred, reflecting on the fact that Catholic, Anglican and Methodist churches invite the others to their sales of old clothing, observes, "It’s rather nice to think of churches being united through jumble sales." The anthropologist Rupert Stonebird, a major figure in An Unsuitable Attachment, finds that his conscience, buried successfully at age 16, revives to plague him "not about the fundamentals of belief and morality but about such comparative trivialities as whether or not one should attend the church bazaar."

Pym also has an eye for the appurtenances of wealth in the church. In one Anglican clergy residence where meat is given up during Lent, the cook, a man of exquisite tastes and delicate sensibilities, revises his repertoire of dishes with scampi, octopus and escargot. And in another parish, a priest has bouillabaisse flown in from Marseilles for Ash Wednesday. In a similarly self-abnegating spirit, one vicar explains his attachment to a wealthy parish, saying in a tone of resignation, "My particular cross is to be a ‘fashionable preacher,’ as they say . . . somebody must minister to the rich."

Church squabbles also occupy a significant place in Pym’s world. "Why does contact with the church seem to make people so petty?" asks an observer in A Glass of Blessings after one server gets miffed because someone else has mistakenly worn his custom-made cassock rather than one of the off-the-rack garments. And when Jane, the vicar’s wife in Jane and Prudence, speaks out bluntly in a church council meeting debating what picture to put on the cover of the parish magazine, her husband thinks, "There was, after all, something to be said for the celibacy of the clergy."

The Church Times, the Church of England’s newspaper, is a frequent target of Pymmish wit. On one occasion, a hostess offers pages of the publication in lieu of toilet tissue. Nevertheless, the paper’s editor wrote to Pym saying that though there was ordinarily not space for reviews of fiction, he planned to review one of her novels, "if only because I had given so many splendid free commercials for the Church Times," she said.

Pym’s notebooks and novels are also full of puckish references to hymns. In No Fond Return of Love, Dulcie Mainwaring sings "All Things Bright and Beautiful" in a "loud indignant voice," waiting for the lines, "The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate;/God made them high and lowly and ordered their estate." But the verse has been left out, and she sits down feeling "cheated of her indignation." In a journal entry, Pym notes that George Herbert’s "King of Glory, King of Peace" is "very English, like a damp, overgrown churchyard." A city parishioner in one of her books notices the "only country words rhyme with God – clod, sod, trod."

Pym’s sharp eye and ear take note as well of the sparks flying out of the incense pot, the acolyte tripping over his cassock and falling down the stairs, the shrill sound of the church telephone heard above the organ, the cigarette lighter used to kindle the new fire of Easter in the dark church on Holy Saturday. And she finds love blossoming amid "the smell of damp mackintoshes" which seems to pervade "perhaps all parish halls everywhere."

A great deal of tea is drunk in those parish halls, but the favored drink of Pym’s spinsters, especially when under stress or seeking to induce sleep, is Ovaltine. Belinda (in Some Tame Gazelle) , who is determined to be reticent, becomes more talkative under the influence of this nourishing milky drink; "the Ovaltine had loosened her tongue." In the later novels, where broad comedy gives way to subtle irony, the consumption of sherry and gin increases. In An Unsuitable Attachment, one of the characters thinks how much livelier the church would be with fewer cups of tea and more glasses of wine.

Odd bits of data from the world of anthropology find their way into the novels. It is reported that members of one tribe "relish putrescent meat," and that another group will eat "anything edible except the hyena." Pym is amused that "the giving and receiving of offprints" (the extra copies of scholarly articles sent to authors) seems to create a "special relationship"; some writers lavish them on friends "like Christmas cards."

Despite her vivid commentary on parish life, we learn little from Pym’s works about her own theology. The journal and letters suggest, however, that she amused her friends with her cheerful spirit and wry observations to the last, and that her faith sustained her as she pondered the mysteries of life and death.

If there is a thread that runs through her body of work, it is simply the conviction that all of us need someone to love, and that the local church, an all-too-human institution of flawed and fussy people, is nonetheless a community that connects fallible human beings to one another and to the One they lose sight of amid the wet mackintoshes, the jumble-sale clothing, the tea urns and the giant squash on the altar for the harvest festival. Pym’s unique way of expressing her love was to entertain us, while reminding us, gently but pointedly, of our foibles.

Intensive Care: The Crucifixion of the Dying?

A 75-year-old woman was admitted to the hospital for treatment of a malignancy that had spread throughout her body. "Dismal prognosis" was noted on the chart. Many laboratory tests were performed and chemotherapy -- requiring intravenous punctures -- was resumed, even though studies had shown that this type of cancer does not respond significantly, if at all, to drug treatment, and even though complications and side effects from the drugs were expected. The day before she died, a large, painful tube was inserted between her ribs to remove chest-cavity fluid.

A young woman entered the hospital who was known to be dying of a rare, malignant tumor of the liver. At the time of this last hospitalization, she was deeply jaundiced. Most of her liver had already been destroyed by the tumor cells. Nevertheless, on the day before she died she was aggressively treated for a particular complication of her illness that required blood to be drawn from her frequently. Her blood pressure, pulse and temperature were also continually monitored.

In these real cases, were the attending physicians being faithful to their calling, even to the classical minimum medical ethic of "Do no harm"? Were the considerable resources of the intensive care unit (ICU) being put to the best use in these instances?

The ICU has helped in the healing of unknown numbers of people with severe injuries and acute illnesses. In some cases, life has been wrenched from death. For others, the ICU has provided attention and care not available elsewhere in the hospital. But for another group of patients, the ICU has simply become a place to die. The technology of the ICU can neither prevent their deaths nor even significantly delay them. For these unfortunates, the ICU only serves to turn their final days and hours into a virtual crucifixion.

Crucifixion, we know, was a torture reserved, in the time of Christ, for slaves and despised malefactors. Along with physical suffering, crucifixion meant isolation, restraint, nakedness, sedation (offered, at least) and piercing of the body. The sensory suffering of the victim can hardly be imagined, much less the psychological and spiritual agony.

Yet some of those same sensations are experienced by some patients in hospitals today, especially in intensive care units. For example, the ICU is an isolated place, where the patient is under the tight control of the medical staff. Visitors, even intimates, are strictly limited.

Because of the nature of the many mechanical devices that are part of the ICU, many patients have one or more of their limbs restrained. Improvements in the systems of restraint have been made to minimize pressure on the body and to accommodate normal body positions, but confinement is still required.

Like Jesus, the patients have their own garments taken away. A hospital gown lacks the comfort of familiar clothing, and frequent exposure of the body for examination provokes a sense of nakedness. If the patient is aware enough to care, the shame of nakedness is added to other assaults. "To be naked means, of course, to be defenseless, unguarded, exposed -- a sign of our vulnerability before the elements and the beasts" (Leon R. Kass, "Thinking About the Body," The Hastings Center Report [February, 1985], p. 27).

It is axiomatic that ICU patients receive drugs, which may not be limited to the sedatives or narcotics appropriate for alleviating restlessness or pain. Over-medication occurs regularly in hospitals, a tendency that scarcely diminishes in the ICU. Countless relatives have complained about the effects of excessive sedation on their loved ones.

For the seriously ill, repeated blood drawings and penetration of veins to administer fluids are routine. It should not be thought that patients become less sensitive to these punctures of the skin; only lowered consciousness relieves the sensation. Other invasive procedures can take place: bone-marrow aspirations, the insertion of various catheters into the circulatory system, the placement of large, plastic breathing tubes into the windpipe and so on. The most extreme example of such a technological invasion is the implanting of an artificial heart.

The ICU patient may also suffer from ICU syndrome or psychosis. This is a condition of confusion and disorientation, sometimes hallucination, that occurs, especially in older patients, because of sleep deprivation, drugs, stress and the experience of being in strange surroundings. Most of us deeply fear such an experience: losing control of one’s faculties suggests the beginning of death.

What types of illness are being futilely treated with this level of technical intervention? Any illness for which there is no effective treatment to control or reverse the pathologic process, or which no longer responds to aggressive measures. This is not to suggest that physicians should be quicker to predict death. Most of us who have ventured to answer the question, "How long, doctor?" have been proved wrong. Rather, the need is for a sensitive, honest and reasonable approach to deciding when to commit someone to the environment and the ministrations of intensive care.

The basic question to be raised concerns the experience of dying itself. Is there not a desired quality of dying? Is there a good death, or at least a less-than-bad death? If so, is that not a reasonable hope for everyone? And would not that better dying include, whenever possible, companionship and presence, freedom of movement, personal clothing and familiar surroundings, clear-headedness and absence of externally caused pain?

Ideally, questions of this sort should be resolved by the patient before the need to enter an ICU arises. It is still incompletely understood, by both professionals and the public, that the ethical and legal authority for deciding on treatment belongs to the patient, not to the family or physician. Although it too rarely happens, the patient can communicate his or her wishes on this score to the doctor, if there is a good patient-physician relationship. Also, the use of living wills, though imperfect, can provide a way of anticipating medical decisions. If these direct methods are not used, hospital bureaucracies and medical workers can obtain information at the time of admittance about the patient’s values and attitudes regarding levels of treatment and intervention. Informed consent is neither simple nor easily defined, but the need remains for those who are healers to be increasingly responsive to patients’ wishes.

Of course, some patients may avoid this dilemma by remaining outside a medically dominated institution, or by seeking a setting, such as a hospice, where medical authority is secondary. However, wealth and status don’t necessarily confer autonomy in this regard. Eleanor Roosevelt, for example, expected her physician to save her from a "draggedout, agonizing death. But Dr. -- was unable to comply with her wishes. And when the time came, his duty as a doctor prevented him" (Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor: The Years Alone [Signet, 1972], p. 324).

