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Welcome to Voices From The Archives
A journey through the rich history of Fountain Street Church, a unique, non-denominational congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Through recordings from our archives, we bring you the voices of past ministers, guest speakers, and community leaders as they wrestle with timeless questions of faith, justice, and the evolving role of religion in society.
Each episode revisits key moments from Fountain Street Church's history, from thought-provoking sermons to pivotal discussions on spirituality, social action, and the liberal religious tradition. Whether you're a longtime member or discovering us for the first time, these archival recordings offer insight, inspiration, and a connection to a progressive legacy that continues to shape the present.
Produced by Kayle Clements with assistance from Dick Wood and Nathan Dannison. Theme music by Kayle Clements.
My name is Charles Burkholder, and it's my privilege to welcome you here for this final, formal event in our month-long celebration. Since early September, we, Fountain Streeters, have had the opportunity to recognize and rejoice in the remarkable history of our beloved church. And tonight, we just move to the next level of that celebration, and that is the celebration of anticipating our future.
Through 125 years, as David Rankin reminded us in the sermon that kicked off this celebration, through this 125 years, this church has survived and thrived because we energized and lived on one liberal principle or tradition, namely, the freedom of religious expression. So tonight, our five preaching ministers are going to help us continue that vigor and vision to this essential and cherished tradition. They will lead us in thinking together on a theme which we've selected called advancing the liberal tradition, why and how.
I expect that in the course of this, we'll learn from our leaders what you and I can expect and what we might discover together that we can explore and develop for our church community and for the greater community in which we live in the years ahead. I doubt if many of us will be around 125 years from now to record that or to rejoice in it, but we'll be recording it as it goes. There are some quick thank yous I want to give for this evening, in planning this evening's symposium.
Certainly the panelists, but you'll be giving them thanks later, but also the planning committee members for this evening, including Vicki Travis, Nancy Van Bells, Tom Logan, Joanne Earle, Steve Crandall, and then our technician with our videos and audio, Dick Wood and Maynard Breck. And a special thanks to our two moderators, Judith Fry and John Cook. It just happens, we didn't know this when we asked them to be moderators, that both Judy and John have been members of this church for 25 years.
They've brought their children to this church and each of them has served at least one term on the governing board. So they will team up to introduce this thing, facilitate it, and knowing our five panelists probably also means controlling it. John will describe the evening format and get things rolling.
So it's yours, John. Thank you. We're going to have each of the ministers give us a five-minute presentation of what their vision of the future of the church is, which will be followed by a discussion among themselves for about 20 or 25 minutes, and then we would like to open for questions from the audience.
We would like to finish somewhere around nine o'clock, and I'm going to cut anybody off who gets too long-winded. So we're going to start with Bruce Bode, who is our Associate Minister for Peer Support and Adult Education. He has the longest tenure, other than Duncan, on our ministerial staff.
And then we'll be Don Hoekstra, who is our Associate Minister for Properties and Finance, and then Sue Cinnamon, the Associate Minister for Education, and then Duncan, and then David. So Bruce, go ahead. The thoughts that I'm going to be presenting tonight are thoughts that I had prepared prior to Duncan's provocative sermon Sunday.
I'm hoping most of you are here. But I'm going to go ahead and present the thoughts that I was thinking before that time, as if that sermon had not been given, so you see the direction that my thinking was taking, and also you will see that he is giving an answer to a question that I'm raising and hope that we can get into a little bit tonight. Now, our topic, as you know, is advancing the liberal tradition, why and how.
But I've had a question that I've struggled with as long as I've been a part of the liberal tradition, and that is a question that precedes the question of why and how, and that is the question of what. What is the liberal tradition that we are supposed to be advancing? Can it be simply values and principles without any theological or mythological content? Now, David has summarized as nicely as I have seen it summarized in ten statements the values and principles of the liberal way in religion. He spoke to the first one the first week, the freedom of religious expression, but it also includes the toleration of religious ideas, the authority of reason and conscience, a never-ending search for truth.
It includes also the unity of experience, that is to say no conflict between faith and science. It also has to do with the worth and dignity of each human being, the ethical application of religion, love, the motive force of love, the importance of intentional religious community, and also the democratic process thereof. Now, these are values and principles of the liberal way of religion, but you see they have more to do with process than with a specific content.
As a matter of fact, when we do the church information classes, the orientation classes, I often make that distinction. I say that the liberal way in religion has more to do with process. The content is the individual's challenge and responsibility.
