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The first comment on his speech that I thought merited mentioning is the context of the quote he gave from Auden ("we must love one another or die.") Now, it's more than possible he just found the quote and is not familiar with the poem from which it comes, because it is a famous quote. However, the poem itself is relevant and one of my favorites, and I think it is worth reading alongside Kerry's speech.
The background of the poem itself is that Auden was himself going through major changes in his life and worldview-- he had (on the brink of World War II) just left Europe permanently for the United States, his formerly Marxist convictions were starting to fade, his increasingly Christian (High Church Anglican) tendencies were becoming apparent, and he had just started a relationship with the poet Chester Kallman, a relationship Auden called a marriage and was most definitely the most significant of his life. The poem is permeated with disillusionment, despair, and anger at a society driven by war and greed-- and the fact that this society is ultimately constructed of the sad, selfish neediness of individuals. Nevertheless, the last two stanzas ring an unmistakably truthful note of hope, that even in this darkness, one can "show an affirming flame."
SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's face And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; 'I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work,' And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the dead, Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.
Defenseless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.
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I think that this poem is important to put up aside Kerry's speech. It, first of all, speaks to the scariness of the new millennium, and Kerry started his speech speaking of the same. It also speaks honestly and plainly of the religious impulse of human beings, the darker tendencies towards faith (conformity and selfishness) and those which speak of hope, of a desperate thirst for healing a broken world. Auden never lost his sense of religion as a prayer against a cold and heartless social structure. Later, in his For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratio, a long many-voiced poem of the Nativity, he has Gabriel urge Mary:
What her negation wounded, may Your affirmation heal today; Love's will requires your own, that in The flesh whose love you do not know Love's knowledge into flesh may grow.
And for such strength to affirm love, he has the society he scorned in the earlier poem pray:
Joseph, Mary, pray for all The proper and conventional Of whom this world approves. Pray for us whose married loves Acquire so readily The indolent fidelity Of unaired beds, for us to whom Domestic hatred can become A habit-forming drug, whose will To civil anarchy Uses disease to disobey And makes our private bodies ill. O pray for our salvation Who take the prudent way, Believing that we shall be exempted From the general condemnation Because our self-respect is tempted To incest not adultery: O pray for us, the bourgeoisie.
This conviction that the religious impulse is at its core a rebellion against broken, unhealthy, destructive, and soul-deadening society (despite its frequent assimilation into the same structures) is the force behind Auden's verse and a conviction that I share. It's the reason I'm a Religious Studies major focusing in World Religions-- I believe that by understanding how "at sundry times and in divers manners" people have been called to faith, I can better imagine how a broken world might be healed. I think this is important to note because I noticed a comment on the link you gave me under Kerry's speech from a reader not understanding why Kerry didn't focus more on how religion is so evil and causes so much conflict. I think that religion is important to study so that we can have a better comprehension of the conflicts caused by it, but I do not think this is the only reason or even the most important reason to study it. I think many people discussing the need for studying "comparative religion" miss this point. I don't think Kerry (generally) did.
It's interesting to me how the current president, Kerry, and Obama all have such easily traceable theological "accents," more so than most public figures. Not only this, but they are important voices, each with more resonance in our society than most people probably know: the voices of conservative socially-minded evangelicalism, post-Vatican II Jesuit-inspired Catholicism, and Protestant liberation theology. What's also so interesting is that these are conscious tendencies on the part of all three of the aforementioned figures. They aren't unknowingly and uncaringly using the religious language with which they have become accustomed (which can be said of many politicans); they have consciously thought over their religious alliances and influences and are plainly disclosing them to anyone "with ears to hear."
The clearest example of this is Obama. As a Religious Studies major, what bothers me most about the treatment of Obama in the press vis-à-vis Obama's religious beliefs is how off-base it is. With all of the hoopla over Rev. Wright and Obama's Muslim connections, people are forgetting that Obama is in actuality a convert to Christianity, an adult convert whose theology is therefore of necessity conscious and genuinely felt. Describing his first visit to Trinity, he wrote: "And in that single note-- hope!-- I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories-- of survival, and freedom, and hope-- became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears." The scriptural emphasis, the connection of the African American story with the story of the early Israelites and the later Christian minority in Rome, a conversion based on a belief in liberation-- all of these things 'mark' Obama religiously and show what is really unique about his faith in American politics. For him, religion is not synonymous with solid upbringing and stability; it is a powerful force against corruption and injustice. Obama, I would surmise, is fond of the more powerful rhetoric in Paul's letters, and one can imagine that much of his vision of Christianity has been derived from Paul's dramatic statements: "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith" (Ephesians 6:10-16). I would classify Obama as coming out of a definite tradition of liberal Protestant theology, and could probably even guess at which theologians he respects the most.