Once in the hospital environment, patients and their families, even strongly independent ones, frequently become passive. Illness, especially when severe, is very frightening, and it is automatic in such a situation to depend on a believed-in system or professional healers.

Contributing to the patients’ willingness to let physicians control treatment is the tendency of doctors to be overly optimistic in estimating the effectiveness of therapy. Physicians themselves may be unaware that they are offering far more hope than can be statistically defended. For instance, most common adult solid tumors that are not cured by surgical removal are resistant to chemotherapy or radiation control, yet drug therapy is frequently offered as a "possibly effective" treatment because both patient and physician want to believe it so. (Doctors frequently reply to criticism of this kind by saying that "hope" must be given to patients regardless of prognosis.)

Further complicating the problem is the fact that many physicians think that they do know what is the "good of the patient" and that they are empowered to act on that knowledge. This attitude represents a failure to distinguish between the personal, value-oriented aspects of illness decisions and the professional, technical ones. The former truly belong to the patient and include such questions as:

Should I go to the hospital? Should I accept drug treatment or an operation? Should I seek another opinion? Should I leave the hospital? Examples of issues that belong to the professional are: What examination is required? What tests are appropriate? What therapies can be offered? Physicians have often blurred this distinction to ensure that all the decisions are ours. And even with cautious or skeptical patients, our powers of persuasion are rarely unsuccessful.

Most serious of all is the fact that communication between doctor and patient is consistently short of what it might be. A study of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) at a well-respected Boston hospital revealed that physicians rarely discussed CPR with their patients, despite the fact that one-third of patients who die in the hospital first undergo CPR. Disturbingly, "the physician’s opinion about a patient’s desire for resuscitation correlated only weakly with the preference expressed by the patient" (Susanna E. Bedell and Thomas L. Delbanco, "Choices About Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation in the Hospital: When Do Physicians Talk with Patients?" New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 310 [April 26, 1984], pp. 1089-1093)

It is clear, then, that changes in physicians’ attitudes and behavior are required. Also, hospitals need to be restructured to provide appropriate levels of care. Awareness of these needs is increasing, but more education is necessary.

Clergy have a special role to play in mediating between the patient and the medical establishment. First of all, they can help people think ahead about how they would wish to be treated should they experience an intensive-care situation. Second, they can serve as patient advocates in the institutional setting. And third, they can help those physicians who are parish members to be more sensitive to the plight of the terminally ill. Clergy have unique opportunities to minister in these areas. Though agents of the medical model of illness may be reluctant collaborators with ministers, relationships between the professionals must become collegial and cooperative, not combative, if patients are to be served well by both.

For many cultural and sociological reasons, it may not be possible to reestablish home-care for the dying. A fortunate few may be granted a private death amid familiar surroundings, close to chosen intimates, and supported by holistic health personnel, of which clergy are significant members. But most of us will experience death in a hospital or a nursing home. We can only pray that our last words will not be: "Why hast thou forsaken me?"

TV Faith: Rituals of Secular Life

Our media-dominated culture bombards us with a multitude of diverse images. The Super Bowl, the message of the 700 Club, the funeral of a national leader -- all these phenomena come to us in the form of television images. In these instances, the images are more than pictures; they are ways of mediating to us a faith or a set of values. In this sense, many of the images we encounter every day can be regarded as religious images, even as examples of religious art.

The term "religious art" is a slippery one. Most people assume that it is content -- for example, biblical content -- that distinguishes religious art from other types of art. But this criterion, while useful, ignores the many other ways in which images can witness to faith in a pluralistic, technological and secular society. I believe we need to consider some different ways of thinking about religious art.

To clarify this point, we must distinguish between a broad and a narrow concept of the term "religion." H. Richard Niebuhr reminds us that faith can mean human confidence in a center and conserver of value" and that it can also mean loyalty to a cause. To Niebuhr, faith seems to "manifest itself almost as directly in politics, science, and other cultural activities as it does in religion" (Radical Monotheism and Western Culture [Harper & Row], p. 16) Religion in this sense means an overarching, integrative principle of order. This kind of religion is less concerned with "What must I do to be saved?" than with "What is real to me and others?" and "What do we value?" Answering these questions helps us to identify ourselves and our world. Sociologists of religion like Max Weber and Émile Durkheim have observed that being religious in this broad sense refers not to a matter of personal choice but to a fundamental human drive to make sense out of reality.

This essentially metaphysical order of the world which humans look for is perceived and understood largely through concrete, accessible public symbols. The manifold forms through which society’s most essential values are communicated are not, therefore, of secondary importance. They are necessary for expressing, legitimating and maintaining the metaphysical -- and the social -- order.

If we define religion narrowly to mean participation in a particular faith community or adherence to particular doctrines, the analysis of religious art will be restricted to the visual images produced by particular religious communities. The sociological view of religion, on the other hand, enables us to analyze the broad spectrum of faith in so-called secular society. From that perspective, we may even discover that we are daily inundated with religious images.

The mediation of religion through apparently secular images is related to particular historical developments in Western culture. Events in church history, plus the impact of secularism and modern technology, have dramatically determined the location of religious art.

The most revolutionary alteration in religious art came with the sweeping changes in sacrament and liturgy brought about by the 16th-century Reformers, especially Calvin and Zwingli. These two, much more than Luther, narrowed the forms of religious communication almost entirely to the Word as expressed through Scripture and sermon. (Luther, for his part, remarked that in his devotions he was "aided by the sight of the crucifix, the sound of the anthems, and the partaking of the body of Christ upon the altar." Thus he maintained a sacramental view of the unity and mystery of the relationship between flesh and spirit, between the visible and invisible.) The visual arts, which had for centuries witnessed to Christian faith in a liturgical context, were now systematically excluded from the worship setting.

As a result of the diminution of the role of the arts in the churches, the sacramental impulse -- the need to encounter invisible faith through visible forms -- embarked on a new, vital life outside of institutional Christianity. Artists themselves took up the search for sacramental forms -- images that could testify to spiritual experience. Nineteenth-century painters such as Washington Allston and Thomas Cole found little or no demand from churches for religious art. Nevertheless, they continued to conceive of the artist’s role in religious terms. Under the influence of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and New England transcendentalist James Marsh, Allston regarded the artist as a kind of seer for the community. Some painters gave a religious interpretation to the secular world and its images. Asher B. Durand, writing in The Crayon, described landscape as the "representation of the work of God in visible creation." For painters like Durand, religious symbolism in landscape painting did not depend upon the use of biblical narratives. Late in the 19th century, George Inness, who was immersed in the theology of Swedenborg, spoke of the artist’s need to contemplate the invisible in the visible. In Europe one finds similar religious interpretations of ordinary reality -- for instance, in the work of Vincent Van Gogh (whose letters powerfully reveal the religious basis of his art)

In the atmosphere of 19th-century Protestant piety, it was still possible for both artists and the public to find religious meanings in the images of everyday life -- in landscape or still life. But what has happened in the 20th century, when the religious imagination -- in its individual and corporate dimensions -- has become fragmented under the assault of modern materialism? How do we interpret and manipulate images of the ordinary world? Is it possible that the imagistic revolution of the information age is also a sacramental revolution in which the visual forms we identify as "secular" are themselves embodiments of faiths and values that compel our deepest loyalties? Perhaps sacramental images are no longer confined to religious institutions or to particular subjects.

I would suggest that in our day the power of images to objectify invisible values and meanings has been appropriated by secular institutions. To the degree that traditional religious groups in American culture have emphasized the word and de-emphasized images, they have deprived themselves of an effective force for transmitting their own symbols. It may be that our sacramental needs and capacities have, ironically, been best understood and most creatively used by secular institutions.

From soap operas to news to sports, commercial telecasting performs a fundamentally sacramental function: it mediates and legitimates a belief in the American way of life. It assists in an important way in shaping our loyalty to the American socio-political-economic system. Witnessing to sentiments and aspirations that transcend denominational beliefs, television provides a common vision. Even though the medium often caricatures and distorts the variousness of America’s diverse communities, the nation has become dependent upon it for articulating public symbols.

If we look closely at different kinds of programs, we may discern certain residual elements of traditional religious communication and psychology. The dynamics and formal structures of some programs parallel some Catholic and Protestant forms of communication. For example, parallels to the Catholic sacramental model, in which a sacred event is re-enacted within carefully measured boundaries of time and space, can be found in the formal dynamics of sports events and civil ceremonies, such as the Super Bowl or the presidential inauguration.

When through an unusual coincidence President Reagan’s second inauguration was telecast on the same day as the 1985 Super Bowl, the entire day seemed liturgically orchestrated, as viewers moved from one sacred event to another. Through their TV sets millions of viewers shared in a solemn event in the political life of the nation. Later that day viewers once again entered the White House to participate in another great occasion. This time, through the miracle of technology, two sacred spaces -- the White House and the Super Bowl stadium -- were united as President Reagan tossed a coin to begin the Super Bowl. The newly inaugurated commander in chief thus ceremoniously opened the event that symbolizes to many the value of competition and the importance of being "No. 1." Standing before a large landscape painting of the American West, the Gipper seemed to personify the heroic image of a winner. Later, the Super Bowl half-time show reinforced our patriotic sentiments, as marching bands and drill teams formed a large American flag on the football field. And the screen offered yet one more sacred exchange when the president called to congratulate the victorious coach.