However, I've never been entirely comfortable with that. Does there need to be a specific content in liberal religion? Now, we have some idea what it would be to be a liberal Protestant institution and an idea of what it is to be a liberal Catholic, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish religious institution, but can there be what I will call a generic liberal religious institution, that is to say one which just promotes values and principles without attachment to a specific content? Can you have a religion, for example, that does not have something like a canon, a rule, that is to say a body of literature to which, like a scripture, which it refers to out of which it operates? Can you have one that does not have a set of rituals or a set of religious disciplines? Can you have a religion that it's going to sustain itself? Can you have a religion that will sustain itself without a mythology, without a central story with which and through which you grapple with the essential religious issues of a life? Or again, can a religion be what I will call, for lack of a better term, an archetypal liberal religious institution, that is to say a religion that teaches the archetypes, the common features of a religion, but without attachment, again, to any specific one? Can you
have a religion, for example, which just says, well, here are the stories on creation, here are stories on redemption, here are stories on God and the gods and the goddesses, see if you can find something there that works. Are we a generic liberal institution, an archetypal liberal religious institution, or are we a liberal church, that is to say, a liberal Christian institution? And if so, what does that mean? We follow, after all, the Christian calendar.
The art and architecture of the church is Christian, so forth and so on. So this is the question I would have us raise this evening. What is the content? Does there need to be a specific content for a religion, for a liberal religion, if we're going to sustain ourselves? Do I have one more minute? Let me give an example of how I struggle and work with this issue.
On the first Sunday of the year, David asked me if I would do the scripture slash reading. That raises the question, in a way, which is it, scripture or reading? The topic had to do with the permanent and the passing. Well, I thought immediately of Psalm 90 as a reading, as a scripture that I could give.
I could show how the psalmist was grappling with the same issue in his way that we are today. I also then thought of a poem that I had recently come across by one of my favorite poets, which spoke more immediately to me on the same topic, more clearly expressed, actually, my own ideas on the subject. Now, which was I to do? What should I read? On the one hand, the poem, I
thought, would have more immediate impact.
And yet, at the same time, I also realized that that poem is not likely to be part of an ongoing literature. Psalm 90 would. That would have a much greater chance of continuing to be a permanent part.
What I did, finally, is I did a little bit of both. I gave a few phrases of Psalm 90, then I went ahead and read the poem. This is kind of where I'm at when it comes to the content of liberal religion.
It's like I have one foot in each world. I feel the need of the importance of of maintaining contact with a specific traditional religious past. And yet, when it comes right down to it, what I usually find myself doing is going with the thing that inspires me at the moment.
But the question I want to raise for our panel and with you is about what is the content that we propose to be advancing into the next century. That is all for now. How did I do? Close.
It should come as no surprise to you that of the five of us here assembled this evening, Bruce and I, the resident Dutch Calvinists among you, have worried and anguished and fretted over this symposium more than the others. It is, I think, a function of our depravity and our upbringing in Dutch enclaves that contributes to this. My immediate response to Bruce's conclusion when he shared it with me on Tuesday was, in typical Calvinist fashion, three Bible verses from the law, Moses in Deuteronomy saying, I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.
Now choose life so that you and your children may live. The choice is yours. From the prophets,
Elijah confronting his own people with this question, how long will you go limping after two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him, but if Baal is God, follow him.
The choice is yours. And then from the gospel, Matthew having Jesus say, no one can serve two masters. He will either hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and something else. Again, the choice is yours. The liberal tradition at Fountain Street Church is characterized by both the freedom and the encouragement of choice.
The second law of thermodynamics, stated simply, says that the universe and its constituent parts and participants are all moving toward more disorder than order. But then I probably don't need to tell you that because preserving or restoring or recreating order in a chaotic world, in our chaotic lives, is a task requiring our best intelligence, our best affection, our best courage, commitment, and conviction. And our best is rooted in our past, but it must also be expressive of our present.
We create our futures by the integrity of our choices and by the realization that our mistakes or failures do not make us mistakes or failures. Advancing the liberal tradition is a process task embodied in and by each and all of us. It is a peopled project, replete with principles, values, beliefs, behaviors, convictions, and commitments.
The liberal tradition at Fountain Street Church began with people. It has been sustained by people. It will be continued by people.
And it is, I think, a tradition which is for the welfare, preservation, and well-being of people as well as principles and values. Advancing the liberal tradition of Fountain Street Church is of the people, by the people, and for the people. Do you reserve your time for someone else? Sue? As they said, the question we were given was advancing the liberal tradition, why and how.
And I want to start with how. How do you advance the tradition? Some of this you might have heard from me before, but there's no such thing as a tradition. Tradition is the act of handing something on.
