WEBVTT
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Of the follow-up, if not follow-through
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on his introductory remarks,
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having had to disappear after his opening address
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and having also to do the same thing this morning,
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we're gonna revise the schedule a bit,
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so that immediately after his address this morning,
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we will be able to have some time for questions
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or discussion with him.
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One can't help but think
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on the basis of what's been happening since we began,
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whether this conference has been dealing so much
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with the moral quandaries of students
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as with the moral quandaries of chaplains.
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(audience laughs)
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We have sweat, I think, as much as any student sweats,
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some of the problems by which we're confronted,
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we have sweat the ambiguity in which we live as chaplains.
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Perhaps the only way by which we can survive
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is suggested by the story of the
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famous opera singer
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Gigli who, on one occasion,
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went up to Boston for the first time
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in their opera house to sing in "Faust".
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And on the occasion,
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when Mephistopheles descends into hell with Faust,
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they had set up the stage
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so that at the appropriate time
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they could get there,
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and then a button would be pushed
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and this would go down
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and symbolize for everybody watching
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that they were going down into Hell.
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Well it so happened
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that the mechanical contrivance didn't quite work
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and about halfway down, it stopped.
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And they tried like mad
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to sort of crawl down out of sight,
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but this even didn't come off
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and they were suspended on their descent into hell,
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right there in the, you know, view of all the audience.
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It's reported that an Irishman,
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way up in the balcony who had one too many before he came,
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saw this and jumped to his feet
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and shouted out, "Thank God, I'm safe, Hell's full."
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(audience laughs)
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And after our discussions,
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I think the only reprieve we may feel
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is that hell is getting fairly well filled up
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by the contemporary college students,
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and maybe the chaplains can't get in
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Waldo Beach is going to bring his address,
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and then we will move immediately into our discussion.
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Dr. Beach.
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You know, I don't know, since I'm among friends here,
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in order to assure you
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that this is not gonna be a lecture and address,
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I don't know whether it be more easy for you,
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and for me, if I just sat down and chatted,
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maybe I can operate this way standing up,
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but I hate the informality of
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both giving a lecture,
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and being incarcerated on tape.
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There's a sort of a irremediable
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finality about this taping business
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that makes one feel one is supposed to utter
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prose of the style of a papal and cyclical.
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And what I have to deal,
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what I have to say is good deal less memorable
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than the
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utterances of John 23rd.
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I apologize, too, for having the other day to duck out
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after our discussion,
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after my
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presentation,
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I was not able to take part in the discussion
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'cause I had a class
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and a hit-and-run procedure isn't very ethical.
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I would like today to have a few minutes to talk,
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and for discussion after what I have to say through.
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I have about 30 minutes to
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provide redemption from Hell
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for the college students who are now there,
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waiting.
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I don't think I can do any better than to
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move them up to a kind of limbo, or Purgatory,
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but at least I want to try to say something positive about
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tasks of a college chaplain
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in meeting the moral quandaries of the college student.
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On Tuesday, I tried to make a kind of descriptive profile
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of Joe College.
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His anomie,
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supposedly his immorality,
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which on closer look appears to be
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a function of his false
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and abortive attempts to realize himself
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and find his identity.
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The things that are so troublesome about his behavior,
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his excessive drinking,
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his destruction of property,
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his leching, if we can use a nice verb
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from the 17th century,
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which has a different connotation now,
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all represent a kind of passion for security
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to belong in his fraternity.
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In his utilitarian view,
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in his passion for economic security,
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in his utilitarian view of his college education.
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Now today, perhaps I can provide some normative guidance,
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derived from the Christian faith,
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which we as teachers,
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as chaplains, as counselors,
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may be able to provide.
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Where does the Christian faith now become relevant
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to illumine these moral quandaries,
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to lead the student to some kind of self understanding,
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some identity,
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some inner sense of moral control
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without providing just
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nostrums and palliatives
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and quick remedies,
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quick pills that really don't solve the problem at all,
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and without providing the kind of tight legalisms,
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rules of saying, "Now, this is what you should do,"
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which have course he at his stage of life resists.
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I think we are, at this juncture,
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well advised to follow a kind of double movement.
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One is a movement back to the Christian faith,
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to a clear understanding of the frame of reference,
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provided by Christian theology,
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from which the student can draw his own moral answers.
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The other direction,
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is to get the student
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out of his tight circle of moral self concern
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and get 'em across the tracks,
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so to speak, out into the world.
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This double movement,
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I want to try to develop a little bit
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like to show you what I mean,
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the first is the movement back
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to the recovery of theology.
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My claim here is based on the thinking of,
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again of Augustine,
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and more precisely and immediately
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of Richard Niebuhr,
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that the recovery of a sense of ethical responsibility
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is the fruit of a recovered theological faith.
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What's called for, what's presumed here,
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is the ethics of response.
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We do what we do out of what we respond to,
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to what we take to be so.
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Our moral norms are always a
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function of our expression,
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of what we feel to be ultimate reality.
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The problem of goodness, then,
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the problem of criteria of right and wrong
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reverts back to the question, "Who is the Lord?
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Who is the Lord of my life?
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What is the ultimate good?"
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Is a question that refers itself
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down the hall to the ultimate question,
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"What it is ultimately so?"
