Charles Marsh, Shea Tuttle and Daniel P. Rhodes, editors. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2019.) 385pp.
Reviewed by Walter B. Shurden
When rhetorically interrogating the congregation with, “Can I get a witness?” the black preacher is expecting an “Amen,” a resounding “Yes.” And so does this book. It answers the question, “Can I get a witness?” with 13 “unruly” witnesses, “dissidents, misfits and malcontents.” Most all of them did their theology close to the ground, right next to human hurt and suffering. With sparkling narratives of these 13 “peacemakers, community builders, and agitators,” the three editors have a purpose in mind. They want to nudge the rest of us to act with the same “heavenly discontent and disarming love” that fired these diverse 13 reformers.
Most of you who read this review will look at the table of contents and find at least three or four names that you do not know, maybe have never seen. So this is not the same repetitive list of American social prophets one often sees. Four, maybe five, names were foreign to me. I tease you with some of their words or words about them. Circle the names you do not recognize.
Cesar Chavez (1927-1993) prayed, “Help us to love those that hate us, so that we may change the world,” while he sought a better life for migrant farm workers.
Howard Thurman (1900-1981), an advocate for “those with their backs against the wall,” was the intellectual and spiritual father of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King, Jr., carried a copy of Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited in his brief case.
Yuri Kochiyama (1921-2014) spent her life fighting against unjust imprisonment. She also taught a Sunday school class of young girls and believed it was “more important what you teach a child to love than what you teach a child to know.”
Howard Kester (1904-1977), working with miners and sharecroppers in the South, turned pessimistic after a horrible lynching in Marianna, FL. He wrote, “We won’t love people into the Kingdom, we’ve got to bust this damn society to hell before love can find a place in it.”
Ella Baker (1903-1986), civil rights leader, caused people to sing, “We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.” She had a special concern for “the least of these” and “lifting up the lowly.”
Dorothy Day (1897-1980) begged, “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.” After her conversion to Catholicism, she helped found the Catholic Worker Movement and insisted that the world is more than a series of ugly truths.
Father John Ryan (1869-1945), “The Right Reverend New Dealer” and alleged founder of “the living wage,” defended his social reforms against the charge of “socialism” saying, “The only liberty that they interfere with is the liberty of the economically strong to oppress the economically weak.”
William Stringfellow (1928-1985), a Harvard-educated lawyer who defended people drawing the short end of the stick of justice and a lay theologian who critiqued the church, said, in Pope Francis style, “The church must be free to be poor in order to minister among the poor.”
Mahalia Jackson (1911-1972), more interested in social change that some could ever imagine, brought her witness to the public through gospel music.
Lucy Randolph Mason (1882-1959) or “polite Miss Lucy,” a white woman with an aristocratic Virginia background, advocated for labor unions and racial reconciliation in the South when both were scorned and a woman was not supposed to lead.
Richard Twiss (1954-2013), born on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, cried out about the dehumanization of Native Americans and rebuked the story line that Native Americans were “the Canaanites, the Jebusites, the Hittites, the Perrezites, who stood in the way of . . . the chosen people.”
Daniel Berrigan (1921-2016), a Jesuit poet-priest who once said jestingly, while making a point, that the Pentagon is “the largest insane asylum in the world.” Protesting the mythology that “violence alone can save,” Berrigan roiled both state and church, and he went to prison for his convictions.
Mary Stella Simpson (1910-2004), a preeminent nurse-midwife of 20th century America, encountered transcendence by ministering to the sick and needy and found herself immersed in the wondrous spirituality of childbirth.
These 13 “witnesses,” calling us to the work of love and justice, shared commonalties. All of them did their work in the 20th century. Father John Ryan died first in 1945. Four of them, Kochiyama, Twiss, Berrigan and Simpson, lived into the 21st century. Also, several of them came from poverty, a schoolmaster for work against injustice. Moreover, women played large parts in shaping several of their lives. In most cases a religious faith of some kind guaranteed their tenacity, perseverance and calling. Solidarity with others and a non-violent approach to social ills dominated much of their activities. Finally, skilled communication, words spoken, written or sung, constituted a powerful tool in the work for human flourishing.
Differences, as well as commonalities, existed among the 13. Latinos, African Americans, Asians, whites, and, of course, male, female and probably gay are among these reformers. Their causes differed as well: peace, racial reconciliation, workers’ rights, physical health and healthy religion. Where religion played a major part in their lives, Christianity was that faith. Within the Christian tradition, however, you will find here Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Baptists, among others. Strategies and tactics for confronting social ills varied. While a few took an “in your face” approach, others were amazing in their love for those they prophesied against.
I must say what one almost always says in a review of an edited volume of essays from different hands, “Of course, the chapters are uneven.” They are. However, not a single chapter failed to arrest me. The subject matter triumphs over style in every case. And it is very difficult to choose favorites among these prophets. For years, I have been enamored with Howard Thurman and challenged to the point of embarrassment by Catholics Cesar Chavez, Dorothy Day and Daniel Berrigan. But in this particular volume, I found myself drawn to John A. Ryan, Lucy Randolph Mason and Mary Stella Simpson. Whatever you do, don’t overlook these chapters.
I came away from the book with another barrel-full of books to read, autobiographies, biographies, words of fiction and non-fiction, books by and about these 13 truth-tellers. The editors, who deserve extensive applause for their work, have a valuable section, “For Further Reading,” in the back of the book.
You, like I, probably do not have the time or inclination to read critical biographies or autobiographies of all 13 of these social reformers, and that is all the more reason to savor these brief sketches. Including the “Introduction,” a chapter a day will keep you inspired for two full weeks. And each chapter will give you subject matter for your personal conversations.
The effort here to “retrieve and celebrate the tradition of Christian social progressives in the United States” succeeds overwhelmingly and beautifully. Sometimes in reading about people of unspeakable courage and rare nobility, I not only wish I could have known them, but that I could embody them. See if it is not the same for you.
— Walter B. Shurden is Minister at Large, Mercer University
