On the Fourth of July—this week—I posted the following on the Internet:

It is July 4th and most Americans celebrate the day as a day of Independence from Great Britain. Do you mind a history lesson?

In Thomas Jeferson's beautiful writing of the Declaration of Independence, the original draft included what has come to be known as the "anti-slavery clause." It read as follows:

"He [King George III] has waged cruel War against human Nature itself, violating its most Sacred Right of Life & Liberty in the Persons of a distant People who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into Slavery in another Hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their Transportation thither. This piratical Warfare, the opprobrium of infidel Powers, is the Warfare of the CHRISTIAN [all caps and underlined in the original draft] King of Great Britain. He has prostituted his Negative for Suppressing every legislative Attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable Commerce, determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, and that this Assemblage of Horrors might want no Fact of distinguished Die, he is now exciting those very People to rise in Arms among us, and to purchase that Liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former Crimes committed against the Liberties of one People, with Crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."

I wonder if this was Jefferson at all. It seems much more like John Adams' style and conviction to me. For, in the declaration debate, Edward Rutledge of South Carolina threatened that South Carolina, joined by North Carolina and Georgia, would fight on King George’s side unless “the offending passage be removed.” John Adams warned that, if the passage were removed, then we would fight another war within a few generations over that very issue of slavery.

Jefferson caved in. The passage was stricken from the text. For over half a million of our brothers and sisters, “Independence Day” was a cruel joke. It was not a day of liberation but a day when slavery and bigotry were entrenched in the laws and minds of a new nation.

No wonder I can’t find any good jazz tunes that celebrate July 4th. For the great African-American jazz artists and all of our African-American brothers and sisters, there is nothing to be joyful about.

The realization that must dawn on "white" America that American History IS Black History. The first permanent colony in North America was the Jamestown colony in Virginia which was settled in 1607. The first African slaves arrived there in 1619. Only 12 years after the settlement... and... one year BEFORE the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts.

The African slaves arrived before your ancestors did.

You can now go back to your hot dogs and beer…

I was not expecting what followed. Within seconds I began receiving messages and comments from old classmates, former students, and dear friends.

One former student, Kevin, simply wrote “Drop the mic.”

Another, nicknamed Trey, replied with “I am, and always will be, proud to be a White Christian American although I'm often pre-judged as such. Happy ID!!!!”

My answer to him was “Nobody is suggesting that you should NOT be proud to be who you are. As my friends say, ‘Pro-Black does not mean anti-white.’ Isn't it possible to be pro-everyone? I'd like to think that I am.”

My friend Vincent quoted Theodore Roosevelt with, “Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong.” Then he followed with a poster reading, “July 4, 1776. While ‘Americans’ were celebrating their independence, Black people were still being beaten, raped, and tortured. While the ‘bombs burst in air’, Africans would still be enslaved for almost 100 more years.”

My old grad school pal, Dr. Gerard O’Sullivan, answered, “Well said. Let's remember to give a shout out to the Quakers. They were excluding slaveholders from membership as early as 1751.”

Then my former student, Cindy Nelson, said this: “I've often wished that Frederick Douglass were required reading every July 4th, right before the anthem and the Pledge, before the music and the food and the fireworks.

'I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.’”

More comments followed but Cindy (and Frederick Douglass) get the last word.

Today, May 16, 2016, is the one-hundred year anniversary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Certainly one of the most divisive, even disastrous, documents of the 20th Century.

In 1916, during World War I, France and Britain secretly ratified what came to be called the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which allowed for the post-war partitioning of Arab lands held by the Ottoman Empire.

The outcome of the Great War (World War I) had not even been determined yet when Great Britain, France, and Russia secretly debated and decided how they would carve up the Middle East into "spheres of influence" once World War I was finished. At this point in the war, Germany and the Central Powers were far from beaten. In fact, Russia would be out of the war in just over seven months.

The Ottoman Empire, however, had been on the decline for over two hundred years before the war. They were referred to as “the sick man of Europe.” Like vultures, the European powers were circling and were ready to carve up the vast spoils of the Empire’s body, once the Ottomans fell to the Allies. Britain and France already had already gained significant interests in the region between Turkey and the Persian Gulf, but the defeat of the Ottoman Turks offered a great deal more. Russia wanted a chunk for themselves.

From November 1915 to March 1916, representatives of Britain and France negotiated their secret agreement, with Russia hat-in-hand to accept whatever was thrown to them. This secret treaty, now known as the Sykes–Picot Agreement, was named after its lead negotiators, the aristocrats Sir Mark Sykes of England and François Georges-Picot of France. In a letter from British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey to Paul Cambon, France's ambassador to Great Britain, on May 16, 1916 the terms of the agreement were spelled out in detail.