It is not the act itself. So how we advance the tradition is in the way that we hand that tradition on. And the first way we hand it on is by loving it, by loving the liberal tradition, by loving this church.
That's one of the first things I noticed about this church was the love for it. And in loving it, that's where the story is embodied, because we communicate our love by retelling the story, retelling the story of the church, retelling the story of its accomplishments, retelling the story of the liberal tradition. What pulls people to it is not the story itself.
It's the love that comes through as we tell that story. It's what's moved us by that story. The second part is the teaching.
It's saying what about this story moves us and why we keep going over and over again. I come from a non-traditional tradition. Bruce may tell one creation story, I'm going to tell 15.
And it's in the telling and the teaching of those stories that people begin to experience, and I'm talking about the future, which are the children that are here every Sunday, what creation means, what it means to embody that tradition of creation, whether it's the creation of this church or the creation of the world. The teaching of what are the traditions, what are the principles, what stands out in the story. Is it the act itself or is it the justice that's illustrated by the story? The next two are the harder of the steps, because I think we do the first two very well.
Mentoring, a skill that we've lost. Mentoring is being able to stand with someone, an adult with a child, with a teenager, an adult with an adult, an older person with a younger person. Standing with them as they go through some of the trials that you go through.
Showing them how you have found your path and standing with them as they move forth on theirs. And the last is modeling, living your life as if it is a liberal tradition. Those are the two that I think are central to our future and also the two hardest to grasp in this time when our energies and attentions are so split.
I grew up in a household where the church was central to our family life. That was the one institution outside of other school and other places that everything else flowed out of. Now we live in a culture where the church is one of many institutions that our families may be involved in.
So we may be part of Wemiak. We may be part of Fountain Street Church. We may be part of this, that, and the other.
And the attention is not there in terms of modeling religious life. When the church is central, you begin to see the religious principles play themselves out in daily life. When it is one of many institutions, it's hard to identify what is religious about our life.
That's my question about where we're going. I was kidding that I was going to talk about traditional family values tonight. Because I think that what we need to look for in moving the liberal tradition forward is paying attention to the mentoring and the modeling that we're going to do for the next generation.
Showing the next generation, showing our family, friends, and community what is timeless and how we hold all of life sacred. And I think that's how I begin to answer the question why. We do it one way, but the reason we do it is to put the sacredness of life at the center of our lives and not something we pay attention to on Sunday, Saturday when we do something special.
It becomes the meaning of our lives. And we have to struggle with community and individual. One of the issues in a generic or archetypical spiritual path is that it can become a psychological path for personal development.
We really need to pull forth what it is about community and how we hold community at the center along with the sacredness of all life as we make our individual journeys to what wholeness is where we all are. I've been counting right, it's my turn. I don't like the title.
Advancing the liberal tradition. I think that's a slogan and it's shallow, superficial, and relatively little meaning. To speak in behalf of liberalism is to wave a flag that you know is going to attract some and repel others.
And it's a political kind of performance. It's like waving the flag of conservatism. Neither one is sufficient.
We've got problems to deal with in our life and society. Don't give me the flag under which you're going to deal with them. I want to know how you're going to deal with those problems.
And just to say liberal doesn't say anything. I think liberalism's dead. I think it's totally outworn.
It's a shibboleth, something that rallies church groups who have no better hold on reality than sloganeering. Liberalism is basically an openness to truth. You realize that truth is ongoing and you're ready for the development of the new.
You're not held by your traditions or by your class or by your church or by your theology. You're free to go looking for the truth. Now that's obvious.
That was established 70 years ago, 80 years ago, 125 years ago. Go looking for the truth. So what's new about that? Why are we touting that? We want to know what the truth is.
And then don't bring me your slogan. Go find the truth. And liberalism, you see, generally has been associated with that open mind.
That's good, but don't brag about it. Use it. Liberalism has been associated with the idealism, with the break with the past, with the hopes for the future, identified with the idea of man as infinite in hope and expectation.
It's been identified with a peaceful world, with a world community, with the nations of the world uniting, all these dreams of the 20s and 30s and 40s. Idealism, that we're going to have one world, and we're going to be brotherly, and we're going to love one another, and we're going to seek the truth. And if you find the truth, it will set you free, and it will make you a good person.
Nonsense. Doesn't make you a good person at all, and it doesn't bring any answer. Because, you see, all that truth-seeking, all that openness, all that optimism and idealism has brought mankind to the worst plight in the history of civilization.
I don't think any question about it. The hatred, the fighting, the bitterness, the wars that are going on. In 1994, a liberal nation finds the only way to solve problems dealing with our neighbors is to send armed forces in.
