History's Echo: A Pastor's Reflection on Faith, Division, and Senator Margaret Chase Smith's Call to Conscience
Dear Friends: Our members know that I like to read, especially history. We learn so much about the past and about ourselves. Much of what we read makes us think about the present, for all too often history does repeat itself. Unfortunately, often “history”, or those things that repeat, has new tools and weapons at its disposal.
Heather Cox is a presidential historian. Her post today taught me something I did not know previously. On this date, in 1950, Senator Margaret Chase of Maine told her colleagues: “It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear…. I speak as a Republican; I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States senator. I speak as an American.” Cox writes that she said, “Americans have the right to criticize, to hold unpopular beliefs, to protest, and to think for themselves. But attacks that cost people their reputations and jobs were stifling these basic American principles, and the ones making those attacks were in her own party.” This was in reference to Senator Joe McCarthy and his horrendous attack on so many people. Senator Chase said: “I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear…..As an American, I condemn a Republican Fascist just as much as I condemn a Democrat Communist,” she said. “They are equally dangerous to you and me and to our country. As an American, I want to see our nation recapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy instead of ourselves.” Smith presented a “Declaration of Conscience,” listing five principles she hoped her party would adopt. It ended with a warning: “It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”
Hopefully, I am clear that the present situation in American politics is not the result of one party alone, or one individual alone. It is not the result of one voter alone. It is not the result of your neighbor alone. The issue becomes, how do we change things? How do we stop using the tools of anger, hatred, name-calling, and isolation from others in our lives?
I have just finished reading an incredible book by Vassily Grossman, titled Life and Fate. It takes place during the Battle of Stalingrad and deals with Stalin and Hitler, among others. There were times when I had to stop and just pause because the parallels to today could be so obvious. I also just read a tremendous book on the Vietnam experience, by Tim O’Brien, titled The Things They Carried. It is short, and I recommend it to all. If nothing else, read it in honor of all those who served, those who sacrificed so much, those who lost their lives in a war that ultimately served little or no purpose. Again, parallels abounded. Why were we fighting? The country was so divided?
History does often repeat itself. It can repeat in generations; the sins of the fathers and mothers are carried over to the children. Sometimes it skips a generation but is still there, which is why we worship. At least it’s one reason. We stop, we confess, we listen to God’s word, we come to the table together as one people of God, and hopefully in the midst of all this, we ask: How can I be different? History does not have to repeat. We make choices.
Even Ethan, Tom Cruise, in Mission: Impossible, is told this in a recording from his dear friend Luther, at the very end of the movie, after he has, of course, saved the world. Luther tells him: "Nothing is written. And our cause, however righteous, pales in comparison to the impact of our effect. Any hope for a better future comes from willing that future into being. A future reflecting the measure of good within ourselves." Or I might add: A future reflecting the measure of God’s goodness within us.
-Pastor Trump