A color-coded partition map and text stated that Britain would be given control over the areas known today as Jordan, southern Iraq and the port of Haifa in Israel. France, on the other hand, would obtain the area that covers modern-day Syria, Lebanon, northern Iraq, including the great city of Mosul, and southeastern Turkey, including Kurdistan. Another area that included Palestine, excluding Haifa and Acre, would become subject to international administration, "the form of which is to be decided upon after consultation with Russia, and subsequently in consultation with the other allies, and the representatives of Sayyid Hussein bin Ali, sharif of Mecca." 

Besides carving the region into British and French "spheres of influence," the arrangement specified specific “commercial relations” and other understandings between them for the Arab lands. Sounds like Dick Cheney and Haliburton Industries, doesn’t it?

The Sykes-Picot Agreement initiated a nine-year process—along with other deals, declarations, and treaties—that created the modern Middle East states out of the Ottoman Empire’s remains. The new borders eventually looked very little like the original Sykes-Picot map but that original map is still viewed as the root cause of much that has happened since.

Russia suffered its own upheaval with the November Revolution and the seizure of power by Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks which created the U.S.S.R. This removed them as partners in the agreement. After all, the terms had been negotiated with Tsarist Russia, not Communist Russia.

The plundering Bolsheviks, however, had discovered the documents of the original agreement in the governmental archives in 1917 and they revealed everything. The British were embarrassed because T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) had been in negotiations with the Arabs. The deal was that the Arabs would be given sovereignty over their own lands in exchange for supporting Britain and the Allies during the war.

In fact, the treaty set aside the establishment of an independent Arab state or confederation of Arab states, contrary to what Lawrence had promised, giving France and Britain the rights to set boundaries within their new spheres of influence, "as they may think fit."

After the successful conclusion of the war, the terms of the agreement were confirmed by the San Remo Conference of 1920 and ratified by the newly-formed League of Nations in 1922. Although Sykes-Picot was intended to draw new borders according to sectarian lines, the simple stupidity and blindness of its straight lines dreadfully failed to understand the actual tribal and ethnic configurations in such a deeply divided region. To put Kurds and Sunnis under the same flag was idiocy.
The Arabs do not hate the West because of religion. Too simplistic. They hate the West because we imposed our will and greed on their lives. And nothing has changed.
 

Martin Luther has been called “the last medieval man and the first modern one.” Though raised in the distant medieval world of witches and plagues and demons, he has profoundly shaped our own modern world.

Someone once asked Dr. Martin E. Marty, the great church historian, “If Luther were alive today, what would he be writing theses about?”

I find myself wondering if Luther would still be in hot debate with Roman Catholicism today. I realize that the Catholic language of sacrifice in the Mass has remained much the same as it was in Luther’s time. That bothered Luther a great deal. Today’s Catholic understanding of the Mass, however, really isn’t much different than what one would find in most Protestant Communion services. At least, there seems to be a whiff of such an understanding. Perhaps the Roman Catholic Church has simply articulated the message clearer than was understood before.

Furthermore, observing the modern Catholic teachings on Paul’s Letters to the Romans and the Galatians, the Catholic Church pays due attention to the roles of faith and grace, something again central to Luther’s teaching. I think Luther would have been happily smiling at what Catholicism teaches regarding those things today. I don’t think today he would have so great a problem as he did in 1517.

Plus, Vatican Council II truly reformed the Roman Church to a degree that the Council of Trent did not. Trent was a strict lock-down against Luther and the Swiss Reformers. It took 150 years for the Church to cool down. And why not? Luther had led to the fragmentation of the Western Church.

Will there ever be a reunited Western Church? Can the old wounds be healed to the point of reunification within the Western Church? It certainly does not seem probable or even plausible.

What we now have in the western world, indeed globally, are national churches and even independent churches with absolutely no eye towards a central authority within the Church. There is a reason that the Church of England is called by that name. The African Methodist-Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church has its own rich culture and history that has never known connection with the church in Rome.

These church denominations at least have dioceses that have some accountability and authority as a group. The non-denominational or independent churches, however, are (in many cases) strictly autonomous and without submission or accountability to anyone. Once a group or an individual has experienced that type of independence, it is difficult imagining them returning to a place of submission to a hierarchy.

Can there at least be meaningful dialogue and fruitful cooperation? Most assuredly, it happens already. Especially with Pope Francis who has reached out to Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, Judaism and Islam. Francis has championed forgiveness with as much fervor as Martin Luther did. That may be Luther’s longest legacy—the triumph of forgiveness.