American television has also united the nation in rituals of sorrow. Beginning with the funeral of John F. Kennedy, television has enabled the country to participate in the mourning of national heroes. Although not physically united, millions of people are bound together by television in a shared experience of grief. When the space shuttle Challenger exploded, the entire nation was again brought before its television sets to mourn. President Reagan communicated through radio and television words of comfort to the nation. In concluding his statement, the president combined words from the first and last lines of a moving poem, "High Flight," written by a poet-pilot, John Gillespie Magee, Jr. "We will never forget them," the president said, "nor the last time we saw them this morning as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye, ‘and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God."’ The president performed the religious function of articulating to us and for us the meaning of the astronauts deaths.

The memorial service, telecast live from the Houston Space Center, brought into focus the grief of a nation. Americans saw as well as heard the president express his sorrow to the astronauts families, friends and colleagues. Meanwhile, other groups gathered around the country to mourn particular astronauts. In a temple at Akron, Ohio, a congregation held services for Judith Resnik. In North Carolina there was a service for Ronald McNair. Portions of these services were also telecast in the course of the coverage from Houston. Thus, all mourning seemed to exist within the overarching public ceremony telecast by the major networks.

Some Protestant forms of communication may be so integrated into secular American culture that we fail to see their religious roots. The Protestant evangelical model, which tends to stress charismatic leadership, may be useful in understanding the widespread perception of certain public figures as "trustworthy." Viewers watching a presidential news conference may be dimly conscious of the image of a Protestant minister standing behind a central pulpit, framed by two flags, delivering a sermon to inspire faith and conviction. The intention of the presidential conference is, of course, to inform the press and public. But ritualistically speaking, it is much more: it is an opportunity for the public to confirm its trust in the president and loyalty to the nation. The event is an occasion to see the president perform much like a persuasive, charismatic preacher. He confronts his adversaries, calls us to look at the "facts," returns us to time-honored values, articulates the differences between good and evil and then makes the right choice.

The nightly news programs also offer viewers authoritative individuals who, night after night, sort out the facts and help us understand our world. Many people realize, of course, that they are viewing highly selective and symbolically charged accounts of events. But sophisticated and unsophisticated viewers alike may ultimately fall back on their sense of trust in the reporters. It is interesting that in a recent poll examining the perception of news, believability was one of the questions raised, and anchorpeople and newspersons scored higher in this category than did the president (The People and the Press [Times-Mirror, 1986], p. 10)

More comparisons might be drawn between secular communications and religious prototypes. Commercials, MTV (whose music and fast-paced visual rhythms almost hypnotically envelop us) , soap operas and situation comedies give us detailed, visual narratives of the ups and downs of the American Dream. They are our moral tales of success, failure, sin and salvation. However superficial or inane, they present public, rather than private, symbols. Their creators, consciously or unconsciously, are providing the rituals and icons that shape and legitimate our common beliefs.

Thus far I have not addressed the religious dimension of what is commonly called "high art." For many modern artists, the making of art objects indeed involves a search for self-transcendence. But in a secular society in which churches have not shown an interest in the visual arts, artists have tended to create their own private religious symbolism. The solitary search for symbols experienced by 19th-century artists in Protestant cultures has today become a standard part of our culture.

Sometimes the museum-going public may glimpse the private religious meanings of particular works. Barnett Newman, for example, frequently titled his works with religiously suggestive captions, such as "Onement One" or "The Way." These titles and the artist’s interest in the literature of Jewish mysticism led critics to speak about the religious significance of his works. Yet, as Harold Rosenberg observed, it is not really certain what Newman’s "rectangles and zips" mean. In an important commentary on Newman’s work, Rosenberg concluded that painting was for Newman a way of "practicing" the sublime, not of "conveying" it ("Meaning and Abstract Art," the New Yorker [January 1, 19721, p. 46)

Rosenberg’s comment, written over a decade ago, continues to illuminate some of the religious dimensions of contemporary art. Images and objects can symbolize a personal search for meaning, and in the sanctuaries of museums people may almost genuflect before such art works. These embodiments of personal faith are often accorded the reverence once given to holy objects.

But when we leave the quiet, sacred spaces of the museum, we return to the world of crowded subways and rush-hour traffic, where we confront, in despair or occasional disgust. the human condition. The spiritual fervor of artists like Van Gogh, Kandinsky, Klee or Rothko then seems as far away from us as the holy pictures of Orthodox churches.

Upon returning home, we may join our fellow Americans in front of the television set. Forgetting the idiosyncratic, unspeakably diverse crowds of strangers, we become drawn through television to the familiar faces, myths and visions of the American Way of Life, thereby putting ourselves in touch with a shared vision of the human order -- a vision that engages our loyalties and makes sense of our world.

Taking the Next Step in Inclusive Language

We like to think that we’ve made much progress in the pilgrimage toward inclusiveness. Liturgies and hymns are now frequently shorn of generic male references to humankind, and imperialistic stances toward mission have been discarded.

Though these are positive steps, it would be premature to conclude that we have achieved inclusiveness. True inclusiveness means more than changing words; it means exploring images of God based upon the experience of oppressed peoples. In our context, that means exploring the rich possibilities of feminine imagery, as well as drawing on liturgy and song written by, and in response to, black Americans and peoples of the Third World. For the sake of justice, and for an accurate representation of God’s self-giving, such imagery is essential.

This article will focus on sexual inclusiveness, the frequent misunderstanding of which was brought home to me recently when a friend told me about a paper he had just written on a religious topic. "You’d be proud of me," he said. "I managed to avoid using any pronouns to refer to God!" What he meant, of course, was that he had avoided using male pronouns to refer to God. And it is possible that he successfully portrayed a desexed God. I suspect, however, that much of his other imagery was still patriarchal.

The same problem is evident in our liturgies. In many cases we have successfully replaced "man," "men" and "brotherhood" with words such as "humankind" and "community," and masculine pronouns frequently are avoided both in reference to God and to humankind. Still, our primary images of God are masculine: Father, Son, Lord, King. For instance, we may revise the Doxology to "Praise God from whom all blessings flow. /Praise God all creatures here below. /Praise God above, ye heavenly host . . ." but if the last line still says "Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost," we have done little to counterbalance the patriarchal tendencies of our faith. Revision of only the pronouns in hymns and prayers produces an unhelpful paradox: a bland, asexual deity who is nonetheless masculine. Such a God reflects little of the vitality of the biblical references to God.

Scripture abounds with vivid images of God, not all of them human. A surprising number of scriptural passages describe God in terms of nonhuman creatures.

Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions, the Lord alone did lead him. . . . [Deut. 32:11-121.

I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like dry rot to the house of Judah. . . I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will rend and go away, I will carry off, and none shall rescue [Hos. 5:12,14].

. . . therefore [Ephraim] forgot me. So I will be to them like a lion, like a leopard I will lurk beside the way. I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs. .. [Hos. 13:6b-8a].

Other descriptions of God use the images of light, wind and fire:

In him was life, and the life was the light of [all people]. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it [John 1:4-5].

The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit [John 3:8].

And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit . . . [Acts 2:2-4a].

Scripture’s primary means of describing God’s self revelation is through that of human relationships, and nost of these descriptions are obviously patriarchal: Father, Master, Lord, King. But occasionally the Holy spirit had her way, for there are a few uses of feminine imagery to describe God’s relationship to her people:

For a long time I have held my peace, I have kept still and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in travail, I will gasp and pant [Isa. 42:14].

. . . It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of compassion, with the bands of love. and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them [Hos. 11:34].

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! [Matt. 23:37-38].

The sheer abundance and diversity of images of God in the Bible bears witness to the futility of focusing on any one image as the ultimate exemplification of God. Unfortunately, the church has done just that. By claiming the male experience to be normative for faith, and by naming the deity as male, we have overemphasized strength and aggressiveness and denied -- indeed, repressed -- many expressions of faith that focus on God’s self-giving, self-emptying love. It would be difficult to say whether our culture’s stress on aggressiveness grew out of an overemphasis on God’s power and might or whether the images of God’s power and might emerged from a society that valued such strength. Regardless, our faith is the poorer for this lopsided view.

The most important way to redress the patriarchal imbalance of our faith is, at least some of the time, to refer to the deity as feminine. It is no small matter to move from a male or even a sexless deity to a feminine one. Congregations that tolerate the use of the terms "humankind" and "Creator God" may well balk at the sudden introduction of "God the Mother." An appropriate approach to this issue would be one which allows for a gradual introduction of feminine terms, addresses and images.

The importance of a gradual, prepared and pastoral introduction to feminine imagery cannot be exaggerated. People brought up to call God "Father," to believe in the maleness of God, will not understand, without explanation, why we are suddenly (and seemingly without scriptural precedent) calling God "Mother." They will rightly resent abrupt shifts in, or abandonment of, the metaphors that have proved most meaningful in their spiritual pilgrimages.

I once had the experience of worshiping at a church where a visiting pastor decided to make a few changes in the day’s already-typeset liturgy. Without explaining to the congregation what it should expect and how it should respond, he simply replaced all pastor-led references to "Father" or "Lord" with "Sovereign" or "Creator," while the congregation read what was already written. Everything went along fairly well until the Lord’s Prayer. Then, instead of leading us directly into "Our Father . . ." he hesitated, searching for an appropriate replacement. He decided on "Our God" at the same time that the congregation took the initiative and began the prayer without him.

Had the visiting pastor explained that the changes he would make in the liturgy were for the sake of inclusiveness, the congregation would have followed with greater understanding. As it was, most were perturbed, and felt uneasy and insecure about the improvised liturgy. I suspect that the insecurity imprinted itself more strongly upon the corporate consciousness than did the effort to be inclusive.

