Thomas E. McCollough - "Society and the System" (February 9, 1969)

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	(bright organ music)	0:03
	(gentle choral music)	5:21
	(bright organ music)	6:34
	(choral music)	7:27
	(high-pitched choral music)	7:47
-	Let us offer unto God our unison prayer of confession,	10:30
	and for pardon.	10:35
	Let us pray.	10:38
	Oh God, our heavenly father,	10:40
	we have sinned against thee,	10:42
	and are not worthy to be called thy children.	10:45
	We are guilty of committing specific acts of sin.	10:48
	We are even more guilty	10:53
	in having a sinful attitude in general.	10:55
	We have argued at times when we should have prayed.	10:59
	We have pretended to have the wisdom of experience,	11:03
	when we were immature,	11:07
	we have been selfishly competitive	11:09
	when Christ desired us to be cooperative.	11:12
	We have dealt in proud criticism	11:17
	when we should have attempted with humility to understand.	11:19
	Forgive us, we beseech thee most merciful father	11:24
	and renew us in the strength of thy grace	11:28
	through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.	11:32
	Hear these words of assurance of forgiveness	11:39
	as they are recorded in the book of the Psalms.	11:43
	"The Lord is gracious and merciful,	11:48
	"slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.	11:53
	"As a father pitieth his children,	11:59
	"so the Lord pities those who fear him.	12:02
	"The Lord redeems the life of his servants.	12:08
	"None of those who take refuge in Him will be condemned.	12:13
	"Therefore, let us be of good courage."	12:20
	(bright organ music)	12:39
	♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪	13:06
	♪ Hallelujah unto God's Almighty Son ♪	13:15
	♪ Hallelujah unto God's Almighty Son ♪	13:27
	♪ Praise the Lord, ye bright angelic choirs ♪	13:42
	♪ In holy songs of joy, in holy songs of joy ♪	13:47
	♪ In holy songs of joy ♪	13:53
	♪ Praise the Lord, ye bright angelic choirs ♪	13:58
	♪ In holy songs of joy, in holy songs of joy ♪	14:00
	♪ Praise the Lord in holy songs ♪	14:06
	♪ In holy songs, in holy songs of joy ♪	14:10
	♪ Praise the Lord, ye bright angelic choirs ♪	14:20
	♪ In holy songs of joy ♪	14:25
	♪ In holy songs, in holy songs, in holy songs of joy ♪	14:28
	♪ In holy songs of joy ♪	14:46
	♪ In holy, in holy songs of joy ♪	14:55
	♪ Man, proclaim His grace and glory ♪	15:05
	♪ Proclaim His grace and glory ♪	15:09
	♪ Proclaim His grace and glory ♪	15:13
	♪ Proclaim His grace and glory ♪	15:16
	♪ Hallelujah, Hallelujah ♪	15:19
	♪ Hallelujah, Hallelujah ♪	15:22
	♪ Hallelujah, Hallelujah unto God's Almighty Son ♪	15:24
	♪ Praise the Lord in holy songs of joy ♪	15:35
	♪ In holy songs of joy ♪	15:47
	♪ In holy, holy songs of joy ♪	15:54
	♪ Man, proclaim His grace and glory ♪	16:03
	♪ Proclaim His grace and glory ♪	16:08
	♪ Proclaim His grace and glory ♪	16:11
	♪ Proclaim His grace and glory ♪	16:14
	♪ Hallelujah, unto God's Almighty Son ♪	16:17
	♪ Unto God's Almighty Son ♪	16:29
	♪ Hallelujah unto God's Almighty Son ♪	16:34
	♪ Hallelujah unto God's Almighty Son ♪	16:36
	♪ Praise the Lord, praise the Lord ♪	16:46
	♪ Praise the Lord in holy songs of joy ♪	16:50
	♪ In holy songs of joy ♪	16:55
	♪ Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, ♪	17:00
	♪ Praise the Lord in holy songs of joy ♪	17:04
	♪ In holy songs of joy, in holy songs of joy ♪	17:08
	♪ Praise the lord, in holy songs, in holy songs ♪	17:14
	♪ In holy songs of joy ♪	17:18
	♪ Praise the Lord, praise the Lord ♪	17:24
	♪ In holy songs of joy ♪	17:29
	♪ In holy songs of joy ♪♪	17:33
-	"Now John's disciples and those of the Pharisees	17:51
	"were keeping a fast.	17:53
	"The people came and asked Jesus a question.	17:54
	"Why is it that John's disciples	17:57
	"and the disciples of the Pharisees fast and yours do not?	17:59
	"Jesus replied to them,	18:04
	"can the bride grooms friends fast	18:05
	"while the bride groom is in their company?	18:07
	"As long as they have the bride groom with them,	18:09
	"fasting is out of the question.	18:11
	"The time will come when the bride groom is taken away	18:14
	"and on that day, they will fast.	18:17
	"No man sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on a worn out garment	18:19
