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Minister
and President’s Message
Our faith must find expression in public life of nation
October,
2003
By
Nancy S. Taylor
When Congregationalist Samuel Sewall published the first anti-slavery
tract in 1700, he intended to engage the soul of the nation on a matter
of the highest spiritual import. (Sewall’s tract is a theological argument,
quoting liberally and aptly from the scriptures.) He succeeded: many
people credit the beginning of the anti-slavery movement to that publication.
When John Quincy Adams argued the cause of the Amistad captives before
the US Supreme Court in 1841, he too, intended to engage the soul
of this nation (not just the minds of the Supreme Court justices)
on theological,
spiritual, and moral grounds. He succeeded. The Amistad captives
were freed and the abolitionist cause took a huge step forward.
When Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, she
used the compelling genre of fiction to engage the soul of this
nation with the moral and spiritual blight of slavery. It worked:
Abraham
Lincoln later described her as the lady who wrote the book that
began the Civil War.
In each case, Christians brought the ethical insights of the Judeo-Christian
tradition to inform, judge, challenge, and guide a nation in
peril of loosing its soul. Unabashedly and unapologetically they
brought
their Christian faith into the public square. They offered this
nation a vision of a common good, a good that transcended any
particular caste or class.
In bringing the Freedom Schooner Amistad to Boston Harbor this
month, we have an opportunity to engage the soul of the nation
– and, indeed,
our own souls – on issues of public import and the public good
from the perspective and judgment of the Judeo-Christian tradition
… the
tradition that inspired Moses to engage the powers and principalities
in a quest for emancipation for the Hebrew slaves; the tradition
that inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. to dream aloud and in
public about
justice and equality for all God’s children.
Moses, Sewall, Adams, Stowe and MLK remind us that our faith,
while always profoundly personal, can never be private. It
must find
expression in the public life of the nation, and in the service
of the public
good. God requires no less from us.
It is for this reason that a host of events surround the
visit of the Amistad. The vessel is a starting place, a springboard
for unlimited
opportunities: to initiate thoughtful, if difficult, conversations
on race; to provide a racial-justice lens through which to
read the daily papers and listen to the evening news; to
challenge
ourselves to heed the bitter words of the prophets aimed
at those
with privilege
and power; to inform and expand our prayer life to include
the alien
and stranger; to inspire us to become acquainted with persons
of different
races, ethnicities, income and educational levels; to learn
about the horror and prevalence of modern-day slavery; to
turn our
Christian hearts to the plight of the most vulnerable; to
wonder aloud and
in
public about the soul of America; to carry our faith into
the public square on behalf of the common good.