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And there's no point in talking about being ethical,
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or being good,
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without an understanding of the ground of goodness.
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The way to recover
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inter-moral responsibility
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is then by the articulation of the lines
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of the Christian faith.
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Procedurally, here we start from scratch
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and worse than that,
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from behind the line of scratch,
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because what we encounter is
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a theological illiteracy
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on the part of a college student,
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which is cosmic in its proportion.
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He likely brings with him,
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and may even acquire at school,
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a bundle of misinformation and debris,
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old wives tales and Bible verses,
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which constitutes his body of theology,
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his misinformation.
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Seems to me the main job,
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prior to ethical recovery,
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underneath ethical recovery,
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to recover in liberal arts education,
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a basic theological literacy.
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How is this done?
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Well it's best done in the curriculum,
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and with the same standards of intellectual integrity
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as all the other subjects that the students taking.
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But as many of you know,
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who are working, maybe in a state university situation,
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or in your own chaplain situation outside the curriculum,
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it may be only possible to do this
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in an extracurricular way,
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in the Lay Scholar movement,
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or a study group program.
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And I know all of the working difficulties involved here.
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The great difficulties of starting out bravely
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with a study course program in Christian faith
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and Christian ethics,
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or church in the world,
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strong start in October,
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peters out by Christmas,
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students have too much to do.
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Materials of this particular course become expendable
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in light of their curricular pressures.
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But where carefully done,
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well taught.
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This can become an exciting experience,
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and I think it's fair to say
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that if you look at these
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extracurricular study programs on some campuses,
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the motivation for study is there,
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and because it's intrinsic,
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a student doesn't have to do this,
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and for that very reason
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may have an excitement about it for it.
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Most important in this whole study area,
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study of the recovery of the Christian faith,
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is the necessity for critical intellectual analysis
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of the problems of faith,
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and belief.
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In working on problems
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of the nature of the Christian faith,
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Christian theology,
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Christian anthropology,
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to overcome the dualism in the student's mind
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between scientific thinking
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and religious thinking.
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He may acquire a great sense of excitement
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and interest,
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and curiosity,
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when he recognizes that to think well
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is to serve God in the interior court,
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as Traherne phrases it.
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The awareness of the necessities
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of careful, radical, critical scrutiny
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never occurs to him as appropriate
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to the field of religion.
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When he discovers that not only is this permissible,
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but it's necessary,
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when he gets out from under the Sunday school mentality
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about the study of religion,
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it then takes on appeal.
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Perhaps his task here of the teacher,
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of the counselor,
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of the chaplain,
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as teacher, is a double one.
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One is the maieutic role,
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of shaking up the pious,
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the comfortable,
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and the complacent,
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whose prefatory word to all religious utterances is,
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"I've always been taught that,"
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and so forth,
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or, "What we learned at church was that,"
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and so on.
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That maieutic role, on the one side,
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against, or towards the pious lad
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who runs to the safe copy-book answers,
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is necessary to lead him out
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from the escape answers.
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It is in a very tight, pious, stuffy,
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over-churched campus,
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what's needed is Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.
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Get 'em all shook up.
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On the other hand,
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toward the skeptic,
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in the sophisticated, emancipated campus,
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where kind of positivistic,
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humanistic scientism is the established religion,
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established church,
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towards the student in this situation,
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that searching skeptic,
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who was always more entrancing,
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00:15:12.210 --> 00:15:13.800
and really more winsome,
278
00:15:13.800 --> 00:15:16.713
than the pious complacent lad,
279
00:15:18.720 --> 00:15:19.713
towards him,
280
00:15:21.660 --> 00:15:24.530
the maieutic method is to indicate
281
00:15:24.530 --> 00:15:26.560
that his very skepticism
282
00:15:27.650 --> 00:15:29.413
is a way of affirming truth,
283
00:15:30.950 --> 00:15:34.000
and his very doubt is meaningful
284
00:15:35.150 --> 00:15:37.723
against the background of an order of truth,
285
00:15:39.470 --> 00:15:42.750
that his skepticism is much closer
286
00:15:42.750 --> 00:15:44.020
to the kingdom of God,
287
00:15:44.020 --> 00:15:45.490
the kingdom of truth,
288
00:15:45.490 --> 00:15:49.203
than the pious and proper church answer.
289
00:15:51.470 --> 00:15:52.693
Give him Tillich.
290
00:15:53.680 --> 00:15:57.610
Work towards the positive underpinning
291
00:15:57.610 --> 00:15:59.310
of his skepticism
292
00:15:59.310 --> 00:16:03.803
by showing him how doubt is an angel, not the Devil.
293
00:16:08.820 --> 00:16:12.293
In the job of recovering theological literacy,
294
00:16:15.420 --> 00:16:17.360
one of the main procedural problems
295
00:16:17.360 --> 00:16:19.630
is how you go about it program-wise.
296
00:16:19.630 --> 00:16:22.443
What do you set up for the conference on a campus?
297
00:16:24.340 --> 00:16:28.397
What about this whole deal of "Religious Emphasis Week"?