	"for if he does the patch tears away from it,	18:24
	"the new from the old	18:26
	"and leaves a bigger hole,	18:28
	"and no one pours new wine into old wine skins	18:30
	"else, the wine will burst the skins	18:33
	"and the wine is spilled and the skins are ruined.	18:35
	"New wine has to be put into fresh skins.	18:38
	"One Sabbath, he was going through the grain fields	18:42
	"and his disciples began to pick the heads of grain	18:45
	"as they made their way through.	18:47
	"And the Pharisees said to him, look at that.	18:49
	"Why should they do what is forbidden on the Sabbath day?	18:52
	"Jesus said to them,	18:55
	"have you never read what David did	18:57
	"when he was in need and became hungry?	18:59
	"He and his men?	19:01
	"How he went into the house of God	19:03
	"when Abiatha was high priest	19:05
	"and ate the consecrated loaves	19:07
	"which no one, except the priest is allowed to eat	19:09
	"and also shared them with his men?	19:12
	"And he said unto them,	19:15
	"the Sabbath was made to serve man	19:16
	"and not man to keep the Sabbath.	19:19
	"That is why the son of man is master even of the Sabbath."	19:22
	(bright choral music)	19:29
-	The Lord be with you.	20:27
-	And with you too.	20:28
-	Let us pray.	20:30
	Let us offer first a prayer of Thanksgiving.	20:37
	We thank the Lord that we have thy wisdom	20:42
	lying at the mercy of every seeking mind.	20:45
	Oh, thou most wonderful in the realm of truth.	20:50
	We thank the Lord that we have thy world	20:56
	river and sea, hill valley, forest and field	20:59
	for our dwelling.	21:04
	Oh thou most glorious in the realm of beauty.	21:07
	We thank the Lord that we have thyself	21:13
	for our guide and friend,	21:16
	oh thou most faithful in the realm of love.	21:19
	Thanks be to thee,	21:25
	for thy nonspeakable gifts	21:27
	this day and forevermore.	21:30
	And let us offer unto God a prayer of intercession	21:36
	for our country.	21:42
	Remember oh Lord the nation to which we belong	21:45
	that in righteousness and truth, we may be established.	21:51
	Extend for thy mercy's sake thy blessing to this our land,	21:58
	that within this realm of different races,	22:03
	peace may reign and prosperity	22:07
	with love of right and justice.	22:12
	Help us better to understand and love those	22:17
	who are of a different race or color from ourselves.	22:20
	Remembering that we are all members of the one family	22:25
	Overcoming us, any want of charity,	22:31
	any manner of prejudice by thy more abounding goodness	22:34
	and love and kindness.	22:40
	May our agreements be greater than our differences,	22:43
	and may our unity in thee	22:48
	sanctify all our natural diversities of opinion,	22:50
	grant that there may be open ways and peace and freedom	22:57
	from end to end of the nation and of the earth.	23:04
	And let's offer a prayer of supplication	23:12
	for the knowledge of Christ.	23:15
	Almighty God, who has called us through Jesus Christ	23:19
	to be thy sons and daughters.	23:22
	Give us so to know Christ and his life	23:26
	that the same mind, which was in him may be in us,	23:30
	that we may be in the world as he was in the world.	23:35
	Give us so to know Christ and his death	23:42
	that we may not glory save in the cross	23:46
	whereby the world is crucified unto us	23:52
	and we unto the world.	23:54
	Give us so to know Christ and the power of his resurrection	23:58
	that like as he was raised from the dead by thy glory,	24:02
	we also may walk in newness of life	24:07
	through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord.	24:12
	And oh God of truth and beauty and goodness,	24:17
	we thank thee that thou has to reveal thyself	24:21
	in the honesty of the mind that will not be content	24:25
	with a lie in the sensitivity of the heart	24:29
	that will not be satisfied with the unseemly	24:33
	and in the courage of the will	24:38
	That refuses to be reconciled to the mean.	24:40
	Grant us so to seek after truth,	24:45
	to follow after beauty,	24:48
	and to strive after goodness	24:50
	That we may be thy children	24:53
	through thy son, even Jesus Christ, our Lord.	24:57
	And now as our savior Christ have taught us	25:04
	we humbly pray together saying,	25:07
	Our Father who art in heaven,	25:11
	hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come,	25:14
	thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.	25:19
	Give us this day our daily bread	25:23
	and forgive us our trespasses	25:26
	as we forgive those who trespass against us,	25:29
	and lead us not into temptation,	25:33
	but deliver us from evil.	25:35
	For thine is the kingdom,	25:37
	and the power and the glory	25:39
	for ever, amen.	25:42
	The story by Franz Kafka,	25:56
	"The Trial" is a parable for our time.	26:00
	K is apprehended by authorities whom he does not know.	26:05
	Taken through a torturous Labrinth,	26:10
	the legal processes	26:14
	during which neither his accusers	26:16
	nor the nature of his crime are ever disclosed.	26:18
	And finally he's executed without any apparent reason.	26:22
	The horror evoked by Kafka story	26:29
	lies partly in the matter of fact	26:33
	way in which the story is told	26:35
	with it's intimation of a dark and mysterious fate	26:39
	awaiting the victim.	26:43
	And partly in the subliminal feeling of the reader,	26:45
	that in some ways he shares K's fate,	26:49
	as the victim of impersonal and inscrutable powers.	26:54
	The Greeks would've called it fate,	27:00
	New Testament writers referred to principalities and powers.	27:03
	Some today call it the system.	27:08
	Is this just mystification	27:14
	to be sure the system may be a myth.	27:19
	But the protestant theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr	27:24
	has said of biblical myths and symbols	27:29
	that while they're not to be taken literally,	27:33
	they are to be taken seriously.	27:35
	Does it make any sense at all to speak of the system?	27:39
	If so, we ought to try to be as clear as we can	27:45
	as to what it means.	27:48
	There are some notably representatives of the new left	27:51
	who identify the system with American Society as such.	27:57
	The solution to the problem as they see it,	28:03
	is a revolution against the existing order,	28:06
	the overthrow	28:10
	of social, political and economic institutions.	28:11
	The traditional, and now perhaps too easy	28:17
	Christian answer to social revolution	28:20
	has been spiritual revolution,	28:24
	a fundamental change in the attitudes of men.	28:28
	Love not law, it has been argued	28:33
	is the answer to the problems of men.	28:36
	But to many in our society,	28:40
	this looks suspiciously like irrationalization	28:42
	of the status quo by the has	28:45
	in order to protect their interests against the have nots.	28:49
	Perhaps we should examine further the notion of the system.	28:54
	The ultimate source of bafflement and horror in Kafka story	29:00
	is the inaccesibility and the invisibility	29:05
	of his accusers and judge.	29:09
	The system is inhuman and even demonic	29:13
	because it is invisible.	29:15
	It cannot simply be identified	29:19
	with existing organizations and institutions.	29:21
	Abolish these and immediately other institutions	29:25
	would take their places.	29:29
	The radical left makes a serious error, I think,	29:32
	and believing that a new society can be built	29:37
	by erasing the old.	29:40
	Revolutions breed new evils.	29:43
	But it scarcely seems enough to say	29:47
	that the problem lies in the hearts of men.	29:48
	The answer is bound to be, so what?	29:52
	Where do we go from here?	29:57
	What can be done?	30:00
	The analysis of the system has to be pushed further.	30:03
	And invisible system means invisible men.	30:09
	It means men on the top without responsibility	30:14
	and men on the bottom without rights.	30:18
	In America, we profess to believe that democracy	30:24
	entails equal rights for all citizens	30:26
	whose needs and interests	30:30
	are represented by elected officials	30:31
	accountable for their decisions to the citizens themselves	30:34
	But the system takes over	30:40
	when fateful decisions are made in secret by invisible men.	30:42
	President Truman had on his desk,	30:48
	the motto, The buck stops here."	30:50
	He made the decision to drop atom bomb	30:53
	on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.	30:55
	Though he claimed final responsibility for his decision,	30:58
	he was invisible when he made it.	31:01
	The American people knew nothing about it	31:05
	until it had happened.	31:07
