William W. Finlator - "Faith and Morals" (July 11, 1976)

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	(choir singing)	0:18
	(organ playing)	1:43
	(choir singing with organ)	2:44
Speaker 1	The scriptures tell us,	7:20
	all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.	7:22
	Let us therefore make our common confession to almighty God.	7:28
	Oh, holy God.	7:35
	We give thanks for our heritage.	7:37
	We confess before you and our neighbor that our pious	7:40
	language and actions have often deceived us and blinded us	7:45
	to the deceits and the destructive use of power.	7:51
	Which has been a part of our history.	7:56
	We confess with shame our broken trust and treaties.	7:59
	The massacres and the enslavement,	8:05
	which are part of our past	8:08
	open our eyes	8:11
	that we may see and confess the injustice and oppression,	8:13
	which we now participate in through our active involvement.	8:20
	For our passive silence,	8:26
	and then put in our hearts	8:29
	the desire and the power to heal,	8:32
	to enlighten and to set free.	8:36
	Amen.	8:40
	Let us continue in prayer.	8:43
	As we make our individual confessions to almighty God.	8:44
	Hear these words of assurance,	9:10
	as we find them in the prayer book of the church.	9:12
	The psalms,	9:16
	he will hide me in his shelter and the day of trouble.	9:19
	He will conceal me under the cover of his tent.	9:23
	Wait for the Lord.	9:28
	Be strong. Let your heart take courage.	9:30
	Yay.	9:35
	Wait for the Lord.	9:36
	The Lord is near to the brokenhearted	9:40
	and saves the crushed in spirit.	9:44
	(organ playing)	10:04
	(choir singing)	10:12
	Our Old Testament lesson is from several	12:24
	portions of the Old Testament.	12:27
	The first, the book of Exodus the 20th chapter,	12:31
	these select verses.	12:33
	And God spoke all these words saying,	12:38
	I am the Lord your God	12:42
	who brought you out of the land of Egypt,	12:44
	out of the house of bondage.	12:47
	You shall have no other Gods before me.	12:50
	You shall not make yourself a graven image or any likeness	12:54
	of anything that is in heaven above,	12:59
	or that is in the earth beneath,	13:02
	or that is in the water under the earth.	13:05
	Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,	13:11
	honor your father and your mother,	13:16
	that your days may be long in the land, which the Lord,	13:18
	your God gives you.	13:22
	You shall not kill.	13:25
	You shall not commit adultery.	13:28
	You shall not steal.	13:31
	You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.	13:34
	You shall not covet your neighbor's house.	13:38
	You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his man servant,	13:42
	or his maid servant,	13:47
	or his ox	13:50
	or his ass.	13:51
	Or anything that is your neighbors.	13:53
	From the 15th chapter of Psalms.	14:04
	Oh Lord, who shall sojourn in thy tent	14:10
	who shall dwell on thy holy hill.	14:14
	He who walks blamelessly and does what is right	14:18
	and speaks truth from his heart	14:23
	who does not slander with his tongue	14:26
	and does no evil to his friend.	14:29
	Nor takes up a reproach against his neighbor.	14:33
	And from the 24th chapter.	14:43
	The Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof,	14:46
	the world and those who dwell therein	14:50
	for he has founded it upon the seas	14:53
	and established it upon the rivers	14:57
	who shall ascend the hill of the Lord	15:00
	and who shall stand in his holy place.	15:03
	He who has clean hands and a pure heart	15:07
	who does not lift up his soul to what is false	15:11
	and does not swear deceitfully.	15:15
	He will receive blessing from the Lord	15:19
	and vindication from the God of his salvation.	15:21
	Such, is a generation of those who seek him.	15:25
	Who seek the face of the God of Jacob.	15:29
	And from Micah, the prophet, the sixth chapter.	15:36
	With what shall I come before the Lord	15:43
	and bow myself before God on high.	15:46
	Shall I come before him with burnt offerings?	15:50
	With calves a year old?	15:53
	Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of Rams?	15:57
	With 10 thousands of rivers of oil?	16:00
	Shall I give my first born for my transgression?	16:04
	The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?	16:08
	He has showed you, oh man, what is good?	16:14
	And what does the Lord require of you?	16:18
	But to do justice	16:20
	and to love kindness,	16:22
	and to walk humbly with your God.	16:25
	And the New Testament lesson from the epistle of James.	16:33
	If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his	16:41
	tongue, but deceives his heart,	16:46
	this man's religion is vain.	16:49
	Religion that is pure and undefiled before God	16:53
	and the father is this.	16:56
	To visit orphans and widows in their affliction.	16:59
	And to keep oneself unstained	17:04
	from the world.	17:08
	Here ends the morning lesson.	17:11
	(organ playing)	17:15
	(choir singing)	17:25
	We are not alone.	18:04
	We live in God's world.	18:06
All	We believe in God who has created and is creating,	18:09
	who has come and the truly human Jesus	18:15
	to reconcile and make new.	18:18
	Who works in us and others by the spirit	18:21
	We trust God who calls us to be the church	18:26
	to celebrate life and its fullness,	18:31
	to love and serve others,	18:34
	to seek justice and resist evil,	18:37
	to proclaim Jesus crucified and risen.	18:41
	Our judge and our hope	18:45
	in life and death	18:48
	in life beyond death.	18:51
	God is with us.	18:53
	We are not alone.	18:56
	Thanks be to God.	18:58
Speaker 1	The Lord be with you.	19:03
	Let us pray.	19:07
	We thank the Lord of life and death	19:23
	bestower of time and former of creation.	19:27
	That thou has made us,	19:32
	but a little lower than the angels.	19:33
	For lips to praise the.	19:37
	For tongues to thank the.	19:41
	For minds to glorify the.	19:44
	We give thanks and praise.	19:48
	Neither tongue nor mind,	19:52
	word nor thought can contain our joy and gladness	19:55
	that you are the one who has created and redeemed us.	20:00
	We delight in your wisdom.	20:06
	We grow by your forgiveness.	20:09
	Your spirit enlarges our spirits	20:13
	and by your presence,	20:17
	our time is made pregnant with meaning and purpose.	20:19
	Oh Lord, our Lord.	20:24
	How magnificent is your name and all the Earth,	20:27
	how magnificent thy redeeming and regenerating influence in	20:31
	our unfulfilled lives.	20:36
	And this Pentecost season,	20:40
	we pray the holy comforter,	20:42
	that thou who	20:46
	must need the,	20:49
	that we who most need the	20:50
	that thou be with us and with all those who need the most in	20:53
	whatever station and whatever circumstance and whatever	20:58
	place they may be.	21:02
	That they may feel thy comforting presence	21:05
	in a special way, and receive its manifold benefits	21:08
	of body and spirit.	21:13
	Mindful as we are of your life giving and profoundly	21:17
	comforting presence in this special season.	21:21
	We lift up now the special needs	21:25
	of those near and dear to us.	21:27
	We name them silently in our hearts before the.	21:31
	Oh thou Lord of nations and creator of history,	21:48
	the Sunday after independence day, we give thanks,	21:55
	especially for the great moments and the great persons	21:58
	and dreams in our nation's history.	22:01
	There is indeed much in our national story	22:06
	which we must lament.	22:08
	But much there is to which we must also celebrate.	22:12
	We pray the Lord confirmed the good,	22:17
	sift the evil and ill inspired.	22:21
	Raise up out of our midst,	22:26
	strong-willed women and men with visions	22:28
	for justice and peace.	22:31
	To provide the right kind of leadership and influence.	22:35
	We are glad for this land Lord	22:40
	and we pray privately that it may be indeed throughout its	22:44
	history, a light to the nations.	22:47
	Dispelling the shadows of tyranny,	22:51
	greed and injustice	22:54
	both at home and abroad.	22:57
	We pray to the our Lord keep us all close to the.	23:02
	That we may dwell evermore in the.	23:06
	And the, in us.	23:10