Luther also stands as the greatest single factor in increasing the value of the individual. What eventually emerges from Luther and the Enlightenment Period is a new kind of individual. That made democratic government possible. The role of the single voter, the single voice, is critical to modern democracies. This, of course, is under assault in our time with the cacophonous voices of the corporations raised in opposition to the individual. If Luther were alive now, he would nail a new 95 Theses to the doors of CitiGroup.

Along with that, Luther contributed to the rising status of women. Sure, he was patriarchal but we must remember not to judge people outside the context of their time and—for his day—Luther was progressive. He simply assumed that girls, along with boys, should be taught the catechism. In that regard, he anticipated co-education by a couple of hundred years.
He insisted that marriage was just as important a vocation as monasticism, and in that he accorded greater status to a woman’s role in marriage. Like the samurai of Japan, he believed in the authority of the environment. Women were certainly superior in the home. And Luther was married to and proud of a woman (the former nun, Katarina von Bora) who was, in effect, the treasurer, manager, and administrator of a rather complex business—the informal boarding house that the Luthers kept in the old monastery.

Speaking of Luther’s concept of vocation, he highlighted the connection between the gospel of forgiveness and vocation and, if that connection were understood properly, guilt and worry would diminish. Luther taught that each day is a new start. We are not shackled by what was nor are haunted by our future. Again, Luther and Francis would be teaching from the same viewpoint.

Finally, Luther and Pope Francis both teach us not to try to gain God on God’s own level but on the human level. We see God as in a cloud chamber of particle physics—not seen directly, but seen in effects on the world around us. As Luther said, “we must be content to see, not the face, but the hind parts of God.”
 

Reformation Day is celebrated every October 31 in Lutheran and many of other Protestant Churches across the globe. It is often commemorated as the day when the Western Church (the Roman Catholic Church) was fragmented again. Whereas the A.D./C.E. 1054 split between the Eastern and Western Churches remained relatively stagnant for five centuries, the fracture of the Reformation was a seismic event whose aftershocks are still felt today.

It began so innocently. Dr. Martin Luther, professor of theology at Wittenberg University and Augustinian friar, was disappointed, even disgusted, by something that was going on locally in Germany. He did not intend to rupture the Church, he only intended to correct an abuse within it.

Luther has been called “the best thing and the worst thing to happen to the Church.” You may see why.

In 1517, Archbishop Albert of Mainz had finished borrowed vast sums of money to pay for his church positions. He was a Prince Elector of Mainz which means he was one of the German princes who actually elected the Holy Roman Emperor. [Voltaire said “The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman.” It was actually a German Empire until Napoleon finished it off in 1806. Yeah, Napoleon.] But then he bought the position of Archbishop of Magdeburg. This was a common occurrence in the Middle Ages and was the topic of furious debate. It was called “simony” from the Acts of the Apostles (8:9-24) account of Simon Magus attempting to buy the power of exorcism.

Not only did he buy his position as Archbishop of Magdeburg in 1513, the next year he bought the office of Archbishop of Main even though this was prohibited by canon law. In 1518, he became a cardinal at the age of 28.

He owed Jakob Fugger, a German mining merchant and banker, over 20,000 gold ducats for the purchases of his elevations. To repay his debts, he petitioned Pope Leo X (di Medici) to sell indulgences in Mainz.

Indulgences were completely legal according to law and doctrine within the Roman Catholic Church. According to the Roman Catechism, an indulgence is a “remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints." In other words, indulgences got you out of acts of penance. They were usually not sold but were dispensed for benefits and actions benefiting the church.

Enter Johann Tetzel. Tetzel was a Dominican friar who had also been a Grand Inquisitor in Poland. He was known for selling indulgences for money. This was the one who would be used by Albert of Mainz to raise money—through the sale of indulgences—to repay Jakob Fugger.

Tetzel, however, was not just selling indulgences—which was not beyond the acceptance of church—for getting out of penance. Tetzel began to sell indulgences as a guarantee against future sins. As in going to confession and, before the priest can pronounce penance, waving the indulgence through the screen and sneering at the priest.

Even more, it became a means, Tetzel proclaimed, of getting out of purgatory early. Tetzel had a chant that sounded something like, “When a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs!” Mothers would buy indulgences to rescue dead children from purgatory or even for children who died unbaptized who were supposed to be in limbo.