	President Eisenhower acknowledged in his book,	31:10
	"Mandate for Change"	31:13
	that we entered Southeast Asia	31:16
	for a strategic interest of our own power or all materials.	31:18
	When we clog our real intentions	31:25
	and the guys of idealistic aims,	31:27
	we hide not only our motives, but ourselves.	31:30
	President Kennedy permitted the bay of pigs invasion of Cuba	31:34
	to the shock of everyone in the country, except the CIA.	31:37
	In retrospect, it may seem ironic	31:42
	that we began to hear about a credibility gap	31:44
	only during the last administration,	31:46
	as we became increasingly involved in the Vietnamese war	31:49
	again, without public discussion of the real issues.	31:53
	The men at the top were visible enough	31:58
	as far as their images in the mass media were concerned,	32:00
	but they were invisible men.	32:05
	And so far as their public responsibility	32:06
	for some of the most crucial decisions of our time	32:08
	was concerned.	32:12
	The most urgent political question	32:15
	before the American people	32:18
	is that of how to hold a man on top	32:20
	fully responsible for their decisions.	32:23
	That is how to make them visible.	32:26
	And correspondingly, how to enable those on the bottom	32:28
	to become visible,	32:31
	to have a fair share in the making of those decisions	32:33
	that affect their lives.	32:36
	To put it another way,	32:39
	the issue is what to do about the suppression	32:40
	of what goes on behind the political scene	32:43
	and the repression of people	32:46
	who are excluded from the political stage.	32:47
	The system consists of all that supports	32:52
	those social arrangements, economic priorities,	32:54
	political procedures and goals	32:59
	that allow laws or institutions or ideologies	33:02
	to take precedence over persons.	33:09
	The system consists of unspoken agreements	33:14
	to keep things away they are	33:16
	in the face of needed change.	33:18
	The system is a defensive mechanism	33:21
	to preserve the interests of the majority.	33:23
	It is invisible.	33:27
	It is invisible because no one admits its existence.	33:31
	25 years ago,	33:40
	the Swedish sociologist, Gunnar Myrdal	33:41
	wrote his classic study in American dilemma,	33:45
	"The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy."	33:48
	In it he reported and I've lifted a statement	33:52
	and then a part of a paragraph from this report.	33:55
	He says, "I have come to understand	34:00
	"how a whole system of moral escape has become polite form	34:02
	"in the South.	34:06
	"Everything can be said in the South,	34:09
	"if it is said in the right way.	34:11
	"Criticisms and even factual statements	34:15
	"should be phrased in such a manner	34:17
	"that they do not offend or create embarrassment."	34:18
	Myrdal continues,	34:25
	"When talking about the Negro problem,	34:27
	"everybody not only the intellectual liberals	34:31
	"is thus anxious to locate race prejudice outside himself.	34:35
	"The impersonal public opinion or community feelings	34:40
	"are held responsible."	34:46
	"The whites practically never discuss issue	34:48
	"in terms of I or we	34:51
	"but always in terms of they.	34:55
	"People in the South, people in the community,	34:58
	"or folks down here will not stand	35:03
	"for this or that.	35:06
	"One can go around for weeks talking to white people	35:10
	"in all walks of life	35:13
	"and constantly hear about the wishes and beliefs	35:14
	"of this collective being	35:16
	"yet seldom meeting a person	35:19
	"who actually identifies himself with it,	35:21
	"but he follows it."	35:25
	This was 25 years ago when Myrdal	35:32
	was often told by learned and laity alike	35:34
	that there was no Negro problem in America.	35:37
	We think the Negros are all right in their place	35:42
	and they on their part do not want things changed.	35:46
	The victims of the system were invisible.	35:51
	(indistinct) titled his story of a black man	35:55
	in search of his identity as an American and as a man,	35:58
	"Invisible man."	36:02
	He said, "This Invisible Man,	36:05
	"I am a man of substance of flesh and bones,	36:10
	"fiber and liquids.	36:15
	"And I might even be said to possess a mind.	36:18
	"I am invisible, understand	36:21