That experience was an isolated one, perhaps, but feelings of insecurity and uneasiness can be prevalent in any service where unfamiliar images are used without preparation. Because of the potential volatility of introducing feminine imagery, I would like to suggest a possible three-step approach. It begins with a congregational study of the patriarchal origins of Scripture, and of the church, and of the nonmasculine imagery present in Scripture. The following questions might serve as a guide for the study:

Though Scripture’s primary (most obvious and concrete) metaphor for God is "Father," does this imply that God is sexual or that God is personal? Granted that Scripture’s primary images of God are masculine, are we to assume that the image of God as male was intended to be normative for all time? If so, does this imply that masculinity is superior and femininity inferior? If not, how may we adapt the intent of the message of personal relationship in a way that reflects feminine experience?

The study could then lead participants to explore feminine expressions for humankind. Women could be encouraged to describe feminine experience. What is it like to mother? How can that experience help us understand God (in terms of giving oneself to the beloved) ? What is it to feel as a woman feels in pregnancy, childbirth, nurturing and lovemaking, and how do these experiences help us understand the feminine face of God?

Male participants should be encouraged to speak or write of their perceptions of women in their lives -- sisters, mothers, friends, lovers, wives -- and of how these women have helped to shape their own faith and character. After listing and describing so-called feminine attributes men could be encouraged to search for these attributes in their own personalities, and to explore ways these traits may be used to describe God.

It would be important to stress that there are many experiences and traits once thought exclusively feminine that women and men actually share. Yet to describe these attributes and then name them "male" or "masculine" in some sense downgrades womankind. If women and men are equals, lovingly created in the image of God, then God may be imaged in feminine as well as masculine terms.

After the study, the introduction of feminine imagery through sermons is a logical second step. This could be approached gradually, through a sermon series, or, if the congregation seems ready, in one sermon. At this stage it would certainly be appropriate to use the groundbreaking inclusive Language Lectionary (Division of Education and Ministry, National Council of Churches, 1983) for the Scripture readings. Though the lectionary is not without problems, its editors have nevertheless dared to adapt Scripture to reflect feminine imagery. Their endeavor is worthy of serious attention and can serve as a valuable guide for making one’s own revisions of the text.

After careful preparation through study and sermon, the congregation may be ready for the third step -- feminine imagery in the liturgy itself, in both spoken and sung words. Prayers, responses and hymns can be revised to reflect feminine imagery.

Here again, it Would be wise to begin gradually, using indirect feminine references -- images which describe God as "like" a mother -- in combination with traditional masculine images. For example, prayers beginning with the following phrases might prove less threatening: "O God, who is like a mother to us . . ." or "Dear God, who loves us with a mother’s fierce protectiveness and a father’s tender mercy . . ." There is also a very fine affirmation of faith that begins: "We believe in God, who is like a good mother or father, near to us, and strong to help us" (Hymnal for Worship, James W. Gunn, editor: Program Committee for Professional Church Leadership, National Council of Churches, 1982) The following pastoral prayer demonstrates how feminine imagery may be used effectively without referring to God as either father or mother:

Gracious God of the loving heart, by whom all fatherhood and motherhood is named, Source of our own creation, you whose Trinity of persons all human bonding and richness of human community reflects, may your name be praised! ... Because of the boundlessness of your love, you opened your womb, pouring forth your own inner life, giving birth to the world, and bestowing on it life like your own.... [Flames of the Spirit, edited by Ruth C. Duck (Pilgrim, 1985) , p. 971.

Such examples would accustom the congregation to hearing the word "mother" in conjunction with the word "God" so that the next step, direct reference, may take place, as in the following prayer by Brian Wren:

Holy and Living God, Father of life and light, weaving space ~nd time, only source of everything that is, set us free from all false gods to worship you alone. . . . God our Mother, you give birth to all life, and love us to the uttermost. Your love surrounds us and feeds us. Within your love we find our home, our joy, our freedom. [Copyright © Brian Wren, 1982].

What can we do in the meantime? We can revise and supplement.

Contrary to what seems to be a popular opinion among some traditionalists, revision is not the seventh deadly sin. Those who cry, "Preserve the author’s integrity" in regard to inclusive language do not know (or perhaps forget) that almost all the hymns we sing today bear the mark of editing. "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" was originally "Hark! How all the Welkin Rings." Hymnody is not a "pure" art in the sense that poetry is often thought to be. Rather, hymnody is art for the church, art that aids the community in expressing its faith. Hymnody is not sacrosanct, or immune to time’s movement and changes. It is a gift to the church, to be used in ways that build up the faithful. The church has not just the right but the responsibility to alter texts to reflect its new vision of what has always been the church’s hope: the inclusion of all God’s children in the beloved community.

This is not to say that there are no constraints on revision. Judgments must still be made between good and bad revisions. Preserving the author’s integrity is not a bad guideline, if the spirit rather than the letter of the intent is followed. Because hymn editors must revise within the bounds of rhyme and meter, compromises must be made. One example of compromise is Brian Wren’s revision of "Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above." Wren says, "A hymn so full of ‘feminine’ imagery deserves to be recast in a feminine form. This version does so, and makes a few other changes, while keeping the imagery of God as ruling sovereign." Wren’s revision shows careful thought both in retaining valuable feminine imagery and choosing additional images. Not only does his revision retain the original hymn’s image of God as ruling sovereign, but it gives the hymn new credibility.

As with changes in liturgy revised hymns should be carefully introduced to the congregation. Revised hymns can be used as examples during the study series on feminine imagery, and introduced during the sermon or sermon series on feminine images. Later, the congregation could be asked to sing both the original translation and the revision. At other times, only one or the other version could be used. It is not necessary to reject the original translation altogether. Total rejection of masculine imagery denies both our history and the value that such imagery has had in our consciousness of the divine.

A balanced use of all types of imagery in both word and song can help us to achieve a more accurate -- though never definitive -- idea of who God is. Drawing from the abundance of scriptural images which are God’s gift to us, perhaps we will more clearly see that

God is not a she, God is not a he,

God is not an it

or a maybe.

God is a moving,

loving, doing,

knowing, growing

mystery.

[From The Song of Three Children, libretto copyright © Brian Wren, 1986].

The mystery that cannot be pinned down, but is known to us through a personal relationship, is speaking to us today in a new voice. May our liturgy and song reflect our response to that voice.

Bringing Good Tidings to the Afflicted (Isa. 61:1-2)

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prisons to those who are bound [Isa. 61: 1-2].

But there is a tension between that ministry -- our ministry as followers of Christ -- and our tendency to view these words as timeless, eternal and transcendent. Let me tell you a true story about this tension.

Seven or eight years ago, there was a bar down the street that attracted truck drivers and street repair crews in the mornings, and in the evenings college students and the area’s dropouts -- people who had decided ten years earlier to become carpenters instead of lawyers. Then the neighborhood began to change and the bar catered to the people rehabilitating the older buildings in the neighborhood. There was live entertainment then, with different groups performing almost every night.

A friend of ours sang blues in those days, and that bar was one of the places where she sang. But then the owner died and the place was converted into a chrome-and-fern restaurant which catered to the people who had dropped out of carpentry to adopt an alternative lifestyle and drink chablis. This past New Year’s Eve our friend was invited to a party which gave her the first chance in years to see some of the people with whom she had worked and played and sung. It was rather like a class reunion, she told us the next day. These were singers who were good enough to do it for fun, and camaraderie had always been part of the pay for them.

At some point in the evening someone mentioned to our friend that Steve was there. She had sung with him on occasion, and liked his singing. She knew he was someone, like her, who had another profession but loved to sing. She had enjoyed his company in the earlier days. He was perhaps a dentist, she thought -- or something that required some intelligence and discipline, and three or four years of professional schooling.

Well, our friend was shocked when she saw Steve. He was a shell. His shoes were the wrong size and not made for cold weather. He was wearing someone else’s dirty clothes, his hair was untended, his eyes were vacant. He had a guitar, but he did not play.

Our friend, his friend, asked him questions, but his answers were slow, and only sometimes related to the question. He made no inquiries in return. "You could look in his eyes," she told us, and "there was nobody there."

He was a street person. Homeless. The host told her that their friend had been in and out of institutions over the past two or three years, and had been released recently, but had no place to go.

At first his friends were enraged at the institution that had released him; enraged at the system of deinstitutionalization that forces so many mentally ill onto the streets to fend for themselves; enraged at society for caring too little about its helpless; enraged at Ronald Reagan as the symbol of budget cuts and the agent of bottom-line considerations. But in a few days it became clear to them that in this case, anyway, no one had violated any laws of state or of morality. The man had been released into a supervised setting, at a time when he seemed capable of functioning in that setting. He was not without friends or contacts or access to support. But he could not reach out for them on his own. The failure was not the system’s; there was no one to blame.

Nor was he to blame. I had expected to hear a tale of drugs and dissipation, self-indulgence and the loss of discipline -- a morality story confirming the values of my conservative roots. But that was not the case either. If he used alcohol or other drugs, it was not to any greater extent than those with whom he spent, but did not share, that New Year’s Eve. As far as we know, he had done only what they had done, neither more nor less. We could see in his life only the measure of his tragedy, not its source.

Steve is an affront to our morality, the harshest judgment there is against the shallow places of our faith: he is the victim who is neither sinned against nor sinner. We long to blame someone. In doing so we long to find in ourselves the power to cure the evil -- to mend the tragedy, or to prevent it in the future. We want to create a program of care for such people, or of prevention for such evil.

But sometimes there just is no one to blame, and nothing we can fix.

Some say we should take refuge in transcendence, and care for this helpless one, and for all the homeless, because Christ is present in them, because they are Christ. Jesus even said something like that: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Yet if we are not careful, we convert that directive into a sentimental blasphemy, which appeals to both liberals and conservatives in the church, but which is dangerous in a way: when we issue calls for action on the basis of Christ’s presence, there tends to be no stopping us. Armies have been mobilized and motivated by saying Christ was present in this cause or in that person.