298
00:16:30.210 --> 00:16:34.060
As a battered grizzled veteran of many such
299
00:16:35.340 --> 00:16:36.173
weeks,
300
00:16:37.180 --> 00:16:39.770
I would testify in general
301
00:16:39.770 --> 00:16:44.130
that it would be much better to retire the term
302
00:16:44.130 --> 00:16:46.083
and the event entirely.
303
00:16:48.500 --> 00:16:49.333
Seems to me,
304
00:16:49.333 --> 00:16:51.993
this institution is kind of an artificial revivalism.
305
00:16:53.780 --> 00:16:55.500
It presumes that religious faith
306
00:16:55.500 --> 00:16:58.160
is taken for granted around
307
00:16:58.160 --> 00:17:00.850
and needs only to be emphasized,
308
00:17:00.850 --> 00:17:02.630
or recalled,
309
00:17:02.630 --> 00:17:04.950
or revived,
310
00:17:04.950 --> 00:17:08.203
When actually this is real artificial to the true situation.
311
00:17:11.010 --> 00:17:12.330
A much better pattern,
312
00:17:12.330 --> 00:17:16.060
which is a growing one on many campuses,
313
00:17:16.060 --> 00:17:18.100
where growing successful is,
314
00:17:18.100 --> 00:17:20.480
instead of the "Religious Emphasis Week",
315
00:17:20.480 --> 00:17:22.950
is the symposium,
316
00:17:22.950 --> 00:17:25.240
or conference,
317
00:17:25.240 --> 00:17:26.200
or parley,
318
00:17:26.200 --> 00:17:28.870
or whatever,
319
00:17:28.870 --> 00:17:32.940
on some vital, current secular issue
320
00:17:35.090 --> 00:17:38.413
that is of great moment, great urgency,
321
00:17:43.090 --> 00:17:47.910
then planned to include in the panel of perspectives,
322
00:17:47.910 --> 00:17:50.140
brought to bear upon that problem,
323
00:17:50.140 --> 00:17:52.293
as one perspective on it,
324
00:17:53.170 --> 00:17:55.443
the Christian theological approach.
325
00:17:57.300 --> 00:17:58.900
What does the Christian faith
326
00:17:58.900 --> 00:18:02.900
have to say to this particular issue,
327
00:18:02.900 --> 00:18:06.780
along with what other points of view,
328
00:18:06.780 --> 00:18:08.440
what other perspectives have to say
329
00:18:08.440 --> 00:18:09.793
to this particular issue?
330
00:18:11.300 --> 00:18:14.200
This is much more true to the realities
331
00:18:14.200 --> 00:18:18.370
of the polytheism of the American campus.
332
00:18:18.370 --> 00:18:21.023
Christianity is one faith system,
333
00:18:22.020 --> 00:18:24.920
along with other major faith systems,
334
00:18:24.920 --> 00:18:26.250
with positivism,
335
00:18:26.250 --> 00:18:27.500
and scientism,
336
00:18:27.500 --> 00:18:31.206
and suburbanity,
337
00:18:31.206 --> 00:18:32.039
and Americanity,
338
00:18:32.039 --> 00:18:34.953
and the other major religions of our day.
339
00:18:38.580 --> 00:18:40.790
Still in the same direction,
340
00:18:40.790 --> 00:18:44.363
toward the theological recovery,
341
00:18:46.690 --> 00:18:48.460
once confronted with a whole problem
342
00:18:48.460 --> 00:18:50.300
of the meaning of worship,
343
00:18:50.300 --> 00:18:53.063
the recovery of authentic worship,
344
00:18:54.961 --> 00:18:58.270
for the springs of ethical renewal lie here
345
00:18:59.750 --> 00:19:02.523
in renewed worship at the altar,
346
00:19:04.670 --> 00:19:07.440
where the total self is brought face-to-face
347
00:19:07.440 --> 00:19:10.163
with the mystery and the awesome Holiness,
348
00:19:11.012 --> 00:19:13.243
and the forgiving mercy of God.
349
00:19:17.610 --> 00:19:21.690
Many chapel services, on many universities,
350
00:19:21.690 --> 00:19:23.780
desecrate the function of worship
351
00:19:25.550 --> 00:19:28.790
by being purely secular exercises
352
00:19:28.790 --> 00:19:31.290
set within the college calendar
353
00:19:31.290 --> 00:19:36.290
as convenient times to get the children together,
354
00:19:38.110 --> 00:19:39.840
and give them some kind of sense
355
00:19:39.840 --> 00:19:42.713
of togetherness, or loyalty.
356
00:19:43.800 --> 00:19:47.430
And this is sprinkled with a little bit of holy water,
357
00:19:47.430 --> 00:19:49.147
in the form of an invocation
358
00:19:50.348 --> 00:19:51.248
and a benediction.
359
00:19:54.350 --> 00:19:55.853
This isn't worship at all.
360
00:19:58.620 --> 00:20:02.323
The need here to recover authentic worship,
361
00:20:03.820 --> 00:20:07.030
I think is a very, very central one,
362
00:20:07.030 --> 00:20:09.030
one in which we fumble a great deal,
363
00:20:09.030 --> 00:20:10.870
which was great deal of need
364
00:20:10.870 --> 00:20:13.060
for searching and rethinking.
365
00:20:13.060 --> 00:20:15.143
Basically it's a dialectical need.