	"simply because people refuse to see me.	36:24
	"When they approach me,	36:28
	"they see only my surroundings themselves	36:29
	"or figments of their imagination,	36:32
	"indeed everything and anybody except me.	36:34
	"Negros of course have not been	36:41
	"the only invisible men in America."	36:42
	Michael Harrington's book, "The Other America"	36:46
	appearing in 1962,	36:49
	contended that side by side with affluent America	36:51
	was what he called the invisible land,	36:55
	The America of between 40 and 50 million poor people.	36:59
	Harrington declared that the poor in the United States	37:05
	tend to become increasingly invisible.	37:08
	The rest of us are unaware of the extent	37:12
	and depth of the poverty because it is off the beaten track,	37:14
	often hidden in the beauty of the mountains	37:20
	and the countryside.	37:22
	It's not so obvious because poor people can dress decently	37:25
	while their living conditions are abysmal.	37:28
	Many are never seen because they're old	37:32
	or very young or sick.	37:35
	And finally, as Harrington says,	37:40
	The poor are politically invisible."	37:41
	He continues as one of the cruelest ironies	37:45
	of social life in advanced countries	37:47
	that the dispossessed at the bottom of society	37:50
	are unable to speak for themselves.	37:53
	The people of the other America do not by and large	37:57
	belong to unions,	37:59
	to fraternal organizations or to political parties.	38:01
	They are without lobbies of their own.	38:07
	They put forward no legislative program.	38:10
	As a group, they are atomized.	38:13
	They have no face, they have no voice.	38:16
	Harrington's book was influential, we are told	38:23
	in sparking the war on poverty,	38:26
	which as Harrington said here at Duke last fall,	38:29
	has turned out to be a mere skirmish.	38:33
	Some may feel that these invisible Americans	38:38
	are at least now in the public eye.	38:40
	And that rapid progress has been made	38:43
	in lifting their level of life.	38:45
	In the last several weeks however,	38:49
	the results of a survey by the U.S. Public Health Service	38:51
	were announced.	38:54
	The survey revealed that the poor in the United States	38:56
	are crippled by "hunger and malnutrition"	38:59
	as seriously, and in some cases more seriously	39:04
	than peoples of underdeveloped nations.	39:08
	The director of the survey declared that he and others	39:11
	were "shocked and surprised"	39:14
	to discover that 15 to 20% of the poor person studied	39:18
	were suffering so much malnutrition	39:23
	that they were candidates for immediate medical treatment.	39:25
	Well, what does Christianity have to do with all this?	39:33
	So far, this would seem to be electron politics	39:39
	rather than a sermon, right?	39:42
	Well, if politicians have prayer breakfast,	39:47
	perhaps a chapel sermon can have some politics.	39:49
	Religious rhetoric is empty	39:54
	if it has no reference to the world	39:56
	in which men make a living and try to make a life	39:57
	for themselves and their families.	40:00
	Then it is a rhetoric of the system.	40:04
	Being religious is the worst kind of rhetoric of the system,	40:10
	rendering invisible, the realities of life	40:13
	of flesh and blood men.	40:17
	But what if anything,	40:21
	does the church have to say about the system?	40:22
	According to many perceptive observers of American society,	40:28
	young people who reject what they feel to be false values	40:31
	in our culture	40:35
	and who vehemently protest the system	40:37
	are not looking to religion for answers to their questions.	40:39
	Kenneth Keniston recently reported	40:45
	on what he calls experiential counter-cultures	40:48
	in American society.	40:52
	Groups of youth who have turned their backs	40:54
	on the materialism and the success-oriented goals	40:57
	of the culture	41:00
	to try to find a way of life of their own.	41:01
	But while Keniston points out	41:06
	that these young people have discarded formal religion,	41:07
	finding no meaning or ideological guidance	41:11
	in what church and synagogue offer.	41:15
	Michael Novak	41:19
	in one of the last issues of the Saturday Evening Post	41:20
	sees the underground church	41:25
	as a sign of vitality and ferment	41:28
