Dear Friends,
May 30th 1770, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Rev. Samuel Cooke preached “An Election-Sermon” in the audience of Thomas Hutchinson, Esq., Lieutenant-Governor. He began with scripture from the Book of Samuel, that is known as “The Last Words of David:”
“He that ruleth over Men, must be just, ruling in the fear of GOD. And he shall be as the light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds, as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.”
It was a pretty good sermon, mainly lamenting the tensions between the colonies and the King at that time, the management of those tensions, and even touching on slavery in the colonies -- of the former he said, foreshadowing Thomas Jefferson, I think:
“A society emerging from a state of nature, in respect to authority, are all upon a level, -- no individual can justly challenge a right to make, or execute the laws, by which it is to be governed, but only by the choice, or general consent of the community. The people, the collective body, only have a right, under God, to determine who shall exercise this trust for the common interest, and to fix the bounds of their authority.
And consequently, unless we admit the most evident inconsistence, those in authority, in the whole of their public conduct, are accountable to the society, which gave them their public existence.”
Of the latter, slavery, he wrote:
“Ethiopia has long stretched out her arms to us – Let not sordid gain, acquired by the merchandize of slaves, and the souls of men – harden our hearts against her piteous moans – When God ariseth, and when he visiteth, what shall we answer!”
In early August I drove back to my hometown in North Central Pennsylvania to attend my 52nd High School Reunion. I think we all realized that we were getting to the point where getting together every five or ten years was going to have, well, diminishing returns, so now the class tries to do it annually. While it was nice to see everyone and various relatives, and even to endure the less than luxurious hotel in the town, what was most noticeable was driving across Pennsylvania on Route 6. What I saw was heartbreaking, for I saw the collapse of rural America.
There have been economic transitions in the past that led to America’s Rust Belt, and towns in Pennsylvania that were part of the region’s coal and steel industrial past had declined long ago, but this was different. Each town had a number of houses and churches that had physically collapsed, including my hometown. Industries and young adults were mainly gone. It felt like 1930. For two hundred years, most of these towns had displayed resilience. My hometown started out as a lumber town, the logs being floated down the river to the main branch or the Susquehanna River, then on to Baltimore for shipbuilding (good masts from those pine trees). As the age of tall ships passed, someone realized that in the hollows and rills of the Allegheny Mountains, one could make explosives and gunpowder in those sheltered valleys and any accidental explosions would be confined to the hollows (that was the theory anyway, more than once all the windows in our town were shattered by shock waves from an industrial accident), this was an industry at the turn of the century – at the same time, other tree-related industries emerged – tanneries that used the bark from the trees (my high school football field was built over one, and when it rained, we would go home from a football game smelling like rotting leather), and it was noted then that from trees we can get carbon, and thus a carbon black industry emerged, as well as a paper mill a few towns over. Those industries faded as well, but that carbon black concept lead to an industry making light bulbs, which lead to an industry making vacuum tubes, and Sylvania Electric was born in the town, which was a mainstay until the invention of the transistor, and that industry left town, and then a powdered metal industry sustained the town for a decade or two, but now it has all gone to states with lower tax rates, or to lower cost countries, the result of globalization.
A major underlying cause for rural poverty, as well, is the fact that throughout Appalachia, while there are ample natural resources, the mineral rights or forestry rights are owned or leased to large corporations, often through slick deals struck in the late nineteenth century, and now, with the disappearance of industry the towns in this region are left with addiction, unemployment, and disappearing healthcare – the nearest hospital where there are adequate birth facilities is fifty miles away from my hometown (it used to be twenty miles!). So in these areas there is a sense of despair, there is a wish for the simple dignity of jobs, and a longing for, and a mourning for, a small town America that may no longer exist, and may never exist again. These are forces far greater than what a local Chamber of Commerce can confront.
Since the country began, there has been a steady migration from rural communities to urban communities (it does not escape me that I myself participated in this same migration), yet observing the effects of this as I drove, I realized how distant these persons’ concerns were from ours in the Greater Boston Area, and I realized that we often look across the urban/rural divide and declare one state red and another state blue, there are deeper contexts that drive this coloration. The rural concerns can be different from our own here in our urban and suburban contexts, and their causes can be different from our causes, and no one is necessarily wrong, they are just different. Media and social media profit from elevating and aggravating our differences, but it is only compassion and understanding that will save the country. The path to this compassion is listening, and social media will only tell us what we already think and believe. Prayer and listening will take us further than fear and shouting.
Samuel Cooke closed his sermon with these words:
“We also are all strangers on earth; and must soon, without distinction, lie down in the dust; and rise not, till these heavens and earth are no more.
May we all realize the appearance of the Son of God, to judge the world in righteousness, -- and improve the various talents committed to our trust; that we may then lift up our heads with joy – and thro’ grace, receive an inheritance which cannot be taken away – even life everlasting. AMEN.”
AMEN.
Blessings,
Father CJ+
Comments