366
00:20:16.550 --> 00:20:17.383
On the one side,
367
00:20:17.383 --> 00:20:20.770
the conservative need
368
00:20:20.770 --> 00:20:25.510
to recover the tradition of the classical forms
369
00:20:26.830 --> 00:20:29.833
of worship in the richness of Christian liturgy.
370
00:20:33.530 --> 00:20:35.120
And there's a great deal of that going on,
371
00:20:35.120 --> 00:20:36.810
and it's very exciting,
372
00:20:36.810 --> 00:20:38.630
and very valuable,
373
00:20:38.630 --> 00:20:40.980
in the realm of music, for instance,
374
00:20:40.980 --> 00:20:42.410
on American college campuses,
375
00:20:42.410 --> 00:20:44.060
we have of at last gotten up,
376
00:20:44.060 --> 00:20:45.640
I think, most of us,
377
00:20:45.640 --> 00:20:49.160
except perhaps at some Southern schools,
378
00:20:49.160 --> 00:20:51.870
from the horrors of the 19th century drivel
379
00:20:51.870 --> 00:20:53.423
that passed for church music,
380
00:20:54.600 --> 00:20:58.600
back into the richness of the Baroque,
381
00:20:58.600 --> 00:21:00.243
and classical,
382
00:21:02.150 --> 00:21:03.023
style.
383
00:21:04.830 --> 00:21:06.230
But while we have done this,
384
00:21:06.230 --> 00:21:08.990
and recovered objectivity of our authentic worship,
385
00:21:08.990 --> 00:21:10.740
there is need at the same time
386
00:21:12.620 --> 00:21:15.800
to recover the relevance of all of this;
387
00:21:15.800 --> 00:21:18.860
the point of connection between this kind of worship
388
00:21:18.860 --> 00:21:20.603
and the student where he is,
389
00:21:21.650 --> 00:21:24.170
between the form of worship
390
00:21:24.170 --> 00:21:26.573
and the existence of the worshiper.
391
00:21:28.587 --> 00:21:30.040
I'm much impressed for instance, by the way,
392
00:21:30.040 --> 00:21:32.960
in which college choirs nowadays
393
00:21:32.960 --> 00:21:35.370
have been in Protestant schools,
394
00:21:35.370 --> 00:21:37.163
recovering the mass form,
395
00:21:38.450 --> 00:21:40.290
and with great feeling and power
396
00:21:40.290 --> 00:21:43.073
sing the Kyrie Eleison.
397
00:21:45.397 --> 00:21:50.063
"Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi"
398
00:21:52.900 --> 00:21:57.035
Without the slightest notion of what Kyrie Eleison means.
399
00:21:57.035 --> 00:22:00.210
(audience laughs)
400
00:22:00.210 --> 00:22:01.720
I won't embarrass anybody here
401
00:22:01.720 --> 00:22:05.090
by taking a nose count,
402
00:22:05.090 --> 00:22:05.923
or a hand count,
403
00:22:05.923 --> 00:22:09.023
as to what Kyrie Eleison means.
404
00:22:10.510 --> 00:22:11.960
But, for many students,
405
00:22:11.960 --> 00:22:14.770
it's really just about as meaningless
406
00:22:15.930 --> 00:22:18.380
as for the boy who reported home after church,
407
00:22:18.380 --> 00:22:22.967
that the closing hymn song was, "The Cross-eyed Bear."
408
00:22:25.090 --> 00:22:27.433
This is about as much as it meant to him.
409
00:22:28.730 --> 00:22:31.540
Great fervor singing about the cross-eyed bear
410
00:22:34.060 --> 00:22:36.610
without knowing what theologically it really meant.
411
00:22:38.440 --> 00:22:41.620
Well, this recovery of authentic worship
412
00:22:42.750 --> 00:22:43.583
by
413
00:22:46.030 --> 00:22:49.300
explaining, by working at the explanation
414
00:22:49.300 --> 00:22:52.080
of the objective meaning of the mass
415
00:22:53.600 --> 00:22:55.750
and what Kyrie Eleison
416
00:22:56.960 --> 00:22:59.580
means for the
417
00:23:00.760 --> 00:23:02.800
worshiper who stands in need
418
00:23:02.800 --> 00:23:04.843
of the mercy of the Lord,
419
00:23:08.470 --> 00:23:10.923
is much needed.
420
00:23:12.720 --> 00:23:16.923
The other direction of worship is the experimental one.
421
00:23:19.610 --> 00:23:21.430
One is the conservative direction,
422
00:23:21.430 --> 00:23:24.200
the other is the experimental one,
423
00:23:24.200 --> 00:23:27.670
of working with new worship forms,
424
00:23:27.670 --> 00:23:28.990
the dance,
425
00:23:28.990 --> 00:23:30.443
jazz mass,
426
00:23:33.720 --> 00:23:35.063
the vernacular,
427
00:23:36.160 --> 00:23:40.060
to indicate the way in which the sacred
428
00:23:41.570 --> 00:23:43.823
appears in the secular.