	We make our prayer in the name of our Lord and Savior who	23:13
	taught us to pray saying...	23:17
All	Our father who art in heaven,	23:19
	hallowed be thy name,	23:23
	thy kingdom come,	23:26
	thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.	23:28
	Give us this day,	23:33
	our daily bread	23:34
	and forgive us our trespasses.	23:36
	As we forgive those who trespass against us	23:39
	and lead us not into temptation,	23:43
	but deliver us from evil.	23:46
	For thine is the kingdom,	23:49
	the power and the glory forever.	23:51
	Amen.	23:56
Speaker 2	Church and Raleigh,	24:25
	which I have served as a minister with	24:28
	various degrees of success and unsuccess for 20 years.	24:33
	Recently, wish either to refurbish my sermons	24:39
	or my study.	24:44
	And then, doing the latter,	24:47
	my office, like that organ back there	24:51
	is undergoing some renovation.	24:55
	And in your case, a brand new organ,	24:59
	this innovation,	25:05
	which means I have the addition of a new filing cabinet.	25:06
	I forced me to go through with what the constitution calls	25:12
	my papers and effects.	25:17
	Some of this stuff, I am refiling.	25:22
	Some of it, I am mailing to the state historical society	25:28
	of Wisconsin in Madison.	25:33
	And some I'm shredding.	25:36
	In this summoning up, remembrance of things past	25:41
	in my life.	25:46
	I'm impressed with the consistency,	25:49
	with which I have at least tried	25:52
	to fulfill a commitment made years ago.	25:56
	Which was that my ministry should give major emphasis	26:03
	to corporate and collective ethics	26:08
	rather than to private and individual	26:14
	morality.	26:19
	Not that I have minimized or do minimize	26:21
	privatized	26:26
	or single sin,	26:29
	but that I have long known that	26:33
	some 95% of my fellow clergymen	26:35
	would be vigorously working that side of the street.	26:42
	To the neglect as I feared of what Saint Paul called	26:47
	the principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness	26:52
	in the high places.	26:57
	What's a border from Reinhold Niebuhr's great book,	27:00
	Moral Man and Immoral Society.	27:06
	My decision was to leave moral man	27:11
	to the tender mercies of my brethren	27:16
	while I, however, ineffectively in my Don Quixote role	27:19
	would take on the immoral society.	27:24
	And I have no apologies	27:29
	except that I didn't do it well.	27:32
	But on this first Sunday,	27:37
	as you mentioned in the prayer to Richie.	27:39
	The first Sunday after the bicentennial,	27:44
	July four,	27:47
	I am making an about face	27:50
	in turning 180 degrees in the	27:54
	opposite direction.	27:57
	I'm talking with you today	28:00
	about personal and private morals	28:03
	of church people in America.	28:08
	And I'm referring to mea culpa.	28:13
	I have sinned against heaven	28:17
	and in thy sight,	28:21
	and I'm referring to your sins too.	28:23
	I'm raising the question with you about the separation	28:27
	of faith and morals.	28:31
	About people whose daily individual lives	28:36
	contribute to a decadent society.	28:42
	People who resent that phrase in the book of common prayer	28:47
	which tells us there is no health in us.	28:50
	People who wonder why a psychiatrist like	28:58
	Karl Menninger would write a book	29:02
	with a title,	29:05
	Whatever Became of Sin.	29:08
	I am in short calling for a recovery of puritanism.	29:14
	For many years, we have read an article,	29:20
	novels, or heard on TV, and radio	29:25
	or in polite conversation,	29:30
	the constant derision of puritanism or the Puritan ethic.	29:32
	A tour liberated cultured people like you and me	29:39
	loftily dismiss the restrictions and inhibitions	29:45
	and hesitance as to which all flesh is rightly air	29:50
	as puritanical.	29:54
	If it's puritanical, it's passé.	29:57
	People, we are told who have come of age	30:01
	transcend the hypocrisies	30:05
	and repressions	30:08
	of our New England heritage.	30:09
	Lord Macaulay, great English historian,	30:12
	early sounded this note when he opined	30:17
	that the Puritans	30:22
	of his day,	30:24