	in the contemporary church.	41:31
	Novak declares,	41:33
	"The end product of the underground church	41:35
	"seems to be a humanism	41:39
	"who's only distinctively Christian characteristics	41:41
	"are a special attachment to Jesus Christ	41:44
	"and a concern for the welfare of the church	41:48
	"as a historical people."	41:51
	This is the distinguishing characteristic	41:57
	of even the most radical of the secular theologians today.	41:59
	They see in Jesus, the embodiment of radical humanity,	42:04
	The freedom to be one's self and love without limit.	42:09
	Instead of seeing the historical Jesus	42:17
	through the spectacles of classical theological dogmas,	42:19
	many are now subjecting these dogmas to scrutiny	42:24
	in light of the humanity of the man, Jesus.	42:28
	The most striking thing about the figure of us	42:33
	as he meets us in the gospels	42:36
	is his solidarity with victimized human beings.	42:38
	He identified himself with the outcasts of his society,	42:45
	the tax gatherers, sinners, and poor.	42:48
	He declared by his actions as well as his words.	42:55
	Now, these people were included in the concern	42:59
	and love of God.	43:01
	They were not invisible to him.	43:03
	In fact, as Jesus consciously enacted the love of God	43:07
	and taking his place alongside these people,	43:10
	he showed a definite bias toward the poor.	43:12
	Matthew has Jesus begin the Sermon on the Mount	43:19
	with the words,	43:22
	"Blessed are the poor in spirit."	43:23
	But Luke began simply, "Blessed are the poor."	43:27
	It was shocking to the Pharisees	43:32
	that Jesus should say that he was not come	43:33
	to invite the righteous and godly people	43:36
	who were carefully living by the law,	43:39
	but publicans and sinners.	43:42
	He scandalized the good people by sitting down to eat	43:46
	with the outcasts	43:49
	and by breaking the rules of Sabbath observance	43:51
	when human needs call for it.	43:54
	On one occasion,	43:57
	he made one's attitude toward his needy fellow man,	43:58
	the ultimate test of his relation to God.	44:01
	To take one stand alongside his fellow man, as Jesus did,	44:08
	is to relate to him as men to men,	44:13
	not as superior kind ascending to help an inferior.	44:19
	To do this is to protest and indeed to overcome the system	44:26
	by making visible the humanity of men.	44:32
	This I think is part of what students around the world	44:38
	are seeing now,	44:40
	however much others may deploy the way they often see it.	44:43
	Demonstrators that carried signs	44:48
	like the ones we saw last year in London,	44:50
	solidarity with the Biafrans,	44:52
	solidarity with the Vietnamese,	44:55
	solidarity with the doc strikers.	44:58
	The student activists have helped to give visibility	45:02
	to the minorities, the young, the poor,	45:06
	the black, the new nations.	45:09
	Of course, someone will object that Jesus himself	45:13
	is not a political figure	45:15
	and that he denied challenge the system.	45:17
	Lord Donald Soper of London did however,	45:22
	after all declare in an address of Duke	45:25
	a couple of years ago, that Jesus was the first protestor.	45:28
	We should be cautious inciting Jesus	45:32
	in support of law and order	45:34
	when his concern was, first of all, for the human being,	45:37
	most especially the victimized human being.	45:42
	In his actions, Jesus made visible	45:48
	the most fundamental needs of men	45:50
	and the kind of human response to those needs	45:52
	that brought healing and wholeness into human life.	45:55
	Perhaps we need to get back to the man, Jesus.	46:00
	We've taken love as a norm of ethics,	46:05
	but love abstracted from life becomes an ideal	46:09
	that is most likely to lose its appeal and it's force	46:13
	when most needed.	46:16
	Love evaporates today,	46:19
	because it seems ineffective, unreal, evanescent	46:20
	in the sweaty, bloody, dull and boring	46:27
	stretches of existence,	46:30
	which so many people have to endure so much of the time.	46:32
	Why not then get back to life even in religion?	46:37
	Not love, but a man is needed.	46:44
	A real man in genuine connection with other men.	46:48
	Love is just a word	46:54
	and today a rather empty and meaningless word,	46:56