429
00:23:46.791 --> 00:23:48.180
You have to distinguish all this very carefully
430
00:23:48.180 --> 00:23:50.573
between secularism and the secular,
431
00:23:51.920 --> 00:23:54.610
and a Protestant motif of worship always
432
00:23:54.610 --> 00:23:55.720
is the
433
00:23:57.390 --> 00:24:00.433
appearance of grace in the secular,
434
00:24:01.870 --> 00:24:04.670
just as Bach used German drinking songs
435
00:24:04.670 --> 00:24:06.723
as the basis of his corral tunes.
436
00:24:08.100 --> 00:24:11.840
So the sense of the judgment and grace of God
437
00:24:11.840 --> 00:24:15.010
can be recovered in contemporary college students experience
438
00:24:16.590 --> 00:24:19.803
through exciting secular forms.
439
00:24:21.130 --> 00:24:23.160
You remember so vividly instances of this
440
00:24:23.160 --> 00:24:24.633
in college chapels where,
441
00:24:28.682 --> 00:24:30.870
well, one in particular comes to mind,
442
00:24:30.870 --> 00:24:32.900
worship at Hollins College,
443
00:24:32.900 --> 00:24:35.340
a magnificent chapel there,
444
00:24:35.340 --> 00:24:38.370
where the chaplain, Al Beardsley, is a
445
00:24:40.410 --> 00:24:43.500
master of the use of ritual
446
00:24:44.890 --> 00:24:46.930
of the classical sort,
447
00:24:46.930 --> 00:24:49.960
but he casts his prayers,
448
00:24:49.960 --> 00:24:52.100
usually in the collect form,
449
00:24:52.100 --> 00:24:54.523
often in striking vernacular.
450
00:24:55.570 --> 00:24:57.853
One occasion, I remember there, chapel,
451
00:25:00.010 --> 00:25:01.750
after a party weekend or something,
452
00:25:01.750 --> 00:25:04.100
where his use of the vernacular
453
00:25:04.100 --> 00:25:07.677
was real earthy, talking about how,
454
00:25:07.677 --> 00:25:09.560
"Here we are, God, before thee,
455
00:25:09.560 --> 00:25:11.653
with bellies distended,
456
00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:15.104
with too much food."
457
00:25:15.104 --> 00:25:15.937
And so on,
458
00:25:17.630 --> 00:25:19.560
this was a little bit less elegant
459
00:25:19.560 --> 00:25:22.313
than the King James,
460
00:25:23.490 --> 00:25:25.510
or Elizabethan English style,
461
00:25:25.510 --> 00:25:28.550
but it had a certain compelling vividness about it
462
00:25:31.664 --> 00:25:32.840
that I feel strongly
463
00:25:34.470 --> 00:25:36.840
involved the worshiper deeply in the worship,
464
00:25:36.840 --> 00:25:39.120
in the experience, in the encounter.
465
00:25:39.120 --> 00:25:41.720
Well, all that I've said thus far
466
00:25:41.720 --> 00:25:44.300
is in the direction of the recovery,
467
00:25:44.300 --> 00:25:46.350
through the study of the Christian faith,
468
00:25:47.720 --> 00:25:50.320
and through the
469
00:25:50.320 --> 00:25:54.040
recovery of objective and relevant worship
470
00:25:55.200 --> 00:25:57.603
of the grounds for moral renewal.
471
00:25:59.140 --> 00:26:00.840
But now the other direction,
472
00:26:00.840 --> 00:26:01.790
the other movement,
473
00:26:02.950 --> 00:26:03.783
this seems to me,
474
00:26:03.783 --> 00:26:06.563
the movement to get the students across the tracks,
475
00:26:08.280 --> 00:26:11.180
made aware of the social revolutions
476
00:26:11.180 --> 00:26:12.343
that are going on,
477
00:26:13.490 --> 00:26:14.960
the world's hunger,
478
00:26:14.960 --> 00:26:16.273
the world's need.
479
00:26:18.640 --> 00:26:21.050
This fraternity lounge lizard
480
00:26:21.050 --> 00:26:22.853
and the sorority queen,
481
00:26:25.350 --> 00:26:29.680
in their fantastic world of array of sports cars,
482
00:26:29.680 --> 00:26:30.990
and beer cans,
483
00:26:30.990 --> 00:26:32.760
and bouffant hairdos
484
00:26:32.760 --> 00:26:36.283
of various delicate pastel shades,
485
00:26:37.800 --> 00:26:41.190
these characters need to be shook loose
486
00:26:42.520 --> 00:26:43.530
from their comfort
487
00:26:43.530 --> 00:26:44.880
and their ease
488
00:26:46.820 --> 00:26:49.250
by the awareness of how the other
489
00:26:51.570 --> 00:26:53.633
nine tenths of the world lives.
490
00:26:54.860 --> 00:26:58.853
Dumped into an awareness of the desperate poverty,
491
00:27:00.120 --> 00:27:03.750
which prevails maybe not five blocks away,
492
00:27:03.750 --> 00:27:06.463
more than five blocks away from the campus.
493
00:27:07.830 --> 00:27:09.890
You're all aware of these needs
494
00:27:09.890 --> 00:27:12.170
and the projects that lead,
495
00:27:12.170 --> 00:27:15.470
that provide guidance in this direction.