Prince Frederick the Wise and Prince George of Saxony refused to allow such sales to go on in their provinces but the masses would simply travel Mainz to obtain the indulgences. Such people believed that these certificates granted them forgiveness of sins and began refusing to go to confessions.

Martin Luther reacted. As a professor of theology, he was incensed by the improper use of such instruments and for “buying with coin what God has already freely given.” Furthermore, it was being taught that the veneration of relics would bestow release of penance and even forgive sins.

Luther’s own prince, Frederick the Wise, was said to have had 19,000 relics. Relics which ranged from a vial of the Virgin Mary’s breast milk to a nail from the cross of Christ to straw from the manger of Jesus. There were so many frauds that Luther was said to have remarked, “I have seen five shin-bones from the donkey that carried Jesus into Jerusalem, enough nails from the cross to make a suit of armor and enough beams from the cross to build a ship!”

The grace made available to humanity through the offices and sacraments of the Church were precious to Luther, too precious to sit silently while they were being mishandled and abused.

On the night before All Saints’ Day—on the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg—Martin Luther nailed a placard with 95 statements on indulgences, simony and the wealth of Church officials. It became known as The 95 Theses. On the same day, Luther mailed copies to Albert of Mainz and his own superior, the Bishop of Brandenburg.

It was never in Luther’s mind to break with the Church or even to stop the sale of indulgences. What he wanted was a wholesome, scholarly debate. What he got was the Protestant Revolution.

Keep that in mind. It really should not even be called the Reformation. Only the Roman Catholic Church could reform itself. Once Luther was excommunicated and was, effectively, outside the Church, all that was left was revolution.

End of Part One.

 
 
 

I was a teacher of history and theology for many years so I am always aware of what makes this or that date significant. As I thought about January 15, so many events come to mind. The easiest, of course, is the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.—a lifelong hero of mine. However, he is always in my thoughts and weighs heavily on my writings. So, I decided to go for something a little less well-known.

On January 15, 1922, Michael Collins became the first prime minister of the Free State of Ireland. In 1961, the Supremes signed to Motown Records. I could go on and on about either of those and so many other events. For me, however, one of the most interesting and touching stories comes from this date in 1919. So, let me set the scene.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski was a Polish pianist and composer born in the Russian Empire in 1860. His mother died only months after his birth and his father was arrested by Russian authorities in 1863. Young Ignacy was adopted by an aunt who provided piano lessons for him.

Eventually, he won a scholarship to the conservatory in Warsaw. He was a brilliant student and showed signs of brilliant performance and even composition.

He married in 1880 but his own dear wife died not long after the birth of their son. He devoted his life to music and continued studying with various masters. His talents made him wildly popular as a concert pianist. His fame grew so far and wide that one critic, upon hearing Paderewski perform, remarked, “He plays well, I suppose, but he is no Paderewski.”

His compositions were well-received and respected, from sonatas to an opera. He went to the United States to perform and see his own compositions performed by American musicians and opera companies.  

While in America, however, World War I erupted all over Europe. He bought an estate in California and lived as an exile.

Far from remaining aloof from politics, he joined or founded several organizations dedicated to the relief and independence of Poland. He became an active member of the Polish National Committee in Paris which was soon accepted by the Allies as the representative of the movement to create the state of Poland.

His music allowed him to move to and fro across borders and he became the chief ambassador for Polish independence in the middle of the European conflagration. He formed other social and political organizations, including the Polish Relief Fund of London.

In his travels to the U.S., he met with President Woodrow Wilson and played a key role in achieving the explicit inclusion of an independent Poland as point number thirteen in Wilson’s Fourteen Points, the peace terms that would guide him in the treaty conference following the cessation of hostilities in 1918 and would became the principles of the Treaty of Versailles which concluded World War I.

Before that treaty was adopted, however, the city of Poznan and the whole region of Wielkopolska (Greater Poland) remained in German hands and the fate of the region was still in the balance. Paderewski decided to visit the city of Poznan and gave a rousing speech to the inhabitants on December 27, 1918. An uprising ensued against the German occupiers and the German yoke was thrown off with Poland finally gaining the longed-for independence.

On January 15, 1919, Ignacy Jan Paderewski was appointed as Poland’s First Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He played a key role in defining the 1919 Polish Constitution and he represented Poland at the Paris Peace Conference. It was Paderewski who was Poland’s signatory on the Treaty of Versailles which restored the territories of Wielkopolska and Pomerania around the city of Gdansk.

Later that year, on December 4, Paderewski resigned as Prime Minister and accepted the role of Polish Ambassador to the newly-formed League of Nations. Over the course of the next twenty years, he remained politically while maintaining his lively career in music.