	but man is a word that's taking on fresh meaning.	47:00
	As man is threatened in his essential humanity	47:05
	by the conditions of modern life,	47:07
	the question is being raised and you, what really is man?	47:09
	What after all is the meaning of life in our situation?	47:13
	The philosophers and the scientists	47:20
	will not give us the ultimate answer to this question.	47:22
	But men will.	47:29
	Men who prove themselves to be men,	47:31
	not by speculating or theorizing or intellectualizing	47:33
	but by taking their stand alongside other men.	47:37
	Showing in action, their conviction,	47:42
	that what unites us is immeasurably more important	47:44
	than what divides us,	47:46
	that what we have should be used in interests	47:49
	of what we essentially are and can be,	47:51
	that to realize a truly human life,	47:55
	we must achieve it together.	47:59
	It is a faith of the Christian Church	48:03
	that Jesus revealed man as he is	48:05
	in the intention of the creator.	48:08
	But if Jesus made men visible,	48:11
	it is a work of our time and of our society	48:15
	to make men visible.	48:18
	I take this to be the purpose	48:21
	behind the theme of the Afro-American week at Duke.	48:22
	"The beauty of black."	48:26
	In his effort to become visible to himself and his society,	48:29
	the Afro-American is resorting to strong language.	48:32
	Whites must try to open their eyes and ears.	48:36
	In a paper published last week by the Afro-American Society,	48:40
	its purpose is stated.	48:43
	The motive is not to arouse guilt,	48:46
	not to evoke your sympathy or condemnation,	48:49
	and not to elicit your praise.	48:53
	But our motive is to dispel your ignorance and myths.	48:56
	What will it take to open our eyes	49:02
	to the fact of our fellow men as men,	49:04
	and to pay the price necessary	49:07
	to enable him to realize his essential humanity.	49:09
	After the report of the National Advisory Commission	49:13
	on civil disorders came out last year,	49:15
	the Negro sociologist, Kenneth Clark	49:19
	observed that this report would suffer the same fate	49:22
	as all other such reports.	49:25
	It would be discussed.	49:27
	And that would be that.	49:29
	As an Afro-American burst out	49:32
	in a class discussion of racism,	49:34
	"You whites can understand everything.	49:37
	"You solve problems by discussion.	49:42
	"You think you can take anything out and talk."	49:45
	The fact is that we're being forced	49:53
	to look at our fellow men,	49:54
	if not, because our desire to accept him as brother	49:57
	than because of his desperate demand to be seen and heard.	50:00
	In his introduction to the civil disorders report.	50:05
	I referred to it just a moment ago.	50:08
	Tom Wicker declared,	50:12
	"The righteous are the personification	50:15
	"of the nation's shame,	50:17
	"of its deepest failure, of its greatest challenge.	50:19
	"They will not go away.	50:24
	"They can only be repressed or conceded their humanity.	50:26
	"And the choice is not theirs to make.	50:34
	"They can only force it upon the rest of us."	50:38
	And what this report insists upon	50:41
	is that they are already doing it and intend to keep on.	50:43
	Is there anything more alarming	50:52
	than the paradox of abysmal poverty in the land of plenty?	50:54
	Of a multi billion dollar military machine	50:59
	in a democratic society?	51:02
	Of racism in the land of the free?	51:05
	But it's too easy, too simple	51:09
	to think that the system is wholly out there somewhere,	51:13
	it's in you and me.	51:18
	And so far as I am identified exclusively	51:20
	with anything that is less than all inclusive humanity,	51:22
	I am part of the system.	51:25
	But you and I are also man against the system	51:29
	and so far as we retain	51:32
	some genuine vestige of flesh and blood human beings	51:34
	created in the image of God	51:38
	and understanding ourselves without regard	51:41
	to manmade qualifications.	51:43
	We may see ourselves in the man made visible	51:47
	in Jesus of Nazareth.	51:51
	We also see ourselves	51:54
	in the men whom Jesus provoked to violence.	51:56
	After all, he was responsible	52:04
	for some men becoming murderers, you know.	52:06
	A new Testament scholar said of the picture of Jesus	52:10
	as a good but harmless man,	52:12