496
00:27:15.470 --> 00:27:17.720
Many of them, summer service projects,
497
00:27:17.720 --> 00:27:19.810
American Friends Service Committee projects,
498
00:27:19.810 --> 00:27:21.483
Operation Crossroads,
499
00:27:23.010 --> 00:27:25.420
for summer youths,
500
00:27:25.420 --> 00:27:27.500
but then during the school year
501
00:27:27.500 --> 00:27:30.403
more immediately projects in town,
502
00:27:33.470 --> 00:27:34.373
companion,
503
00:27:35.500 --> 00:27:37.380
much impressed, can at Wesley,
504
00:27:37.380 --> 00:27:40.300
with this companion program in the hospital,
505
00:27:40.300 --> 00:27:42.320
where students go
506
00:27:42.320 --> 00:27:45.700
and give regular time through the whole year
507
00:27:45.700 --> 00:27:47.260
as companions for
508
00:27:49.230 --> 00:27:50.290
people in the hospital
509
00:27:50.290 --> 00:27:52.220
who are desperately lonesome
510
00:27:52.220 --> 00:27:55.450
and have no contact with the outside world,
511
00:27:55.450 --> 00:27:58.030
or the tutoring programs for Negro students
512
00:27:59.230 --> 00:28:00.360
in Southern communities,
513
00:28:00.360 --> 00:28:02.470
as well as in Northern communities,
514
00:28:02.470 --> 00:28:05.900
where kids, well, college students
515
00:28:05.900 --> 00:28:08.930
will give hours of time to help,
516
00:28:08.930 --> 00:28:11.460
tutoring with Negro students to high school level,
517
00:28:11.460 --> 00:28:12.533
to bring them up to,
518
00:28:14.570 --> 00:28:18.410
help to bring them up to levels of adequacy for
519
00:28:19.764 --> 00:28:21.293
a college admission,
520
00:28:22.250 --> 00:28:25.090
to newly integrated schools,
521
00:28:25.090 --> 00:28:26.490
or boys' club work,
522
00:28:26.490 --> 00:28:30.223
or social projects in the town.
523
00:28:31.110 --> 00:28:32.540
This kind of activity
524
00:28:34.020 --> 00:28:34.940
is a necessity.
525
00:28:34.940 --> 00:28:37.683
It's not just an extracurricular luxury.
526
00:28:39.940 --> 00:28:41.863
It's the redemption,
527
00:28:42.934 --> 00:28:44.913
in reality of the student,
528
00:28:46.500 --> 00:28:49.300
from the artificiality of a good deal
529
00:28:49.300 --> 00:28:52.533
of his current, existential, Christian lingo.
530
00:28:54.456 --> 00:28:56.320
It's the okay terms that
531
00:28:56.320 --> 00:28:59.403
these students love to talk about are,
532
00:29:01.710 --> 00:29:03.523
terms like the abyss,
533
00:29:04.460 --> 00:29:06.430
or involvement,
534
00:29:06.430 --> 00:29:08.433
or encounter,
535
00:29:09.500 --> 00:29:11.670
or dread,
536
00:29:11.670 --> 00:29:13.083
or dialogue.
537
00:29:15.760 --> 00:29:18.780
But this talk's pretty
538
00:29:18.780 --> 00:29:20.870
artificial and fancy.
539
00:29:20.870 --> 00:29:24.530
I overheard one comment recently after both sessions
540
00:29:24.530 --> 00:29:27.960
from a darling looking little campus cutie,
541
00:29:27.960 --> 00:29:32.084
who said, "We had more fun talking about despair!"
542
00:29:32.084 --> 00:29:34.917
(audience laughs)
543
00:29:39.670 --> 00:29:40.503
Well,
544
00:29:42.130 --> 00:29:44.350
image of a good deal of this lingo
545
00:29:44.350 --> 00:29:46.930
is that of the
546
00:29:46.930 --> 00:29:48.330
well-heeled boy
547
00:29:48.330 --> 00:29:49.850
who was sitting in the sports car
548
00:29:49.850 --> 00:29:51.730
with beer can in hand,
549
00:29:51.730 --> 00:29:55.330
looking over this abyss of meaninglessness,
550
00:29:55.330 --> 00:29:56.163
you know,
(audience chuckles)
551
00:29:56.163 --> 00:29:58.883
but all he does is artificially look over.
552
00:30:00.420 --> 00:30:03.710
Another way, another moral imperative
553
00:30:03.710 --> 00:30:05.960
to if one can't get the student
554
00:30:05.960 --> 00:30:07.870
or himself across the tracks,
555
00:30:07.870 --> 00:30:10.763
or to bring to the campus from across the tracks,
556
00:30:12.560 --> 00:30:16.610
those young ministers who are working on the problems
557
00:30:16.610 --> 00:30:19.227
of the inner city church,
558
00:30:19.227 --> 00:30:20.470
for instance,
559
00:30:20.470 --> 00:30:22.830
the east Harlem,
560
00:30:22.830 --> 00:30:25.110
and similar projects,
561
00:30:25.110 --> 00:30:28.960
or the new Negro leadership in the church.
