How Civilized Are We?

A steady stream of important and well-presented documentaries have been offered of late on public television, most recently a series on Auschwitz which humanized for me both the Nazi criminals and their victims, and another entitled, Slavery and the Making of America, a production of Thirteen/WNET New York.

While watching recently the stories of brutal, self-serving slave owners in 19th Century America and the heartache they wrought on millions of forgotten people, I am tempted to reverse my fealty to Jesus' proscriptions against judging another person. I wish to assert that there must be a special place in hell for white Christians who so savaged their fellow men, women and children, and for mere economic ends. To build an empire. I say I wish, because a threat of punishment seems too similar to their crimes—and so I hold myself back. Humility and charity should extend even to them.

One story from the film stands out. Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery, and at the age of twelve began attracting the sexual attentions of her “owner”, whom she seems to have successfully avoided by setting up with another man and bearing two children while still a teenager.

“When Dr. Norcom joined the Episcopal church, I was much surprised. I supposed that religion had a purifying effect on the character of men, but the worst persecutions I endured from him were after he was a communicant.” (web site transcript here)

His religious commitment failed to change his actions towards “his” slaves, least of all “his” slave women by whom he fathered eleven children.

A heart-wrenching twist of fate required her to leave her children in order to save them, and to condemn herself to years of confinement in an attic “the size of a large library table.” Her personal story ended in freedom in the North, and her writing preserved her experiences for us to learn by.

The film planted an image in my mind of the southern Church of this time, condemned to a struggle for relevance and social position in a society turned truly ugly; a Church that was compelled in that struggle to tolerate and even endorse its slave owners and slave traders, and accept them as fellow partakers of the Christian Communion; a Church compelled to don the façade of civilization to conceal its parishioners’ hearts of death. Jesus might have called them whitewashed tombs.

What a price to pay for relevance.

And we still haven’t learned how to be relevant in our communities without becoming assimilated. How many of our good churches have tolerated, or even embraced, abortion “rights” for women and abandoned the humanizing influence of the Biblical tradition’s love for life? How many of us truly work to sustain marriages? How many churches help young people stand apart from the silliness of their sexually active peers? What Churches today have kept the worthy portions of their heritage (some thinning of which is not untoward) in the face of contemporary fads and pressures?

More personally, where can a religious person attend church today, and a) be reminded of the importance of remaining in committed, loving families, and b) hear the rights of unborn children regularly asserted from the pulpit and defended through the actions of the church’s lay programs, and as an added bonus, c) hear the great religious music of the Christian West, preserved as (an admirable portion of) its Christian heritage?

Having trouble guessing?

After watching Harriet Jacob’s “owner” receive communion in his Church (in this re-enacted documentary) I had a nearly overwhelming urge to join that other Church – the Catholic Church – out of admiration for their strength of conviction in the face of genocide and rampant cultural narcissism. While a momentary impulse does not a lifetime commitment make, the temptation, I readily confess, endures.

An odd pair of institutions I laud tonight. Two very diverse civilizing influences in a era of careless freedom.

Slavery and the Making of America begs the question, if we were to lose public television, who would step in to take their place? When compared to the tawdry, sordid entertainment that now dominates commercial television, Public Television’s thoughtful, intelligent and creative programming feels like an oasis of sanity in a world of vacuous, wanton freedom.

Perhaps we should also ask, if we lose the influence of the Catholic Church in America, would any other American Church have the courage to step into its place?