Tragically, Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, igniting the Second War War. Paderewski—now aged 79—was in exile again as he traveled to London where he served as President of the Polish National Council, the government-in-exile. As part of that office, he set off for America to meet with yet another American wartime president, this time Franklin D. Roosevelt. His cause was the same, to campaign for Polish independence as part of any treaty.

While he was in the U.S., Paderewski died on June 29, 1941 at the age of 80. President Roosevelt authorized that Paderewski be buried in Arlington National Cemetery until such a time as his could be returned to a free and independent Poland.

That, however, would take some time as the Soviets placed Poland behind the Iron Curtain following the war. Poland had become a satellite state to the U.S.S.R.

In 1989, Poland had peacefully overthrown the Communist state of Poland. On June 29, 1992, Paderewski was returned to a free and independent Poland. It was 51 years to the day after his death. He received a state funeral at St. John’s Cathedral in Poland—the returning and too-long-absent hero.

He moved audiences with his music. He moved musicians with his compositions. He moved presidents with his will.

Never disregard the power of music and the will of a musician; they really do change the world.

Pope Francis has finally met with his predecessor Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. No such meeting of this sort has taken place for at least 600 years.

What took place in the meeting we do not know for certain and, according to BBC’s Alan Johnson, “We will never know the details of their talks.”

It was a simple lunch meeting between the two of them. While details are not available, it is certain that this meeting is far more cordial than the last such meeting of two popes.

That last meeting in 1294 saw Pope Celestine V who had resigned after only five months as pope meeting Boniface VIII who had been had been elected days after Celestine V’s resignation. Boniface VIII then had his predecessor imprisoned. Poor Celestine was dead within a year.

Fortunately, Pope Francis has only spoken warmly Pope Benedict and one of his first acts as Pope was to telephone Benedict at his temporary residence in Castel Gandolfo, where the former pontiff had been watching the proceedings on television.

Saturday’s lunch was a bit of a protocol nightmare, seeing that there was no protocol for this type of meeting which was never expected to be necessary. The results were a blend of formality and informality—all carefully choreographed.

Benedict greeted Francis with a warm embrace and the two priests then prayed together in the villa’s private chapel where Pope Francis knelt beside Benedict, shunning the prepared papal kneeler. “No,” Francis insisted, “We are brothers. We pray together.”

It was indeed another sign of the new pope’s humility.

The new head of the Catholic Church is usually elected after the death of the previous pope and there is no public record of any previous meeting between an incumbent pope and a former pope. Hence the protocol nightmare.

One thing certainly on the agenda for this meeting was the passing of a top secret document from Benedict to Francis. The document was prepared by Benedict regarding last year’s information leaks.

Pope Francis has chosen to begin the Church's most important liturgical season on Sunday with a Palm Sunday Mass in St Peter's Square. This will be followed by six more liturgies during the coming week which will conclude with the Easter Sunday Mass and the Urbi et Orbi blessing.

One marked difference between this pope and the last is clearly seen in the clothes they choose to wear. Pope Francis dresses very simply, preferring to wear plain black shoes under a simple white habit rather than the red leather loafers and ermine-trimmed cape worn by his predecessor.

Furthermore, Pope Francis places himself on the very same level as his guests, rather than greeting them from a throne on an elevated platform. This is being seen as a powerful gesture after centuries and centuries of Vatican extravagance.

Pope Francis has also started inviting guests to his early morning Mass - including Vatican gardeners, street sweepers, kitchen staff and maids working at the hotel where he is currently staying.

In a stunning announcement, the pope has scheduled to celebrate Holy Thursday Mass—not in St. Peter’s or even St. John’s basilicas—but in Casal del Marmo, Rome's prison for minors. Pope Francis intends to hold mass for the young prisoners and will wash the feet of 12 inmates in commemoration of Jesus’ washing of the feet of the 12 disciples.

This seems to be a personal tradition of this new pope, begun when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires and would visit jails, hospitals and other places where the poor and rejected would meet.

According to Agence France-Presse, Pope Francis has spoken in favor of narrowing the gap between laypeople and the Church and where he chooses to share Mass and wash the feet of others is a certain sign of his ever-unfolded attitude toward the poor and rejected.

While there is a difference in style, there is a "radical" convergence in their spirituality, according to Civilta Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit magazine.

"They are two figures of the highest spirituality, whose relationship with life is completely anchored in God," the magazine wrote. "This radicalness is shown in Pope Benedict's shy and kind bearing, and in Pope Francis it is revealed by his immediate sweetness and spontaneity."


The Church has awaited this very type of pope.







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