It is unnecessary as well as dangerous, I think, to wait to find Christ in those hollow eyes and blighted lives. Nor should we care for them because Christ tells us to, or because justice demands it, or for any other secondary reason which makes the afflicted mere instruments in service of a greater good, or mere opportunities for our moral behavior.

It is even beside the point to say, "They are like us." They are not like us; we had a place to sleep last night. It is that profound difference which calls us to a response of mercy.

The reality and the power of our call to ministry are more immediate than that: we should care for them not because they "are Christ" but because they are human, and because they need us. Because without mercy they will die. Even if we can do nothing to mend or to prevent the tragedy, we can warm the night. We must care for them because they need care, and because neither they nor we will ever again have this chance.

And there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down . . And he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" [Luke 4: 17-21].

The Roots of Terrorism

When nations find themselves in trouble, their difficulties have usually been a long time in the making. In the case of the terrorism that now afflicts the nations of the West, there is a long intellectual history behind it -- one which is rather unflattering to those who see themselves as the main victims of terrorism. The intellectual roots of terrorism lie in three philosophical ideas which, ironically, are peculiarly Western: popular sovereignty, self-determination and ethical consequentialism. The diffusion of political responsibility that results from popular sovereignty, the belief that every group has a right to its own state, and the decline in the belief in absolute human rights have together fostered a hospitable intellectual climate for terrorism. Even opponents of terrorism may feel a certain moral ambivalence when faced with acts of terror.

One reason academics, journalists and politicians have had difficulty in responding to terrorism is that it is hard to define terrorism in such a way that it refers only to one’s opponents’ activities and not also one’s own. As a result, condemnations of terrorism are often seen by neutral observers as hypocritical. This does not mean that moral denunciations of terrorism are not appropriate and mandatory. Terrorist acts are profoundly immoral. In addition, they are not as politically effective as their practitioners claim. One has only to look at the areas of the world where terror has held sway to see that the violence there is typically prolonged by terrorism, sometimes indefinitely, as the opposing sides come to perceive each other as "criminal" and thus as beyond the pale of civilized negotiation.

But while it is correct for the Reagan administration, for example, to condemn terrorism as a means of effecting political and social change, such a denunciation makes sense only in the context of a moral stance that (1) rigidly distinguishes between combatants and noncombatants and (2) rigidly adheres to the principle that innocent people have an absolute right not to be murdered for any reason whatever. Both of these tenets have been steadily eroding since 1940, in the West as much as elsewhere. Despite repeated commitments to a plethora of declarations of human rights, few if any governments are scrupulous in their military policies regarding such rights. In what follows, I shall try to show how we got ourselves into this predicament.

Popular sovereignty. The doctrine of popular sovereignty developed as the profoundly moral idea that human beings are born free and equal and, as such, have a right to an equal share of political power. The slogan "one man, one vote" perfectly expresses the idea that democracy is the fairest of all political systems because it correctly reflects the natural human condition of freedom and equality. However, it has long been observed that popular sovereignty tends to diffuse responsibility for political acts, particularly acts of war. Everything from conscription to the saturation bombing of cities can find a rationale in popular sovereignty. If the people are the state, then is it not their responsibility both to defend it and to bear the burden of attacks upon it? This question has never been satisfactorily answered.

Despite efforts in international law to distinguish between degrees of culpability with regard to politicians, generals and ordinary citizens, policies of direct attacks upon civilians continue to find a rationale in the identification of the citizen with the state -- even if the ordinary citizen is both ignorant of and indifferent to affairs of state. Thus, the principle of popular sovereignty has provided modern states with the moral leverage to nationalize the lives of their citizens in a way that puts them at risk. Terrorists of all stripes use this principle for their own purposes, and they capitalize on the moral ambivalence reflected in the remark: "One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter."

Self-determination. Self-determination is one of those 19th-century liberal ideas which has worked its way into the primary documents of 20th-century international law, including the United Nations Charter. The principle claims that "a people" has the right to determine its destiny and the disposition of the land upon which it lives without the intervention of outside parties. The principle of self-determination came to the fore after 1945 as a rubric for decolonization.

Ethical consequentialism. The moral tradition that shaped the West is an amalgam of classical and Christian sources. This ethical confluence has been possible despite considerable differences between the two sources because both agree that the good life involves strict adherence to categorical moral principles.

Both Plato and Aristotle insisted that injustice was not permitted as a means of producing good consequences. In the Republic, Plato makes this point in many diverse and intellectually subtle ways. He argued (as did Aristotle) that there are certain basic human values which are simply worth having for their own sake, and that the ultimate consequence of immoral behavior is self-destruction. Plato, in one of the most powerful passages in Western philosophy, describes the decline of the unjust man into the tyrant, the most unhappy of all men.

The main thrust of these classical arguments, then, is that the man of good character is also the only truly happy man. Maintaining such a character will involve avoiding injustice and, in particular, the pitfall of thinking one can do evil in order that good may come of it. Plato understood that such a life is difficult to achieve, and he was extremely pessimistic about the possibility of the masses ever becoming just. The best they could hope for would be to live in a society governed by a just ruler. Nevertheless, he insisted that there are objectively discernible goods, the participation in which constitutes the good life, and that such a life is irretrievably damaged by acts of injustice, even if undertaken for the "best" of reasons.

Plato and Aristotle initiated what was later to be called the natural-law tradition. Central to natural-law thinking is the Platonic insight that it is possible to define objectively what it means to be good at being a person. Just as there are standards of excellence for being a doctor and a teacher, so there are knowable standards of excellence for being human. The good society is one in which people are allowed to conform to these standards.

The Judeo-Christian idea of a transcendent source of all value is consonant with these classical insights. The commandments that govern the life of the Jew and the Christian are strictly categorical in nature, as indeed are most ethical codes based on theistic sources. Friendship with God is closely linked to walking the path of justice; it is understood that to damage any basic human value is to attack the very source of value and being. What Plato understood to be the consequence of injustice -- self-destruction -- the Judeo-Christian tradition understands as the cutting off of oneself from the very source of being.

The absolutist conception of justice was reflected in the medieval theory of the just war. The notion that in war noncombatants must never be made the object of direct attacks is but one instance of the application of the categorical prohibition of murder to the realm of war. As provisions of the just-war theory passed into the developing corpus of international law in the 17th century, they retained their categorical or absolutist character. And, needless to say, the Christian churches continued to promulgate a similar view of justice.

Machiavelli does not make it entirely clear why the preservation of the political order outweighs any other known good, but we may understand his thinking as a response to the rise of the modern, centralized state. In a world of absolute sovereign states, no structure exists to which appeal can be made over the heads of the princes. The state, therefore, becomes the only hope for the survival of any conception of the good life. A transitional figure, Machiavelli reflected the tension between the old and the new ways of thinking about justice. On the one hand, he recognized the good in the traditional sense -- that there are certain qualities of character that are worth having for their own sake, and goods that are self-evident in the sense that no argument or further justification is necessary for them. On the other hand, he believed that necessities of state require the sacrifice of some of these principles (in particular, the prohibition against murder) for a greater good.

In Machiavelli’s account of the prince, we begin to see the outline of a certain type of modern human who rejects the classical warning that acting against the good will irretrievably damage one’s own character, eventually causing one to lose a knowledge of the good altogether. The prince, according to Machiavelli, is a technician in statecraft and, to that extent, beyond good and evil in the conventional sense. Furthermore, the prince rejects the Christian notion of divine providence. The prince must make his own future, even when this involves doing evil; the prince must play God in order to secure the desired outcome. All of this, of course, is "tragically necessary."

Machiavelli’s thought was brought to completion in the 19th century by philosophers like Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill whose work faced up to the pure consequentialism of much modern politics. In its mature 19th-century formulations, consequentialism was a theory devised, in part, to deal with the perceived disappearance of generally agreed-upon moral standards. The skepticism brought on in some quarters by the rise of empiricism, Darwinism and various forms of atheism led to the search for some standard that would unite radically heterogeneous values. Mill and others fixed upon certain subjective ends, styled variously as "happiness" or "pleasure." As the aforementioned belief in divine providence continued to decline, the terrible burden of completely securing the future seemed to fall entirely upon human shoulders. In principle, no possible course of action could be ruled out as wrong or impermissible in itself and no sacrifice of known goods could be regarded as too great if it would secure greater happiness in the future. Thus, in the search for a means of maximizing the good, moral rules lost their categorical force.

Given the pervasiveness of this moral theory and its impact upon the common person, it is no accident that our own century is replete with political movements that require or threaten the destruction of known values in order to create a future of unlimited happiness. The belief in the mutability of moral obligations is one of the main arguments for terrorism. If there are no absolute human rights, the innocent are in danger. "Calculations" about whether or not to kill an innocent person become no more than arguments of advocacy based on hypothetical scenarios of the future. But can we really be reasonably expected to deal with other people on the basis of deciding whether they live or die by trying to project their life prospects for an indeterminate time period?

Terrorists the world over have appropriated concepts and military strategies (consider the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and the fire bombing of Dresden) that originated in the West. This fact should not, however, in any way debilitate us in our fight against terrorism. No government, no matter what its own past transgressions, should fail to protect its own citizens. If anything positive can be said about this grim and ironic situation, it is that as victims of terrorism we may be forced to rethink our own policies on the use of force (including nuclear force) in order to bring them into line with our moral denunciations of terrorism.