Think of that, for the one world. Is that what liberalism, what openness, what loving relationship, what understanding has brought us to? That's where we are. You see, we are only now coming back.
And if some of you were shocked by some of the things I said Sunday, I had more time. I'll shock you more, I hope. Coming back to the depravity of man, to the unbelievable greed, to the embedded hatred, to tribalism.
Few of the things. All there in the world today, and we go waving flags for liberalism. It isn't worth it.
I recall a similar evening. Two years ago, the Board of Governors held a lengthy session in order to write a mission statement for Fountain Street Church. And when I tried to enter into those discussions, I discovered that I was totally unable to participate.
And afterwards, I realized that I could not think of the liberal tradition in any kind of polished intellectual abstractions, because I was immersed in the muck of reality. I think it's fascinating, and I recommend it to you, to trace our liberal heritage. The Jewish prophets, the Greek philosophers, the Christian martyrs, the Renaissance humanists, the Reformation radicals, the Enlightenment scholars, the modern scientists, and all of those who contributed to the rich diversity of religious liberalism.
No single source will ever describe our unique existence. It is a quilt of many, many colors, with each important to the whole. As a senior minister, however, I am forced to think in concrete, day-to-day, down-to-earth terms.
And while I'm aided and nurtured by our heritage, I have to visualize the solution to real problems. It is an ongoing existential process of attempting to advance the tradition to new levels of achievement. How can I improve the quality of the worship services on Sunday mornings? How can I lift the morale of a gifted and creative staff? How can I protect the precious integrity of the democratic process? How can I encourage a social action thrust that will give substance to our rhetoric? How can I raise a budget of $750,000 in order to fund 1,800 visions? How can I guarantee that every person in crisis will be helped and cared for? How can I isolate those who would destroy the institution with their single-issue fanaticisms? How can I deal with a flood or a collapsing roof or the needs of our handicapped members? Sometimes I yearn for the leisure of a philosopher, but you see these practical problems keep intervening, disturbing all of my elevated thoughts.
And that's why I'm not much help in drafting ideal statements or even looking ahead for more than a year. On the other hand, perhaps the advancement of the liberal tradition also depends on the day-to-day labor, on the sweat of a blue-collar ethic. By the liberal tradition, incidentally, I mean the qualities of openness and curiosity and tolerance and generosity and the desire for promoting human freedom, which have existed as a cluster of values for more than 2,500 years and comprise the content of our common faith, despite the pronouncements of our minister
emeritus, it's not likely to die.
Are these not a reality? Are these not a daily task? Are these not built brick by brick? Are these not embodied in our actual relationships with each other? If we are looking for a meaning, maybe we should pay more attention to the secretary who helps the distressed, and to the sextons who restore this building, and to the teacher who inspires our child, and to the parishioner who visits the sick, and to the need to reach out to the poor in this community. I'm
talking about actual deeds beyond all of our private isms. I think too often we try to escape our mission through debates and discussions and other intellectual diversions.
It's typical of liberals, but perhaps there is no grand definition of who we are, no theological or philosophical abstraction, but we are only the accumulation of many small acts of kindness. As these three anniversaries come to an end, I think each of us might ask, what am I really willing to do for my church today, right now, this moment? And I bet that the real meaning of liberal religion will be found in your action. Now, we have a little time here for all of you to respond to each other.
We are collectively a part of this place, this institution, this entity called Fountain Street Church. So there certainly is a corporate or collective element, yet each and all of us bear the responsibility for our actions or our inactions, our choices, or our refusal to make a choice. I obviously share some of Bruce's concern about what it is that we advance, and I think I share some of David's.
Could it be a bit of optimism that we can, in fact, carry on and accomplish some things if we will but act in that direction? I wouldn't waste my life here, otherwise. Well, neither would I, I think. But it's a hard thing, for me at any rate, it's a very hard thing to talk about.
I included Bruce only because I take special license with him that he doesn't often give me, and didn't this evening, either. But this is really quite an anguishing thing for me to try to talk about. I'd rather not sit here and talk about it.
I'd rather be a little closer to what I hope I'm about more of the time than this, those making decisions and acting on behalf of people and needs. Someone deliver me from myself, please. Let me comment, I'll just do it briefly, because I thought Bruce's illustration was a wonderful illustration.
We all go through that anguish, and I'm glad he brought it up. And I also thought his solution was a wonderful solution. He did both things.
He had this attraction to the ancient Scriptures, which I hope all of us have. My heavens, it's so dear to us. It's a part of this church, our tradition, our very lives.