562
00:30:28.960 --> 00:30:31.000
I think people like Martin Luther King,
563
00:30:31.000 --> 00:30:32.460
and Jim Robinson,
564
00:30:32.460 --> 00:30:33.293
and many others,
565
00:30:34.810 --> 00:30:36.720
who represent
566
00:30:39.500 --> 00:30:44.113
in the place of the older campus evangelism visitors,
567
00:30:45.150 --> 00:30:50.150
the new leadership emergent out of the church,
568
00:30:51.000 --> 00:30:54.433
who have escaped the suburban captivity of the churches,
569
00:30:55.720 --> 00:30:56.553
such
570
00:30:58.680 --> 00:30:59.513
people
571
00:31:02.960 --> 00:31:03.793
like
572
00:31:07.740 --> 00:31:09.340
Kermit Meyers,
573
00:31:09.340 --> 00:31:10.780
from New York,
574
00:31:10.780 --> 00:31:14.820
represent a very compelling appeal of the strenuous,
575
00:31:14.820 --> 00:31:15.920
the difficult,
576
00:31:15.920 --> 00:31:17.140
the stringency,
577
00:31:17.140 --> 00:31:19.363
the scandal of the gospel,
578
00:31:20.220 --> 00:31:23.460
and students, I am persuaded,
579
00:31:23.460 --> 00:31:26.180
respond morally with
580
00:31:27.150 --> 00:31:27.983
honest,
581
00:31:29.170 --> 00:31:30.060
honest support
582
00:31:30.060 --> 00:31:32.620
and conviction,
583
00:31:32.620 --> 00:31:34.823
to the scandal of the gospel.
584
00:31:36.840 --> 00:31:39.300
They are, by and large, fed of course,
585
00:31:39.300 --> 00:31:41.520
on the sweetness of the gospel,
586
00:31:41.520 --> 00:31:43.960
in their own suburban backgrounds,
587
00:31:43.960 --> 00:31:45.260
and where they can see,
588
00:31:45.260 --> 00:31:49.130
and this is good reason why they are repulsed
589
00:31:49.130 --> 00:31:52.650
by the usual church line,
590
00:31:52.650 --> 00:31:55.113
and why, as I mentioned the other day,
591
00:31:55.959 --> 00:31:58.750
they are strongly drawn toward theology
592
00:31:58.750 --> 00:32:01.133
and strongly opposed to the church,
593
00:32:02.410 --> 00:32:03.970
but they should be made aware
594
00:32:03.970 --> 00:32:06.817
of the new churches that are appearing.
595
00:32:08.780 --> 00:32:10.820
The moral point of all this shock treatment
596
00:32:10.820 --> 00:32:12.963
and exposure is not just to shock,
597
00:32:15.080 --> 00:32:18.143
for the gospel is scandal,
598
00:32:19.600 --> 00:32:21.303
and redemption,
599
00:32:22.410 --> 00:32:23.243
grace,
600
00:32:26.040 --> 00:32:27.690
but it has to be bad news
601
00:32:27.690 --> 00:32:29.483
before it becomes good news.
602
00:32:32.090 --> 00:32:34.490
The point of this all is not just to remind students
603
00:32:34.490 --> 00:32:39.120
how lucky they are that they don't have to live there,
604
00:32:39.120 --> 00:32:41.410
where these other people live,
605
00:32:41.410 --> 00:32:44.240
but to create in them a sense of guilt,
606
00:32:44.240 --> 00:32:45.973
and moral responsibility,
607
00:32:46.850 --> 00:32:50.230
an obligation, under the great commandment,
608
00:32:50.230 --> 00:32:52.230
to make use of their education,
609
00:32:52.230 --> 00:32:53.833
to serve the common wheel,
610
00:32:54.970 --> 00:32:56.720
and to discover a Christian vocation
611
00:32:56.720 --> 00:32:58.130
in the secular professions
612
00:32:58.130 --> 00:32:59.320
of teaching and medicine
613
00:32:59.320 --> 00:33:00.800
and government service,
614
00:33:00.800 --> 00:33:01.833
in public life.
615
00:33:04.490 --> 00:33:06.260
I hope that it's not wishful thinking
616
00:33:06.260 --> 00:33:07.483
for me to say,
617
00:33:09.769 --> 00:33:11.600
that I think there is emerging,
618
00:33:11.600 --> 00:33:14.453
a kind of new character type,
619
00:33:16.030 --> 00:33:17.683
beyond the operator,
620
00:33:19.130 --> 00:33:22.193
and beyond the cautious,
621
00:33:23.668 --> 00:33:25.000
smoothy,
622
00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:26.433
and beyond the beatnik.
623
00:33:28.150 --> 00:33:30.313
And I will call him the new Puritan,
624
00:33:33.210 --> 00:33:34.320
not the old Puritan,
625
00:33:34.320 --> 00:33:38.570
who's worried about moral trifles,
626
00:33:38.570 --> 00:33:40.000
but the new Puritan,
627
00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:41.690
Puritan in the sense
628
00:33:42.850 --> 00:33:45.170
that he is one who lives obediently
629
00:33:45.170 --> 00:33:47.573
to an inner moral principle,
630
00:33:50.520 --> 00:33:52.480
that he is guided by
631
00:33:54.910 --> 00:33:58.593
a sense of deep moral obligation.
632
00:34:02.210 --> 00:34:06.080
He's not Riesman's other-directed man,
633
00:34:06.080 --> 00:34:09.230
certainly, he's not even Reisman's inner-directed man.