	opposed	30:26
	bear baiting.	30:28
	Not because of the pain that brought the bear,	30:30
	but because of the pleasure it afforded the spectator.	30:34
	But in light of recent revelations of the honor code	30:41
	violations by our military institutions	30:44
	and other educational institutions.	30:48
	In light of the outrageous misbehavior of some	30:53
	national legislators	30:58
	or the acceptance of bribes by high officials.	31:01
	The frightening increase of crimes of violence	31:05
	and white collar crimes.	31:09
	The proliferation of pornography,	31:14
	the breaking up of homes,	31:17
	the rise in illegitimacy and abortions.	31:19
	In light of all of this, we would do well,	31:23
	I think to give serious and prayerful thought to the Puritan	31:25
	and his ethic.	31:30
	But first,	31:32
	what is	31:34
	a Puritan?	31:35
	Now listen to this definition by our friend Webster,	31:38
	"Pilgrim is one who	31:43
	express it and they because of adherence to a religious	31:47
	sect.	31:50
	Practices or preachers a more	31:51
	rigorous	31:55
	or professedly purer moral code,	31:56
	then that which prevails.	32:00
	One who on religious or ethical grounds	32:02
	invades against current practices,	32:06
	pleasures	32:10
	or the like.	32:12
	Which he regards as lacks,	32:13
	impure, or corrupted.	32:17
	Now before some of the...	32:21
	The ERA devotees	32:25
	and this congregation	32:27
	reach the conclusion that we are dealing only with males.	32:30
	This is what he, the Puritan, felt and did.	32:34
	Webster ads by way of illustration,	32:40
	the following quotation from Shakespeare,	32:43
	"She would make a Puritan of the devil".	32:51
	Since I could not find this quote in Bartlett,	32:59
	a librarian of our congregation in Raleigh kind of sent word	33:02
	to me that it occurs in act four, scene six, line nine,	33:06
	a paraclete.	33:10
	I went back to Webster's depiction of our awesome parent.	33:14
	Is this description all bad?	33:20
	I find it forbidding and astaire,	33:24
	but also refreshing and	33:27
	bracing.	33:31
	After all, Jesus told his disciples that	33:33
	unless their righteousness exceeded	33:36
	that of the Pharisees,	33:40
	the religious leaders of his day,	33:41
	they would have no wise enter into his kingdom.	33:43
	Now as much as I believe	33:48
	in a more equitable distribution of the national wealth	33:51
	and I do.	33:56
	Or in social and economic justice,	33:59
	And I do.	34:03
	And in the bringing of all people under the protections of	34:05
	the bill of rights,	34:09
	And I do.	34:11
	I do not think that our nation has a future	34:14
	apart from some kind of revival and our private lives	34:18
	and hearts.	34:22
	Of this spirit of Puritanism.	34:24
	Wordsworth regarding John Milton,	34:31
	who was the Puritan par excellence.	34:35
	Wordsworth regarded at Milton as a man of great faith	34:39
	and morals.	34:42
	And he wrote in 1802	34:44
	these words of invocation,	34:48
	"Milton,	34:51
	thou shouldst to be living at this hour.	34:54
	Angland,	34:57
	hath need of the,	34:59
	she is a fan	35:02
	of stagnant waters.	35:04
	Altar,	35:08
	sword,	35:09
	and pen,	35:10
	fireside,	35:12
	the heroic wealth of hauling power.	35:13
	Have forfeited their ancient English hour	35:16
	of endless happiness.	35:19
	We are selfish men.	35:22
	Oh, raise us up.	35:25
	Returned to us again.	35:28
	And give us manners, fresh air,	35:31
	freedom, power.	35:35
	We need only substitute	35:40
	America	35:43
	and American	35:45
	for England and English	35:48
	and read the portion of the sonnet again,	35:51
	to bring it home.	35:55
	Milton,	35:58
	thou shouldst to be living at this hour.	35:59
	America	36:02
	hath need of the.	36:04
	She,	36:06
	is a fan	36:08
	of stagnant waters.	36:10
	Altar,	36:13
	sword,	36:14
	and pen,	36:14
	fireside.	36:16
	The heroic wealth of hauling power have forfeited their	36:18
	ancient American hour	36:22
	of endless happiness.	36:26
	We are selfish men.	36:29
	Oh, raise us up.	36:31
	Return to us again	36:33
	and give us manners,	36:36
	fresh air,	36:39