At the same time, he had this attraction to this wonderful piece of poetry, and what did he do? He read both of them. Now, the solution is interesting to me because what's important to me about Bruce making that decision is the fact that it was genuinely Bruce. I don't care what he
read.
I mean, that's his choice, what he reads, what he thinks, what his theology is. What concerns me is the fact that Bruce stood up, and he was genuinely Bruce. I love these two pieces.
I'm going to read these two pieces. When you're in a pulpit, all you can be is genuine. You can't speak for 1,800 people.
All you can be is yourself and be as honest and as genuine as you can, and Bruce solved that problem by doing that very thing. That's a wonderful, wonderful illustration. Now, I'll bet you want to say something.
I'll rest on that. I'm very much out of sorts here. I was appalled by his Robinson Jeffers poem on the 125th anniversary of a Christian church in the Western Hemisphere, and I found it totally trivial to be quoting Robinson Jeffers on a personal level.
So, I say I'm out of sorts, and I don't mean to be nasty. I tell him these things. He and I have that kind of relationship, but I want to go on.
The sort of things that David and the others have been talking about have nothing particular to do with liberalism. If this were a conservative group, we'd still be talking about the things we care about, and the need to do something about what we believe in, and to look after the church, and to look after the community, and the neighborhood. It doesn't matter what your heading is.
All those things come in, but I thought we were talking about the essential nature of liberalism. Liberalism doesn't have any proprietary interest or right in tenderness or kindness or generosity or social concern. It doesn't have any.
So, what is liberalism? I reiterate, it's just a flag, and it's a flag that's outworn its usefulness. I'd be glad to comment on that. This church, we've said many times how wonderful this church is, and of course that's what you do during celebration periods and so on.
We also have to recognize weaknesses in our church. One of those weaknesses is a very real parochialism. We really have to get out of this idea that we're the only church in the world, we're the only liberal church in the world, and we're the ones who are advancing this and that.
We are a part of a long perennial universal history of liberal religion, and we have to get out of this parochial attitude. You know, there are liberals within Islam who are fighting the fundamentalists in places like Iraq and Iran and Egypt. There are liberals in Hinduism now who are fighting a resurgence of fundamentalism in India.
There's liberals in Judaism representing the very values that we're talking about that comprise liberalism to make sure that Israel doesn't become a theocratic state. There are liberals in Latin America and South America who are fighting their own church plus dictators. We are a part of a
long and wonderful and historic tradition, and yet we have very little connections with any of those traditions.
And so if we're going to advance in the future, we have to somehow move out of this small town parochial mood, and we have to make links, we have to make connections, we have to have dialogues, and in that way we're going to know more and more and more who we are and where we're going. Can the word liberal just be limited to a very narrow scope in that it might mean unlimited or open or willing to look at new ideas and new ways without having its own limited definitions? I mean, if David just made the comment that there are liberals in all religions, there's liberals in all countries, do we have to use the word liberal in such a defined way other than to mean open to the new and, you know, and then get on with something other than the flag of liberal? Open to the new, if that's the only way you want to use it, still means a whole hell of a lot. You know, it means everything, doesn't it? It means being non-credal, it means being free, I mean, it means almost everything.
So let's recognize the vastness of that kind of comment. That's why we have our links with liberals elsewhere, because they're non-credal, they don't want restrictions on religious belief. I belong to a group called the International Association for Religious Freedom.
It includes the left wings of all the major religions in the world. We disagree on theology all over the place, but we get along because we agree that we're going to be open, we're going to listen, we're going to respect each other. It means a lot.
Yes, this business about liberal, are you talking capital L or small l? We send our children to college originally, or we'd like to think, for a liberal religion or a liberal education, and yet we're not talking about the same thing as a liberal religion, at least the conservatives, especially in West Michigan, don't like to think of our kids getting an L-word type of education. So how does that all fit together? How can we think about that and deal with it in a way that will help, I think, the conservatives understand that because we're liberals, either capital L or lower L, doesn't mean that we're enemies of any other denomination or philosophy. I do think when we send our children for a liberal education, at least when I sent my child for a liberal education, I sent them for the same kind of liberalism that they would find here.
And not in a religious sense, but in that openness of being open to new ideas, new ways, and to different ways of seeing things. I think that maybe that's a little schism in a belief where you send, call a conservative institution a liberal education. Some of them do give liberal educations, and they separate their worlds into a conservative religious philosophy that allows that liberalism within education.
So I don't think it's necessarily a difference. Duncan, could I direct one to you then, Duncan? You said liberalism is dead. I didn't call on you.