Hello and Goodbye (Easter)

Life is a long series of transitions. The healthy person accepts this, and deals with it so that life ultimately thrusts forward. Unhealthy people fight and put off, even deny, transitions. But changes come, whether we choose them or not: children are born; relationships change; jobs terminate; roofs leak; people die. No permission is sought; transitions simply happen.

John Hughes contends that "saying ‘Hello’ and saying ‘Goodbye’ are the two major learning tasks all humans need to accomplish." He continues:

Some children come into this world and have no one in their family really say "Hello" to them. . . Others never learn to say "Goodbye." Some have never said "Goodbye" to Mama or Daddy! Hence, even though he or she has long since passed on, he or she still continues to dominate this person’s life [Alban Institute, 1978, p. 13].

The postresurrection accounts represent how Jesus and the disciples said farewell to each other. For years I have been put off by their spooky nature, and have, therefore, skirted the profound psychological insights to be found in the passages. The way that Jesus says farewell to the disciples in Luke 24 helps them take hold of their new life and new relationship with him.

Because the rich fellowship they have known is no more, he comforts them. There will be no more intimate conversation with him as they wrestle with his person and mission. Now it is their opportunity to work out their own salvation and to realize that God is at work in them. He takes the time to say goodbye so that they may be Easter people with resurrection in their eyes. That model of care becomes a paradigm for us.

Tragedy is often like a giant eraser, cleaning our mental tapes of preceding data. Luke tells of two followers walking hurriedly away from Jerusalem, hoping to hit Emmaus by nightfall. Their journey was fueled by the adrenalin that one possesses when life crumbles and survival is the order of the day. They are together, yet alone.

We feel the poignancy of their comment when they meet the stranger and tell of their troubles. "We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel," they say. Though the women had told them about the empty tomb, they are unwilling to entertain the notion. He is gone, they say, and we are going home to put our lives in order. Nothing dies harder than a dream, if only dreams have died in a young life. These people had staked their lives on the idea that God would again reign in Israel in the person of Jesus. Now they plow through the mixture of foolishness and hurt. "Why us, Lord? Why did we believe?"

The stranger -- the yet-unrecognized Jesus -- does not respond by peppering them with homey advice ("It’s always darkest before the dawn") ; nor does he indulge their self-pity ("Here, here, tell me all about it") Instead he draws them back to what they know, the Scriptures, and teaches them again the things that drew them to follow him in the first place. Something clicks; they want more. They ask him to spend the night with them to continue the theological search. He agrees to stay for dinner. We know the story. The time comes for the guest to break the bread in the act of fellowship, and suddenly they recognize him.

Then, just as suddenly, he is gone. But the mighty current of hope surges anew and they rush back to the others -- no matter what the hour or the dangers on the road may be. They may not be ready to go change the world, but they have enough to accept the goodbye and to move to the next hello.

All joys and all sorrow lead to God, the sorrow of death more than any other experience. The joy of my life, my marriage with Old, was transformed into sorrow for his death. But my faith that I would someday, like Old, be called to God’s kingdom transformed this sorrow into joy.

Now I live with death, not with horrible loathing, but using it as a criterion to determine what is important in my life; as a stimulus to cheerfulness, for through it I shall recover those I love; and as a way of giving meaning to my work, since my efforts, no matter how minor and unimportant, may serve God’s final goal [John Knox, 1974, p. 63].

Each of us lives with death. We began with it in our baptism as we died with Christ and were raised with him to new life. We shudder as we put our child on the school bus and as he or she begins the perilous transition into adulthood. Something dies when the children leave home for college or to take their first job. Something dies when we reach age 30 or 40 or 50 or 65. Each time, we bid farewell to a past that informed our future. We must take off in order to put on; we must let go in order to grow in new ways.

The disciples had to let Jesus die so that he could live in another way. They could no longer be dependent on the fellowship that they knew with him at the center, that sheltered time of teaching. Now they had to seize the life that he had promised them, a life in the world that would challenge their faith beyond anything that they ever dreamed they would know. His death enabled them to claim the resources for growing in a way that his life among them prevented. As they experienced God’s purpose from the inside, they understood it. They now prayed on their own, for his prayers were beyond their hearing. His death forced them to "mature into ripeness for God."

Neither are we spared that maturation process. Called to die with Christ in the beginning, we are then raised with him at our day’s end. Called first to die to fear, we are raised to courage. Called to die to greed and covetousness in childhood, we are raised to generosity and thankfulness in maturity in Christ.

We die to the past to be raised to God’s future. Hope and grace live as despair and self-degradation die. We say goodbye to a self that will save itself by building bigger and better barns, and say hello to the new creation that Christ loves into being by his death and vindicates by his glory.

On a dismal road to Emmaus, two people felt their hearts to be strangely warmed in an hour of empty coldness. Then at a table they met their risen Lord. There they said goodbye to one dream, but began to embrace the possibility of a more profound reality. Aware of resources that, in anguish, they had forgotten, they start to claim the resurrection -- first his, then theirs. They then began a task that changed this world.

How the Church Can Help the Chemically Sensitive

Aids is not the only illness that seriously damages the immune system. An increasing number of individuals suffer from immune system dysregulation, also known as chemical sensitivity or ecologic illness. Since this problem cannot be transmitted from one person to another, its victims, unlike those of AIDS, are not deliberately ostracized by society. However, their illness may turn them into exiles, as their reactions to substances in common use force them to alter their lives dramatically.

Chemical-sensitive individuals and their families, have needs that churches can meet. Unfortunately the staff and congregation often fail to help, simply because they do not understand the nature of the illness.

People with immune system dysregulation suffer harmful reactions to a range of synthetic chemicals and common allergens and, like AIDS victims, have a reduced ability to fight infection. Symptoms in the. presence of offending substances include asthma, depression and irregular heartbeat. The illness is caused by stress from exposure to infectious diseases or toxic chemicals. Pesticides are frequently the culprit.

The most effective treatment requires victims to avoid the substances to which they are sensitive. This allows the immune system to rest and rebuild its strength. Recovery is seldom so complete, however, that former patients can tolerate heavy or continuous doses of the substances to which they were once highly sensitive. Furthermore, the illness could worsen. If patients do not practice avoidance, the immune system becomes progressively weaker. People who have been sensitive to only, one or two substances may suddenly find themselves unable to tolerate many others.

The necessity for avoidance causes a host of problems for people with immune system dysregulation. Sensitivities, like the reactions themselves, vary from individual to individual, but patients typically must stay away from such common substances as plastics, polyesters, detergents, perfumes, particle board, smoke and automobile exhausts. Further more, they may appear well, until a reaction occurs. In fact, many look well even while suffering a reaction. Such people experience the cerebral allergy form of the disorder. Their symptoms include pressure pains in the head, confusion and inability to concentrate.

Since reactions may be invisible and have no obvious link with the substances causing them, victims are haunted by the feeling that other people think they have simply become peculiar. Few people have heard of ecologic illness, and much about its nature awaits research. Some doctors argue that it doesn’t exist and tell patients that they are imagining their symptoms. If they have been harmed on the job, their employers will probably deny compensation. Few lawyers will defend with conviction the rights of the chemically sensitive. Family members often won’t accept the reality of the illness. Many victims are frequently admonished, "if you’d just forget about it, you’d get better."

Attitude can affect the course of the illness, but forgetting about it will not make the problem disappear. The chemically sensitive are in a sense physically handicapped, and what they need more than anything else is for others to accept this fact and cooperate by helping to provide a pure environment.

After the initial diagnosis. those who can afford extensive treatment go to a special hospital where their bodies are freed of contaminants and tested. They then establish for themselves the purest environment possible. This may be simply a room in their own home, an oasis cleaned of all triggering substances. If they are very ill, they are confined to the room. If their problem is more manageable, they use the room only for sleeping and occasional resting. Some people find themselves able to return to their former jobs; most are far more restricted, at least at first.

Concerned church members can help people with chemical sensitivity by determining their physical requirements. Many patients will gladly lend articles or books on the illness. This will relieve them of the burden of having to prove that their problem exists; they can rely on the written material to do so. It will also name the types of substances to which patients are sensitive. Telling a man that he should skip his after-shave or a woman that her perfume makes one ill is not a pleasant task. However, at some point patients must discuss their individual needs.

If a patient must stay in an oasis, concerned people need to find out whether visitors are welcome and, if so, what they need to avoid, bringing into the home. At the minimum, they should not smoke or wear any scented toiletries. For patients who can leave their homes, walks outdoors in areas away from traffic are a good way of getting together with friends. A short visit to another home or to an office may be possible; many patients can stay for a brief time in rooms that would make them unwell if they were there eight hours a day.

Unfortunately, most church sanctuaries are not easily visited, even for an hour on Sunday mornings. Many sanctuaries contain "indoor pollution" such as synthetic furnishings, carpeting and, in the case of new buildings, construction materials. During services the air tends to be filled also with the scent of powders, perfumes, hair sprays, deodorants and after-shave. Burning incense and candles adds to the problem. People only slightly sensitive may manage to attend. If so, they will appreciate the heating and cooling systems circulating a substantial portion of fresh air rather than simply recirculating stale air. Opening windows, when weather permits, is very helpful.

For people too ill to attend regular services, there are alternatives, including those regularly practiced for shut-ins. The church could pipe the service into a bare room elsewhere in the church building, or hold special services. Few churches have enough ill people to warrant such a program for only their own members, but an interdenominational arrangement may be feasible, at least in cities. Since 1983 the University United Methodist Church in Fort Worth has invited chemically sensitive persons to a weekly Bible study in the church’s uncarpeted solarium, where the six to ten participants sit on metal chairs at a distance from one another and the minister.