	freedom,	36:40
	power.	36:42
	A few weeks back,	36:47
	the announcement appeared in the papers	36:49
	of the death of the famous preacher,	36:53
	Dr. Leslie Weatherhead in England.	36:56
	Years before we were tossing about the term permissiveness,	37:02
	Dr. Weatherhead wrote of a young wife	37:08
	who confessed to her husband,	37:11
	an act of infidelity for which she was deeply contrite.	37:12
	He forgave her immediately and handsomely,	37:17
	which both surprised her and moved her to gratitude	37:19
	until she learned later	37:23
	that he himself had been involved	37:26
	in numerous infidelities.	37:28
	How much of what passes for broad mindedness and acceptance	37:33
	may in fact be self-serving and defensive.	37:38
	We do not stand in judgment or protest wrong.	37:43
	When we see it.	37:47
	For fear that we ourselves	37:49
	may be subjected to scrutiny.	37:51
	In an open society,	37:55
	this could be called live and let live.	37:56
	But a conscience informed by the Christian faith warrants,	38:01
	that it may also be sin	38:05
	and let sin.	38:08
	The Psalmist speaks of the man	38:13
	in whose eyes a re-appropriate	38:16
	is condemned	38:19
	because	38:21
	that man	38:22
	fears	38:23
	the Lord.	38:24
	Now your true Puritan will have none of this.	38:28
	He subjects himself to the highest ethical standards	38:32
	and he is rigorous in its enforcement.	38:35
	When he fails, he is not afraid to experience guilt.	38:39
	Then go around consulting every psychiatrist or counselor	38:44
	to remove him from guilt.	38:48
	He's not afraid of repentance and amendment.	38:51
	By the same token,	38:55
	he does not hesitate to identify and protest wrong	38:57
	in other people.	39:01
	He knows little of permissiveness.	39:03
	Though, he may know much of forgiveness.	39:05
	And if this Puritan could find some kind of rebirth in our	39:09
	hearts	39:12
	and I would want a generous addition of compassion and the	39:14
	milk of human kindness.	39:19
	He may not have possessed when he preceded the stern	39:20
	and rock bound coast.	39:23
	If this could happen,	39:25
	how would this affect your life and mine?	39:27
	With regard to our legislators	39:32
	and the infamy they have brought to the nation.	39:35
	We would make it crystal clear, I think.	39:38
	That those who cannot refrain from breaking the law	39:41
	will be constrained from making the law.	39:45
	We will be tolerant of (indistinct) that overlooks	39:49
	mistresses and revelry.	39:52
	As human for so long as they are not	39:55
	put on the public payroll.	39:57
	Neither will we fall for any ploy about Washington being	40:01
	the great corrupter of morals.	40:05
	We would learn about the private morals	40:08
	and business ethics of politicians.	40:10
	Before we sent them to Washington.	40:12
	This of course goes for every public office,	40:16
	including the president.	40:19
	We, of course,	40:21
	would exercise our right to demand that	40:22
	no candidate for president shall be fuzzy on the issues.	40:25
	Such a secret intelligence,	40:30
	federalization of the welfare,	40:33
	national health, relief for the cities,	40:34
	revision of the tax structure,	40:38
	and foreign policy.	40:39
	But we would also exercise the right to demand that	40:42
	no candidate shall be fuzzy in private morals.	40:44
	While neither the constitution or Christian reality require	40:51
	that we have a Saint to be elected president	40:54
	and short of Lincoln we never got one.	40:58
	No one should offer for this position	41:02
	who does not score high.	41:05
	If you will forgive a pun	41:08
	on ethics,	41:11
	purity...	41:13
	It has been remarked of George Orwell	41:19
	who kept up a long feud with the institutionalized Trish	41:22
	1984 is getting close.	41:28
	It's been remarked of Orwell	41:30
	that he was a moralist without religion.	41:32
	Here in America where spiritual fervor and charisma	41:39
	seemed to be reaching new heights.	41:42
	There is much religion without morality.	41:44
	Everyone believes, for example,	41:48
	in the ultimacy of the great commandment	41:49