	"No one would crucify a teacher who told pleasant stories	52:15
	"to enforce a prudential morality."	52:18
	The fact that he was crucified presupposes a controversy	52:23
	of the most radical kind,	52:25
	Jesus pushed the claim of man as man	52:28
	against all the claims of law, of institutions	52:33
	and of social arrangements.	52:37
	The Sabbath he said was made for men,	52:40
	not men for the Sabbath.	52:44
	The early church fathers viewed Jesus death on the cross	52:49
	as a victory over the powers of sin, death and the devil.	52:52
	While there are mythological interpretation of the atonement	53:00
	may be difficult to translate	53:03
	into 20th century thought forms.	53:05
	It is an historical fact that the death of Jesus	53:07
	was not the end but the beginning of his movement.	53:11
	The Christian Church sees the victory of Jesus	53:15
	in his resurrection from the dead.	53:18
	But his resurrection cannot be understood	53:21
	apart from his life and death.	53:23
	When the Apostle Paul declared to the Colossians,	53:27
	now I'm quoting Colossians 2:15.	53:33
	"When he declared to the Colossians	53:37
	"that Jesus disarmed the principalities and powers	53:38
	"and made a public example of them,	53:43
	"triumphing over them, he was pointing to the cross."	53:45
	In his death, Jesus remained himself	53:52
	independent of the old order of things.	53:56
	The cross threw into bold relief,	54:03
	the naked figure of a man in historic humanity	54:06
	against the background of a decaying world order.	54:10
	For a moment in time,	54:15
	he exposed the demonic nature of that world	54:16
	which is taken for granted by most of us	54:21
	most of the time.	54:25
	He made the system visible.	54:26
	Here was a man who showed what it meant to be a man	54:29
	to the very end,	54:32
	a man who is for other men without reservation	54:34
	and in spite of the worst they could do to him.	54:38
	Is it any wonder that the early Christians	54:42
	believe that through him,	54:45
	they had been initiated into a new order of life.	54:46
	Does this have meaning for us?	54:55
	Or does the playwright, Robert Bolt	55:00
	speak more understandably to us when he concludes his play,	55:02
	"A Man For All seasons."	55:05
	Most of us probably saw the film or even the play.	55:09
	By not perhaps the London production of the play	55:14
	at the Globe Theater in which it ended as follows.	55:16
	The common man comes to the center stage,	55:20
	having taken off his mask as the executioner,	55:24
	"Sir, Thomas Moore, you know, had just been put to death."	55:27
	His common man says to the audience,	55:34
	"I'm breathing, are you breathing too?	55:37
	"It's nice, isn't it?	55:45
	"Isn't difficult to keep alive, friends,	55:48
	"just don't make trouble.	55:51
	"Or if you must make trouble,	55:54
	"make the sort that's expected.	55:56
	"Well, I don't need to tell you that, goodnight.	56:00
	"If we should bump into one another, recognize me."	56:05
	Exits, curtain.	56:10
	Or as we say in church, amen.	56:16
	(bright organ music)	56:25
	(bright choral music)	57:04
	(bright organ music)	59:21
	♪ Praise the Lord, praise the Lord ♪	1:00:56
	♪ Praise the Lord in holy songs of joy ♪	1:01:04
	(choral music)	1:01:13
	♪ Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah ♪	1:01:34
	♪ Praise the Lord, praise the Lord ♪	1:01:44
	♪ praise the Lord in holy songs of joy ♪	1:01:53
	♪ Praise the Lord, praise the Lord ♪	1:02:02
	(bright choral music)	1:02:10
	(bright organ music)	1:04:26
	(bright choral music)	1:04:52

Item Info

Title:

Thomas E. McCollough - "Society and the System" (February 9, 1969)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4ht2md12

Date:

February 9, 1969

Speaker:

McCollough, Thomas E.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0467
ref6139_162
uachapelsermaud
duke:628343
dcrau002458
ark:/87924/r4ht2md12
9b8a014e-8b7b-457b-b429-fcae42f8e619

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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English

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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Thomas E. McCollough - "Society and the System" (February 9, 1969)

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