Chemical pesticides and chemical lawn treatments also present hazards to patients, although for briefer periods of time. Since herbicides and pesticides can make even well people ill, all parishioners could benefit from alternative ways of dealing with insects and weeds.

Whether or not the chemically sensitive can come to the church, the members and staff should keep in touch with them, for it is easy for them to fall away from the church altogether. The health hazard of attending a worship service in a sanctuary may put everything associated with the church under a cloud for them. Furthermore, the nature of the illness can cause them to question the church’s teachings about love and relationships. People with immune deficiency syndrome must at times keep at a physical distance from others and make requests that seem unreasonable and selfish; they may become irritable in reaction to physical stimuli. Knowing that they are not being lovable and having difficulty in sustaining warm relationships with others, they may ask an old question: Why does God wish us to do what he makes so difficult?

For many people with chemical sensitivity, moods are extremely affected by food and surroundings. In one day a person may feel deeply depressed while in a room with a gas-burning stove, become elated after eating ice cream, and explode in anger at a librarian, in reaction to a photocopy machine’s fumes. To such a person the mind and the emotions seem completely dependent on the physical world. What need is there for the spiritual, if one can feel renewed simply from eating chocolate? Furthermore, patients become acutely aware of social and environmental problems through their own attempts to avoid pollution. To them, their illness is part of a global degradation, including world hunger and contamination of the earth with radioactivity and toxic chemicals. At times they ask why a just and loving God would let people travel what appears to be a one-way path to destruction.

The illness’s strain is not experienced by the patient alone. Family members often need counseling and support. However, this should not contradict the advice of the patient’s physician. Well-meaning friends can impede the physician’s treatment by fueling the family’s suspicions that changes that the doctor has asked them to make are unnecessary, and this may delay their acceptance of their illness. It is more constructive to help the patient and family members to negotiate ways of implementing the doctor’s advice.

Having a chemically sensitive patient in the house causes tremendous problems for a family. If their house is small, the members have difficulty in providing even the minimum amount of pure space that the patient needs. Each might have to give up some seemingly harmless habits. For instance, a daughter might have to switch from her favorite shampoo, or a son might not be able to cook pancakes because of the smoke this makes. They may resent requests to abandon familiar ways, and even feel personally rejected. A husband is quite likely to think that his wife’s dislike of his shaving lotion is actually dislike of him.

Even more drastic changes may become necessary. Some patients need to change houses or geographic location. If they have been providing all or part of the family support and must give up their jobs, the family suffers an income cut while its expenses rise. Costs increase for basics like food, which should now be organically grown. Such stresses have led many cases of chemical sensitivity to divorce.

Indeed, their limitations are challenging. Some patients are so sensitive to the chemicals in ink that they cannot read a newspaper until it has been aired, write with a pen or typewriter, or handle photocopies. Almost all can use a phone, however. Thus they may call to check on elderly people living alone, become part of a crisis team to refer people to professionals who can help them, or take part in a network that informs citizens of pending legislation. The restrictions on work with special papers and ink may be overcome in part by pairing the patient with someone willing to type letters written in pencil and to make any necessary photocopies.

Encouragement to join or to form a group working on a particular issue may be helpful. Some volunteers find that they like working in a field which has no direct relation to their illness, as they do not want to be reminded of how serious chemical sensitivity can be; but others will want to work with consciousness-raising groups. One such organization is the Human Ecology Action League, which has chapters in many cities. This group organizes patients into a network that furthers the interests of immune deficiency syndrome patients and urges the creation of a cleaner environment for the general public.

A doctor working with the chemically sensitive wrote recently, "I don’t recall seeing anyone recover fully who did not have understanding and loving people around them." If the church family can support and encourage the chemically sensitive and can help them find ways to serve, it will make a human investment that will be well repaid.

Church Vesture as Art

Whether it be the garish uniforms of 18th-century European soldiers or the drab, sometimes threadbare dress of medieval monks, clothing and uniforms have always served as signs of identity. Even today, the serviceable khaki of a Boy Scout marks an individual as belonging to that organization, just as the dress of a policeman or bus driver serves to identify the wearer with a particular profession.

Similarly, in some of the major jurisdictions of the Christian church, clergy are identified by particular kinds of dress or vestment. In the Western church, this is particularly true in the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions, and to some degree in the Lutheran churches as well.

It is commonly supposed that these forms of clothing were deliberately chosen to mark the individual as a member of a particular order of clergy and to set the clergy apart from the laity. There is some truth in this assumption, especially since clericalism has historically been a dominant feature of church life. But the growth of vesture as a matter of distinctive attire and, indeed, as a fine art was not originally a deliberate choice on the part of the church.

In fact, in the earliest centuries of Christianity there was no official dress for clergy. They wore the ordinary dress of the time. It was not until the 13th century that liturgical vesture, which had been a matter of tradition, was incorporated into liturgical law.

In the first centuries A.D., the common public garb of Roman citizens was the toga, a loose, wraparound outer garment. This rather bulky wrap was gradually replaced by a linen robe with close sleeves cailed the linea, which covered the body from head to foot. Over this was worn a tunica, a simple slip-on garment, often belted and with or without sleeves, which reached the knees. On ceremonial occasions, a casula would be worn. This was a circular piece of cloth with a hole in the center so that it could pass over the head.

After the Roman Empire fell in 476, a new attire was adopted by the populace. The clergy, however, retained the older form of dress, perhaps out of a conservative reaction to change or an emotional investment in the older forms. The clergy became an identifiable class of citizens set apart from the worshiping congregation. Often, however, the ceremonial dress of a cleric was merely a second set of clean clothes. Thus the traditional clerical dress received its initial form: the alb, the long white undergarment; the tunicle, reserved today for the dress of deacons; and the chasuble, the sleeveless outer garment worn by the celebrant of the Eucharist.

The stole, too, had its origins in the secular world. It was originally a "scarf of office," used by the emperor and consuls. It was granted to various other officials during the fourth century and then adopted by the clergy. The version of the stole worn by popes and archbishops is called the pallium. The maniple, a silk band that hangs over the left forearm, descended directly from the mappula, a large handkerchief carried in the hand or laid across the arm by magistrates and other officials in ceremonial dress.

What catches the eye in modern liturgical dress is, of course, the panoply of watered silk, furs and lace. But these elements are not, strictly speaking, part of Roman Catholic liturgical vesture, and they are laid aside during the performance of sacramental acts.

Rules on vestments in the Roman Catholic Church these days are summarized in "The Sacramentary" of the Roman Catholic Missal published in 1974. It notes that "the diversity of ministries is shown externally in worship by the diversity of vestments. The Sacramentary" prescribes the alb; a cincture, which is tied at the waist; an optional amice, or neck scarf; and a chasuble as the normal vesture of a priest when celebrating the mass. The cope, developed, again, from a common cloak (as worn in France) may be used for processions or ceremonies other than the mass. Vestments may be made from fabrics common to the region or artificial fabrics which are "in keeping with the dignity of the sacred action."

The colors of vestments are white, red, green, violet, black, rose and blue, according to the season of the church year. One caveat is given: "The beauty of a vestment should derive from its material and form rather than from its ornamentation. Ornamentation should include only symbols, images, or pictures suitable for liturgical use, and anything unbecoming should be avoided." Supervision in these matters is given to each conference of bishops in the local area.

The argument over vestments has since waxed and waned in the Anglican community, adding fuel to the debate between "high church" and "low church." For example, in 1985 the bishop of Pittsburgh received a letter from a priest of his diocese bitterly complaining about the decorative sacred vestments used at a service he attended. From the priest’s "low church" perspective, the importance given to vestments was highly objectionable. "It was indicated to [ordinands at an ordination service] that while kneeling and prior to the stole being placed about them, they were to kiss it, as if this were a routine ceremony. From the inclusion of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the prayers to all the celebrating priests wearing chasubles during the Eucharist, while it may be hard for you to comprehend, I was filled with indignation."

In American Protestantism, the regular use of some form of special clerical garb has been confined to certain Lutheran, Methodist, and Calvinist groups. Even in these bodies, the use of sacred dress has varied widely from congregation to congregation. Partly out of a rejection of a priestly description of ministry, and the absence of a tradition of vested clergy among such denominations as Baptists, Congregationalists and the Society of Friends, Protestants have largely rejected sacred vestments. At least the Protestant concept calls for little insignia other than an academic or tradition-related distinction. However, some Protestant congregations have been influenced by other traditions’ use of stoles, tabs, cassocks, bands and hoods -- no doubt the result of ecumenical encounters which have already resulted in a common church year, a common lectionary and deeper dimensions of liturgical conformity.

Concerning the artistic efforts employed in the conception and creation of sacred clothing, the determination of many generations, back to the time of Solomon, has been to offer the best to God. Of course, the motivations behind this offering have been varied: fear, praise, worship, idolotry and sometimes plain greed have played a part. Nevertheless, some of the finest brocade, velvet, embroidery, silk, cloth-of-gold, cloth-of-silver, linen, damask, satin, appliqué and jewelry and the finest skills of weavers, painters and needleworkers have gone into the making of vestments. Excellent examples of this work can be found in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Los Angeles County Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.

It may be fair to ask: do the vestments foster art or does art encourage the use of vestments? Historians and liturgical specialists have not always agreed on the matter. The process that produced vesture, and moved from simple, amply-cut clothes of everyday life to the elaborate, almost distracting, robes and garments of ceremonial dress, has also moved in the opposite direction. Perhaps the most violent alternation occurred in the 19th century, when a flowering of ornamentation was accompanied by a sharp and didactic resistance to its use.

Ultimately, it is not a question of either/or. The norms of ceremony and rite encourage the use of the finest materials to express the intangible. The use of artistic expression to enhance the words and movements of the ritual is inseparable from the human need to be creative. In this instance, form does not follow function but both proceed hand in hand.