	thou shalt not kill.	41:52
	Yet, our nation has perhaps	41:53
	the highest incidence of homicides	41:56
	of any of the industrialized countries.	41:59
	The heart of this human carnage	42:02
	is the hand gun.	42:05
	Judges boasts that they take the gun with them to the bench.	42:09
	Untold millions of guns circulate freely	42:14
	across the land of the stash and our homeless	42:16
	where far more kinsmen are killed by them then burglars.	42:19
	A car parked at a hospital,	42:24
	I recently visited display this message,	42:26
	"Anyone who takes away my gun	42:30
	will have to pry it from my cold dead fingers".	42:33
	The mirror suggestion of the mildest form of licensing	42:40
	of the gun.	42:44
	Even the handgun.	42:46
	Raised as a human cry of protests,	42:47
	not just from the all powerful national rifle association,	42:49
	but from church bodies gathered in the name of the prince of	42:55
	peace.	42:58
	Japan, for example, has strict gun control.	43:00
	Last year that was one recorded homicide in that country	43:02
	by a gun.	43:06
	In New York city alone, during the same year,	43:07
	1200 people were shot with guns	43:11
	and killed.	43:14
	Violence	43:16
	must be	43:18
	indeed	43:19
	as American	43:21
	as apple pie.	43:23
	In a world,	43:27
	where millions of human beings	43:28
	are literally dying of starvation.	43:30
	Millions of little children will never live beyond	43:33
	eight or ten years.	43:36
	We,	43:38
	we are overfed.	43:39
	We are over boozed.	43:42
	We are overstimulated.	43:45
	We are over entertained	43:47
	and we are not happy.	43:49
	Some people call this enemy.	43:52
	We require	43:55
	not once,	43:57
	but again and again.	43:58
	Abortion on demand. As though the killing of a human fetus	44:00
	were a cool, uncluttered clinical thing.	44:06
	We call adultery	44:10
	open marriage.	44:13
	We call the divorce mill, a modern phenomenon.	44:15
	We cheat on our income tax at home	44:20
	and our children cheat on their exams at school.	44:24
	And the fault there, Brutus, lies not in the act,	44:28
	but in the being caught in the act.	44:32
	Our racist hearts are exposed,	44:36
	not only in the convulsions at Boston.	44:38
	But then those subtle, hidden,	44:42
	and refined ways that still perpetuate the inequities	44:44
	of our society.	44:48
	On November 20,	44:51
	1886,	44:53
	James Russell Lowell	44:55
	wrote a motto for the American copyright league,	44:57
	which to use an overworked word seems relevant	45:02
	today.	45:07
	Listen,	45:09
	in vain, we call old notions,	45:11
	budge and bend our conscience to our dealings.	45:14
	The ten commandments will not budge	45:20
	and stealing still continues stealing.	45:24
	We are in short,	45:30
	paganized Christians.	45:33
	Our faith is one thing, our morality,	45:35
	or lack of it is something else.	45:38
	What God has joined together.	45:41
	We day by day	45:44
	put us under.	45:46
	The scriptures, read this morning,	45:48
	it's richly speak clearly of this indissoluble union.	45:51
	Who shall ascend and under the heel of the Lord?	45:58
	He didn't have clean hands and a pure heart.	46:02
	What does the Lord require of us? To do justice.	46:06
	Love mercy. Walk humbly with God.	46:09
	What is religion, pure and undefiled before God?	46:12
	To visit the widows, the orphans in their need.	46:15
	Keep oneself unspotted from the world.	46:19
	Can we fail? There we have failed.	46:23
	To see puritanism in all of this.	46:26
	Only when we have this insight,	46:29
	can we understand as few of us do.	46:31
	The great beatitude	46:34
	blessed are the pure in heart	46:37
	for they shall see God.	46:41
	It was after	46:46
	God commanded that we love him	46:49
	with all our hearts,	46:53
	that we were then commanded.	46:56
	Thou shalt not bear false witness,	46:59
	thou shalt not kill,	47:02
	thou shalt not commit adultery,	47:04
	thou shalt not covet.	47:06
	We are in closing.	47:12
	We are not required to save this world.	47:15
	Though Jesus did tell us that we are the salt of the earth	47:19
	and the light of the world.	47:23