I know you didn't. I'm taking a derogative, but it's in association with this. You said liberalism is dead.
Do you mean the term? Do you mean the movement? Do you mean, what do you mean is dead? Made here that liberalism is openness, and essentially liberalism has to do with modern science and relativism, and that there are no absolutes, and you never reach any final truth. The truth is always relative. You gain a relative approximation of your statements to what is in fact so.
So I say that's totally understood. It's a total natural part of modern life, and the fact that some radical conservatives haven't reached it yet, there's no reason for us to go on, and I'm going to use the phrase until you understand it or make it clear, waving the flag of liberalism. You assume that there are no answers final.
You assume that everything's open for discussion and discovery. You assume that you belong to the human race. You assume that you have obligations and relationships that are important and necessary.
You assume that there's a possibility and necessity of growth. That's all involved. I just can't stand waving flags, saying how wonderful we are that we're at that point.
Having arrived at that point, I want to deal with the problems that I was superficially or quickly outlining that exist in the modern world, and this is an evolutionary crisis that we're in. It's not just a crisis of modern civilization. It's a crisis in evolutionary development, and we have to deal with those problems, and I want us to deal with them regardless of the titles and the slogans, liberal or conservative.
They don't matter a damn. Essentially, liberalism has to do with modern science and relativism, and that there are no absolutes, and you never reach any final truth. The truth is always relative.
You gain a relative approximation of your statements to what is, in fact, so. I say that's totally understood. It's a total natural part of modern life, and the fact that some radical conservatives haven't reached it yet is no reason for us to go on, and I'm going to use the phrase until you understand it or make it clear, waving the flag of liberalism.
You assume that there are no answers final. You assume that everything's open for discussion and discovery. You assume that you belong to the human race.
You assume that you have obligations and relationships that are important and necessary. You assume that there's a possibility and necessity of growth. That's all involved.
I just can't stand waving flags saying how wonderful we are that we're at that point. Having arrived at that point, I want to deal with the problems that I was superficially or quickly outlining that exist in the modern world, and this is an evolutionary crisis that we're in. It's not just a crisis of modern civilization.
It's a crisis in evolutionary development, and we have to deal with those problems, and I want us to deal with them regardless of the titles and the slogans, liberal or conservative. They don't
matter a damn. I wanted to ask Duncan, I mean, the application of the word Christian to the church that you raised Sunday.
Is this an institution with a Christian heritage, rooted in the Christian heritage? Is that the same as saying it's a Christian church? Certainly. Certainly. Are you—I've got a lot of different questions on this.
Is there a— I'm with you, baby. Okay. My—I hadn't thought that it was important to you whether you called yourself Christian or not, and am I correct on that, at least in the past? You didn't care about that level as applied to yourself.
I'd like a moment to explain that. People ask me in the past, are you Christian? And I say, no. Not in your sense of the word.
I don't want to get into an argument with them, and they want to discard me as being Christian. That's fine. I have for a long time disowned being liberal because, as I'm indicating, I think it's trivial, and I don't want to go around claiming I'm liberal as though it was something big and important and wonderful.
It isn't. So, I—and you want to know, I said Sunday, I'm a Christian. I'm a liberal.
Damn right, I was brought up to be a liberal. I went into my ministry on a liberal basis. I pursued it all my life.
I am totally dedicated to the fundamental basis of what liberalism means, without any question. I just say that, so what? It's not enough. I'm Christian, but I don't say anything either.
You go on and define that from there, you see. Is that—is there a change or development in your thinking with regard to that? Only in the depths of it. Only in the depths of it.
I have—I never gave a scripture reading in this church other than the Bible. Except one, and that was the writings of St. Francis on Thanksgiving. Never.
I believe in the quality of that scripture, that it's a metaphor that you will never, ever exhaust. And I'm sick and tired of people running to something like Zen Buddhism because it looks exotic, thinking that they have greater wisdom. Nonsense.
You don't have to go to Zen Buddhists to learn meditation. Christian history is full of saints who meditated and understood and appreciated. Christian? Yeah.
What does it mean? We still have to find out. That's liberalism. We still have to find out what it means to be a Christian in 1994.
Ah, now we got something. Figure it out and then apply it and show how it works and what it means. Does that answer—am I dealing with your question? Yeah.
Well, I said it before. You know, I can—if I go hunting, I can find a scriptural text to illustrate the thinking that I'm doing. Sometimes I have to rack my brain quite a bit.
Because you don't know them well enough. Well— Yeah, in spite of your Dutch upbringing. I think I can— If you did, you wouldn't have to go hunting much.