Kerry, on the other hand, comes out of a different tradition-- left-leaning Catholic theology. You can clearly see the influence Jesuit theology has had on him every time he speaks about religion-- just compare it to anything you can find on the Holy Cross website about God or justice or the purpose of education. He is more likely to rely on the Thomist conception of the "common good" or the Vatican II councils than on the fiery scriptural references of Obama. He also has clearly been influenced by the Catholic (also generally Thomist) conception of "natural law" (vaguely equivalent to the conception of Noahide laws in Jewish tradition), which is the belief that, all creatures coming from the same Creator, there is some "natural" (as opposed to the grace given through revelation) understanding of what is good and just in all people, though there are real differences given through revelation. Traditionally, this would mean that there is good in all faiths, but it is imperfect compared to faith in Christ. Kerry seems to have his own interpretation of "natural law", however (and I wouldn't be surprised if he also got this from some Jesuit friends)-- that the natural law exists for all people, but different belief systems (perhaps not even necessarily religious) build on this and each has something to offer the others, all ultimately based in the shared sense of what is good and right present in all people. And so most of his speech has to do with this-- what the different religions can offer each other.
I liked his honesty about "not knowing enough about Islam" and his assertion that "if you don't engage, you can't even find answers to the most basic, fundamental questions: Why do you wear the hijab? Why do you go to Mecca? What is jihad?" Regina Spektor, who immigrated to the US (NYC) from Russia, once said that "if we had the Internet 20 or 25 years ago, there would have been no Cold War because you could text someone and be like 'Hey, is this really what your country is like?' and they could be like 'No, actually, it's not.' Okay great, crisis averted!" As much as I love her, I think Kerry's point shows that she was wrong-- we can still be as clueless as people were then, even about people who are our neighbors, friends, family. And a lot of times that comes from not asking. One thing I really appreciated about Sri Lankan society was the openness about religion. Here, talking about it is impolite and embarrassing. And so we don't ask the questions we really have.
And the questions, as Kerry points out, should really be about the moral imperative shared by all of the world's faiths. What I appreciated most about the speech was what I said before-- that it wasn't mainly about avoiding religious conflict (as if we were talking about containing a flu epidemic) but about ways which people of differing religious opinions can work together to combat social and political evils. I thought his rhetoric was strongest when focusing on this, not on the whole "we all believe in God" thing-- I think the speech suffered from an ambivalence as to whether or not he was talking about the shared goals of monotheistic religions or of all people. (My Buddhist host family in Sri Lanka, for instance, would probably be confused by the assertion that what unites all peoples is a worship of God. Not to mention atheists and agnostics.) In any case, the speech overall I thought was really interesting, a call for religious understanding based in a transformation of old religious language: a new understanding of what natural law might mean to Catholics, or what "city on a hill" might mean to the (at least traditionally) New England Protestants of Yale Divinity School.
One more thing that I think should be said about this "new kind of city on a hill." Kerry mentions that the name Salem, a town that saw so many religious conflicts, means "peace." What he doesn't mention is the appearance of Salem in the Scriptures, from which the town took its name. First of all, it is understood in both Jewish and Christian tradition to be an earlier name for Jerusalem. However, in the Bible, it is mentioned along with a story about its king-- Melchizedek, "king of Salem" and "priest of God Most High." After Abram, not yet Abraham, achieved a decisive victory against neighboring kings, Melchizedek blessed Abram and offered bread and wine, and Abram gives him a tenth of all he has. In the Psalms, the king is later referred to in a song of praise as "a priest forever, after the manner of Melchizedek." In the epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament, the (unknown) author makes a complex and brilliant rabbinical argument related to this passage from Genesis. In response to those who would discredit Jesus for not being of the Levitical priesthood, the author notes that long before Levi was born, in fact, while Levi "was still in the loins of his father Abraham," Abram reverenced this "king of peace" as a superior man (the author also points out that in Hebrew, "Melchizedek" can be read as "king of righteousness".) Thus the author places the one of the likeness of Melchizedek, one of the few people in the Hebrew Bible who, as the author points out, is "without father, without mother, without genealogy," over the established priesthood. This is a similar argument to that made by Paul in his letter to the Galatians, in response to conventional Jewish arguments against Paul's teachings (actually, it seems likely that the author of Hebrews was influenced by Paul and took a cue from his rhetoric.) In response to insistence that those who would follow God must follow all the 613 commandments of the Law, Paul points out that Abraham lived before the mitzvot were given to Moses and his faithfulness was counted to him as righteousness. This might not seem that radical, read from today's vantage point-- it seems that Paul is simply arguing for Christianity over Judaism. However, at the time, there was no such thing as "Christianity." Paul was a Jew arguing against conventional Judaism, saying that being faithful to God transcends religious precepts. This was the foundation of his ability to "be a Jew among the Jews and a Gentile among the Gentiles," and the real meaning behind his assertion in the same letter as the above argument that "there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free" among the early followers of Jesus. Whatever one's opinion, however, on the early Jesus movement, Melchizedek, king of peace and righteousness, a pagan priest reverenced by Abram, is a symbol of religious transcendence. May that symbol lead us to greater understanding, respect, shared worship and action.
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