634
00:34:09.230 --> 00:34:10.913
He's the upper-directed man.
635
00:34:14.140 --> 00:34:16.710
He's not Tillich's heteronomous man
636
00:34:16.710 --> 00:34:18.950
or Tillich's autonomous man,
637
00:34:18.950 --> 00:34:21.163
but he's Tillich's theonomous man.
638
00:34:23.310 --> 00:34:25.600
He's morally serious about the Christian witness
639
00:34:25.600 --> 00:34:27.360
to be made to public issues
640
00:34:27.360 --> 00:34:28.500
in the realm of racial
641
00:34:28.500 --> 00:34:30.730
and economic and political life.
642
00:34:30.730 --> 00:34:33.683
And he's so involved in political affairs,
643
00:34:35.650 --> 00:34:39.040
running, so to speak, with New York Times in one hand,
644
00:34:39.040 --> 00:34:40.393
and the Bible in the other,
645
00:34:42.100 --> 00:34:45.830
that he's taken out of his preoccupation
646
00:34:45.830 --> 00:34:48.270
with matters of pietistic morality,
647
00:34:48.270 --> 00:34:49.390
on matters of drinking
648
00:34:49.390 --> 00:34:51.080
and smoking and sex.
649
00:34:51.080 --> 00:34:53.072
In this realm of morality,
650
00:34:53.072 --> 00:34:58.072
he has a mature, sort of take-it-or-leave-it attitude.
651
00:35:00.640 --> 00:35:03.700
Take-it-or-leave-it, nonchalant about these matters
652
00:35:03.700 --> 00:35:07.710
because he's more involved with prior matters,
653
00:35:07.710 --> 00:35:09.790
weightier matters of the law:
654
00:35:09.790 --> 00:35:11.450
justice, mercy,
655
00:35:11.450 --> 00:35:12.793
and faith.
656
00:35:16.200 --> 00:35:17.670
To somewhat to my embarrassment,
657
00:35:17.670 --> 00:35:21.440
I noticed after I finished jotting down these scratches
658
00:35:21.440 --> 00:35:23.670
about remarks I wanted to make,
659
00:35:23.670 --> 00:35:25.210
that the theme for this conference
660
00:35:25.210 --> 00:35:29.023
was the search for a new morality.
661
00:35:30.440 --> 00:35:33.970
Well, this late stage of the game,
662
00:35:33.970 --> 00:35:37.960
I'm afraid I have no wisdom to offer,
663
00:35:37.960 --> 00:35:40.710
as to a new morality
664
00:35:43.020 --> 00:35:44.810
to propose.
665
00:35:44.810 --> 00:35:48.310
I suggest the search for a new morality
666
00:35:48.310 --> 00:35:52.003
would take us back to an old morality,
667
00:35:53.000 --> 00:35:55.423
biblical morality, if you like,
668
00:35:56.450 --> 00:36:00.473
the morality of the love of God and neighbor,
669
00:36:01.840 --> 00:36:03.910
transcendent of the
670
00:36:05.310 --> 00:36:08.700
irrelevant, pietistic morality
671
00:36:08.700 --> 00:36:09.823
of the churches,
672
00:36:13.720 --> 00:36:15.830
transcendent of the
673
00:36:16.700 --> 00:36:18.310
innovated,
674
00:36:18.310 --> 00:36:20.623
liberal morality,
675
00:36:21.980 --> 00:36:23.758
of the theological period
676
00:36:23.758 --> 00:36:26.053
that nurtured most of us,
677
00:36:27.780 --> 00:36:29.560
a morality grounded
678
00:36:30.729 --> 00:36:32.920
on the
679
00:36:32.920 --> 00:36:33.943
transcendent,
680
00:36:35.893 --> 00:36:39.020
the morality obedient to the great commandment
681
00:36:39.020 --> 00:36:42.250
whereby we can help as teachers,
682
00:36:42.250 --> 00:36:44.013
as ministers of grace,
683
00:36:45.770 --> 00:36:47.660
to recover in our own campuses,
684
00:36:47.660 --> 00:36:48.993
campus communities,
685
00:36:49.990 --> 00:36:52.453
something of the integrity of the Christian life,
686
00:36:54.010 --> 00:36:55.560
in responsible obedience
687
00:36:56.580 --> 00:36:58.143
to God's will.
688
00:37:00.156 --> 00:37:03.323
(microphone scraping)
689
00:37:04.680 --> 00:37:06.330
I don't know how to turn this jigger off.
690
00:37:06.330 --> 00:37:09.053
Maybe you wanna leave it on for our discussion,
691
00:37:09.960 --> 00:37:11.150
but let's take a few minutes
692
00:37:11.150 --> 00:37:14.033
to talk some of this back and forth, maybe?
693
00:37:19.530 --> 00:37:20.783
Can anyone turn this off?
694
00:37:24.090 --> 00:37:25.310
Yeah.
695
00:37:25.310 --> 00:37:27.010
You want to leave that on?
696
00:37:27.010 --> 00:37:27.995
Well you can't
697
00:37:27.995 --> 00:37:30.030
pick out the sound
Have to turn it off, so
698
00:37:33.441 --> 00:37:36.103
I don't know whether you have really seen-