I mean— I challenge you to find a single problem in human modern life that you cannot find described, discussed, or illustrated somewhere in the Bible. Here I am, preaching the Bible, you see. Yeah, let me just—I mean, I'm not going to disagree with that last statement.
On the other hand, I find other things speak more directly, more clearly, more in words that not only I, but other people can understand. They're simply more timely expressing the same truths. Why not go with it? Go.
I did. I mean— Go. I expressed myself on that.
I'm not trying to confine you. As David said, you're you and you're wonderful, and I love you, and you know that. Well, I like you, too.
That doesn't mean anything. You go. There are lots of stuff that I say that don't mean—it doesn't mean anything to you or to anybody else.
That's okay. Well, you give me— But I don't like— You give me pause sometimes, you know. Sue wanted to say something here, I think.
Well, some of it's the same thing you said, in that there are a lot—my father used to say the same thing about the Bible, that everything you wanted to know about human nature and spiritual nature was all in that one book. And I don't debate it, that it's all there, but there are a lot of other books that it is all in, too. And I think that using one text has its advantage in that you get to know that text inside and out.
But we're in a culture now that has multi-texts. I mean, we need to know more than one text, I think. I think that in terms of—particularly in terms of the Bible, we need to know the Koran, we need to know the Torah as well, as the revised standard edition, before we look at that.
I think the wisdom's there, but I also think you find it in many other places. And that we become very culturally limited to say that the wisdom is only in this one place. We're denying a lot of other cultural traditions.
I did not say that. Not even slightly involved, Suzanne. I'm saying that every people has its wisdom.
And it's as impossible for us to probe into and be a part of the Koran as it is for the Muslim to be a part of the Bible and Christianity. But they have their wisdom. I would never, ever take that away.
But you cannot appropriate another culture. I'm saying something a little different. Duncan, I'm saying something a little different, and I'm not disagreeing with you on that.
I'm saying that I find places where it's expressed better for me. If I could find the scriptural text that expressed as clearly and as deeply, then I would go with that. Well, you call me the next time you have trouble, and I'll give you one.
All right. With that, we'll go back to the audience. You all must be having some questions. If you'd like to. Come on. We got, all right.
I've got the microphone. All right. Go, Tom.
I might as well use it. One of the questions that our panel and our lack of wisdom submitted to this panel, knowing that they would probably ignore it, was what are some of the problems that an institution like ours should address itself to in the future? Not the process problems, but the substantive problems. What are the problems out there in the world that we should be thinking about being involved with? Duncan referred to this fact.
We need to be working on these problems and figuring out what we should do about it, what a Christian church in 1994 should be addressing itself to. I'd like to put that question to one or two of the panel members. Substantive problems that are really important that people in this church should really be working on.
How about Don and David? I'd go back with Duncan to the Bible. I'm thinking of when Jesus gave His first sermon in a synagogue in Nazareth, and He used a quotation from Isaiah, which went back about 500 years, even before that. The substance of that sermon when He described His ministry to the world was to do something for those who are poor and to do something for those who are sick and to help to heal the oppressed.
Now, that's a social action agenda, a religious agenda that's been around for 2,500 years, and that's the one I support. I don't think we have to go very far to know what we should be doing. There are people here within the shadow of a church who don't have food.
They don't have shelter. They don't have anything. I was reading a paper just 10 days ago, two separate articles by two black leaders.
They were talking about the $1 million that went to the zoo. And they said, hey, independently they were saying this in the newspaper, with $1 million we could build a youth recreational center in the black community. It would be not only for recreation, for counseling, drug rehabilitation.
It would take the kids off the street. It would help the problems of violence. $1 million is all we needed.
Now, I'm looking around here, you know, I would like to transform this whole meeting out of a
discussion into a social action forum. You know, I'm looking at people who are fine, wonderful, compassionate people. You are people who have connections with all kinds of businesses and boards and corporations and foundations.
I'll bet you if we worked together in a year's time, we could raise $1 million. What we lack in this church is any kind of infrastructure of that kind to solve those kinds of social problems. We've lacked it for years.
We've lacked it. We don't have it. A senior minister can't do it by himself.
Twelve members on a social action committee can't do it by himself. But all of you together could do it. And if someone stood up and said, oh, you're tramping on my individuality.
You don't talk for me, all that nonsense. They wouldn't have to participate. But I'll tell you, we could help an awful lot of people if we finally recognize there's a value in some kind of corporate power in working together.
That's what I would like to see, Tom. Some kind of infrastructure that will make us more effective in helping real people in the real world. That's what I would like to see.