Match Point to the Media

I want to tell a little story about the media and the president. Mostly about the media. Teddy Kennedy does not appear in this story.

It begins on December 7, 1978, when a young man named Jim Fallows delivered a public lecture at Indiana University. Mr. Fallows was not then known to most of his audience or to the broader public, despite some thoughtful magazine articles he had written. He was listed in the material advertising his lecture as “James M. Fallows, former chief speechwriter to President Carter.” Although he had held a post of apparent national significance with the president of the United States, his name had not yet been plastered on the nation’s mind by the more powerful instruments of mass publicity. Since then, however, it has been. He wrote some articles for the Atlantic, and there was a flurry of reaction. I want to go back and extract a little lesson from the episode (I include what I learned myself, as a poor man’s Sol Hurok for political speakers at a midwestern university).

Clumsy Machinery

The lesson (not a new one) is the difficulty the publicity machinery has in handling anything complex -- anything with nuances, shades, subtle changes or soft colors. That clumsy machinery alters the world to fit its own needs. With each new grinding, the matter caught up in it is chewed into simpler pieces. With enough grindings it is made into something it wasn’t.

Fallows had not been much publicized in his White House days. When I first met him he was wearing his tennis shorts -- a young man in a big office in the Executive Office Building. (I was reminded of Stewart Udall’s having said, when he was secretary of the interior, that he had played basketball in gyms that were smaller than his present office.) I learned quickly that Fallows, the tennis player, was a good deal more reflective and more philosophically formed than many whose names were better known, in the other big offices in the EOB, or in the White House next door. My opinion of Carter, always volatile, rose a little. Then when it was clear that Carter didn’t really use this man’s abilities, that opinion went down again.

Fallows, just barely out of the White House and gathering again his journalistic momentum, came to Bloomington not only to deliver his lecture but also to participate in a “conference” on “America and the Carter Presidency,” from which I extract the first part of the lesson mentioned above (like Fallows’s Atlantic article, it comes in two parts).

This conference was put together (by me: what follows is all my own fault) simply to provide tape for a segment of “Bill Moyers’ Journal” on PBS. It was a pure media event with no independent existence. Moyers’s people had swarmed over the Indiana University campus in successive waves of producers, executive producers, directors and associate directors; of lighting people, camera people, sound people and questions-from-the-audience people; had added a participant (Nicholas von Hoffman) to be sure the affair would be telegenic; had phoned the panelists before the event with their own list of topics and ideas; had thrown together a wooden platform just for their cameras, which cameras prevented many in the actual audience from seeing the panelists; had shifted the meeting rooms to meet the exacting requirements for the paraphernalia of television; had fed questions to members of the audience, and instructions “from the truck” to the moderator (“move on”); and then had fashioned from 12 hours of tape one hour that might have been made in a New York city hotel room. The best part of the discussion began with comments by E. Brooks Holifield, the church historian at Emory University, and dealt with the link between Jimmy Carter as Southern Baptist deacon and Jimmy Carter as politician. None of that appeared on the program. At one point, however, the program did show five different racial types in rapid succession asking questions -- without showing the answers -- in order, presumably, to display the ethnic variety of the American middle west.

The Case of the Tennis Courts

On the first evening of this curious event the panelists and Bill Moyers had supper together in the Indiana Memorial Union, and there began the Case of the Presidential Tennis Courts. The other participants had arrived before Fallows: Reynolds Price, the novelist; von Hoffman; Charles Hamilton, the political scientist from Columbia (does one now say, “the sometime collaborator with Stokely Carmichael”? -- that was a long time ago); Holifield, and me. We were having an amusing supper conversation about, among other things, a television interview Moyers had had with President Carter shortly before this gathering. (Another Moyers interview with Carter, before he was president -- one Southern Baptist talking to another -- had been very successful, and had influenced some votes. “What’s your favorite hymn?” “Amazing Grace,” But you can’t do that twice.) It had begun -- this second PBS interview -- with a Moyers question about the Carter presidency’s lack of a theme. The president had responded -- typically -- with a list of the problems facing him. Later, rather as a relief from the heavy questions about Iran, inflation and the like, Moyers had asked the president whether or not he had in fact himself made decisions -- as had been reported -- about the use of the White House tennis courts. President Carter, full face into the camera, had answered flatly, “No.” Moyers -- thinking back -- said that at that point the program had begun to go downhill;

Now we sat at supper in the Union, recalling these events, when Fallows arrived from his late plane. Immediately we asked the question: Was it or was it not true that President Carter himself had assigned courts for White House tennis? Fallows said it was absolutely true. He himself had many pieces of paper initialed by Carter granting him permission to play. The conversation around the table became animated. Charles Hamilton, who was rather favorably disposed toward Carter, looked troubled: Why would the president fudge on such a matter?

Later we performed before the “live” audience, as they say (such of them as could see us), under the hot lights of television. But the best event of the evening had been the supper with no audience and no cameras.

Predictably, one of the questions in the public camera-covered meeting had to do with the tennis courts. Fallows gave the answer he had given at the supper, now in a slightly gentler manner.

The television people gathered up their machinery, left with 12 hours of tape, and concocted out of this tape and other ingredients an hour-long program. It did include, of course, Fallows answering the question about the tennis courts. Shown on PBS on February 7, this program was nevertheless quite different from the conference it was drawn from, which in turn was quite different from what it would have been had it not been put together for television’s purposes. An IU political scientist said, after it was all over and we had seen the program: “You know, I don’t think television is worth it.” So much effort for so little meat.

Inside Story

Part Two. In April, the May issue of the Atlantic Monthly appeared, with the cover article titled “The Passionless Presidency,” by James Fallows. There was a cover picture of Carter and a little banner above the magazine’s title that read: “From Inside Carter’s White House.” When the second part of the article was published in the June issue of the Atlantic, the cover again promised insideness, and the subtitle read: “More from Inside Jimmy Carter’s White House.” I think the Atlantic’s own winking and tooting about the article coming from INSIDE contributed to the distortion that followed.

The article itself presented in convincing detail what seemed an evenhanded picture of President Carter as a quite intelligent and decent man who lacked a fundamental political formation and philosophical direction. But the article became the kind of journalistic event that itself provokes journalistic commentary: Fallows and his article became the subject of other people’s articles. Fallows’s article was long, careful and measured, but it was reduced to a sensational caricature in many reports. Time wrote about the “Fallows Fracas.” George Will, the premature Olympian, wrote about Fallows’s “precocious disillusionment.’’ Distinguished columnists denied that the Fallows article was a “kiss and tell” piece, or a “run-of-the-mill peephole job,” and in the denying reinforced the phrases that they rejected. The headlines on the columns syndicated across the country simplified Fallows’s appraisal yet again. “Ex-Aide Hits Carter’s ‘Arrogance,’ ‘Ignorance,’ ‘Insecurity,’” said one headline.

The discussion was not about Carter but about Fallows. It dealt not with his analysis of Carter but with his having written the articles so soon after leaving the White House. The content of the piece was reduced to terse excerpts of its negative points. If they were “balanced” by something he wrote that was more favorable to the president, the words dutifully quoted did not in fact have the effect of, providing real balance. (That was the first wave; media commentary goes in waves. On the second wave, some of the commentators paid attention to what Fallows had written, which was very far from being sensational.)

Meanwhile, at the press conference on April 30 the incident came to a kind of climax with a question to the president.

The question had, with the perfect symbolic symmetry, two parts: philosophy and tennis. “How,” the questioner asked. “do you [Mr. Carter] respond to the statement by Jim Fallows -- first, that you have no broad overall philosophy; second, that you signed off personally on the use of the tennis courts but told Bill Moyers that you didn’t?”

The president’s response had its own interesting shape. Fallows was put at a distance as a “fine young man” who “didn’t express these concerns to me” -- he left “with no insinuation there were things about which he was disappointed.” (Fallows has since said that he had made all his concrete points to the president.) Carter then used -- more in sorrow than in anger -- the perennial resort of the exclusive Club of Presidents: “This is the kind of question that has to be faced by any president when someone leaves the White House. It has happened many times in the past.” (We presidents know -- if you were president you would know -- how it is when these “fine young men” go out and say these things. It happened to Abe Lincoln; it happened to me.)

Though the president said that he and Fallows agree on most things,” he added that “his assessment of my character and performance is one of those things on which we don’t agree.” Fallows’s Atlantic articles dealt quite favorably with Carter’s “character,” and dealt with his “performance” by way of his lack of political understanding and direction. That Carter should not quite comprehend the point of the criticism itself tends to confirm it.

But, of course, the main thing was not philosophy but tennis. President Carter gave the following answer to that great question: “I have never personally monitored who used or who did not use the White House tennis courts.” That would seem to be clear enough. But then another sentence followed: “I have let my secretary, Susan Clough, receive requests from members of the White House staff who wanted to use the tennis courts at certain times so that more than one person would not want to use the same tennis court simultaneously unless they were either on opposite sides of the net or engaged in a doubles contest.”

Mr. Carter showed thus a touch of the humor that he possesses despite the old charge that he is humorless. But a close reader will notice a slight gap in his denial of Fallows’s point. Susan Clough seems to be cast in the role of the Rosemary Woods of the Tennis Court. Meanwhile, Fallows has carefully stowed away his pieces of paper, initialed by Jimmy Carter, permitting him to play on the tennis court.

A writer looks for something concrete to interest readers and to illustrate a point. Sometimes the illustration sweeps away the point, and the tennis-court issue obliterates the philosophic issue -- as it may have done, once again, in the present article.