	That salt must never lose its savor	47:25
	nor light put under a table.	47:28
	St. Paul did say that we were to shine as lights	47:31
	in the midst of a crooked and adulterous generation.	47:34
	We are, nonetheless, not required to save the world.	47:39
	Even though God sent Jesus into the world because	47:43
	he so left it.	47:45
	But we are required to remain faithful to our Christian	47:48
	witness and calling.	47:53
	no matter what the world does or which way it goes.	47:55
	Put another way,	48:00
	as Methodist missionary	48:02
	E. Stanley Jones used to say,	48:03
	"we are to be a part, not of the disease,	48:06
	but of the cure".	48:10
	And we respond to the calls and needs	48:13
	and suffering in the world.	48:16
	We ought to keep ourselves unspotted from the world.	48:19
	We are in the world, but not of the world.	48:24
	This is Puritanism	48:29
	at its best.	48:32
	So,	48:36
	where there is drunkenness	48:38
	let us stand for sobriety.	48:42
	Where there is conspicuous consumption	48:45
	let us stand for frugality.	48:49
	Where there is self indulgence	48:53
	let us stand for self denial.	48:56
	Where there is waste	48:59
	let us stand for the economy.	49:02
	Where there is lust	49:05
	let us stand for virtue.	49:07
	Where there deceit	49:09
	let us stand for rectitude.	49:11
	If this be puritanism, make the most of it.	49:14
	There can be no further	49:20
	enrichment	49:22
	of your material life and mind.	49:25
	Well that they can comment impoverishment	49:28
	of someone else's life.	49:33
	That can mean no further increase.	49:36
	And the national GNP	49:40
	without diminishing	49:44
	the national GP	49:47
	of developing nations.	49:49
	That's why we went to Vietnam	49:53
	and that's why they got mixed up in Angola.	49:56
	And don't let nobody tell you different.	50:00
	The Puritan ethic will teach us	50:05
	to live in a world	50:09
	and share it.	50:12
	We are finally not to be conformed to this world,	50:22
	but to be transformed by	50:27
	the renewal of our minds and hearts.	50:29
	Even in the world of pornography, of obscenity,	50:33
	of perversity, of infidelity,	50:36
	of greed, violence, racism, and hatred.	50:39
	And as St. Paul put it have it done all	50:43
	we ought to stand.	50:48
	Toward the end	50:51
	of his long and productive life,	50:53
	George Santayana wrote a book,	50:57
	which he titled	51:02
	The Last	51:05
	Puritan.	51:07
	If need be, we must be just that.	51:11
	We shall pray.	51:17
	Take away	51:22
	our love	51:24
	of sinning.	51:26
	Pure and spotless.	51:28
	Let us be	51:31
	in the faith at its beginning.	51:33
	Set our hearts	51:38
	at Liberty.	51:40
	Amen.	51:42
	(organ playing)	51:48
	(choir singing) (organ playing)	52:27
	(organ playing)	56:27
	(organ playing)	59:53
	(choir singing)	59:58
	(organ playing)	1:01:54
Speaker 1	Oh Lord our God, send upon us thy holy spirit	1:03:10
	to cleanse our hearts,	1:03:16
	to hallow our gifts	1:03:18
	and to perfect the offering of ourselves to the	1:03:21
	Through Jesus Christ our Lord.	1:03:26
	Amen.	1:03:29
	(organ playing)	1:03:35
Speaker 1	The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.	1:07:15
	The love of God,	1:07:18
	the communion and the fellowship of the holy spirit.	1:07:20
	Be with us all this day and forevermore.	1:07:25
	(choir singing)	1:07:35
	(bell ringing)	1:08:31
	(bell ringing)	1:08:36
	(bell ringing)	1:08:40
	(organ playing)	1:08:51
	(clapping)	1:15:39

Item Info

Title:

William W. Finlator - "Faith and Morals" (July 11, 1976)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4cz3662d

Date:

July 11, 1976

Speaker:

Finlator, William W.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0844
ref6888_fh7
uachapelsermaud
duke:628178
dcrau002803
ark:/87924/r4cz3662d
2af33f6c-8d4f-41c5-ba09-694cc0891d70

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Language:

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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William W. Finlator - "Faith and Morals" (July 11, 1976)

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