I want to join in applauding because I agree wholeheartedly. I think that when, because it's a part of my background, I think that when Jesus was asked the question by His disciples about who is my neighbor, which is oftentimes one of those discussion-oriented questions, I think if I understand, and I'm trying each day to understand things like that, I think if I understand Him, He said more important than asking the question who is my neighbor is your conviction about being a neighbor right where you are and with those people with whom you share your day-to
day existence. And I think that that being the case, what you've just said about the needs that are all around us, we don't have to go far at all.
In fact, I encounter them, as might any of you, I encounter them between where I park my car across the street and where I walk in the front door here. Sometimes, much to my own chagrin and dismay, I have an other agenda that brings me into the building rather than into the life of the person that I encounter out there. I'm Mary Murphy.
Duncan, I'd like to hear your view on this. I was listening to your sermon on Sunday, and you were talking in terms of the church. The church was a place of spirit, and the spirit extends into the community, and you felt that that was the primary focus of Fountain Street Church.
How do you respond to the comments about our getting involved in community efforts in the way that David and Donald talked about it? How do I respond to the idea that we should be more involved in the community efforts? I said it's Sunday. I don't think it's our business. We're not a social agency, and we go raise a million dollars, as David says.
There are foundations out there that have millions of dollars. They're available. We can go out and compete with foundations.
It's not our business, but I'll tell you another little cute thing that I've been observing. I think that million dollars appropriation of money for inner city province to the zoo is a total, horrendous, stupid, insensitive, socially obnoxious position in political society. Absolutely awful.
However, you see, I've spent a lot of time in that inner city, and the people down there over the past years have known it, and I didn't wait around for you or anybody else. I went down there and did it. I went down and got involved, and I wanted to call one of our members to find out just how much money was involved.
You see, that million dollars sounds wonderful. I can tell you it isn't going to amount to anything much, because when we got into trouble, I went down there, and I found a person. I went down looking for somebody who had a mission in the inner city, who lived there, who understood, who was appreciative, and a potential leader, and I found him.
I found him teaching seventh grade down in the Sheldon School. Ray Tardy. And I took him aside, and I said, Ray, we've got a common problem in this community.
We've got to do something about it, and I want to help, and I need somebody like you, and you need me and others. What can we do? Let's get started. Well, out of that came a whole Sheldon Complex, which spent millions, millions, not a million, every year.
Where is it? Where is it now? Any vestige of Sheldon Complex left? There were dozens and dozens of people working in there. They had everything going. What happened? Not just a million, millions.
Now, the activity is important, and fundamental, and vital, and Ray did a lot. Can you count it up now? Can you point it out? This church helped. It originated, it inspired him, gave him the original encouragement, and the original money, and he always acknowledged that.
We did something, but it was done down there, not by us, and it didn't amount to very much, and that million dollars will not do a hell of a lot now, either. So, I don't believe that's our mission. I don't believe it at all.
I believe our mission is to be concerned. Our mission is for you to find your spirit and let it lead you where it will, you and your own life. Let it lead you where it will, and we can't lay that responsibility on you.
You're going to find it, and if you're a person of the spirit, you'll find a place to express it. Our job is to build that spirit, and that desire, that inspiration, that encouragement, that sense of involvement, and wonder, and responsibility. That's our mission as a church.
I don't think our mission is to spend money in social action. My answer to your question is really quite simple, and that is that I've never seen that one's spirituality and one's desire to help another human being should be separate, or should be a contest, or that you should do one and not do the other. I see them very much connected.
You know, just like faith without works is dead, spirituality without works is dead. It doesn't mean anything. This isn't going to be some damn selfish place where people hang around, looking into their navels, thinking about their own spirituality.
It's not going to be that. It's never going to be that. I won't let it be that.
No, no, no. You didn't hear me. I'm not finished.
I did hear you. I heard you. I always hear you, Duncan.
Always hear you. Well, then I'll say it again when you get through. I don't listen to everything you say, but I always hear you.
It's very important to us as a church, I think, not to put these two things against each other. I think it's very important to realize that some kind of wholeness, some kind of totality, and just to talk about spirituality is really just bringing back pietism and some kind of new garb is all it is. We have to bring in the ethical component as well.
Duncan, you're on. Now, you see, I just got through saying our job is the Spirit, and if the Spirit is here, the responsibility will come, and nobody of the Spirit. I said it, didn't I? No one of the Spirit can ignore his brother or neglect his social responsibilities or the problems out there that affect the Spirit.
I said that. If you have the Spirit, you will do something. You cannot help it, and it's your responsibility to do it, and ours as a to encourage you.
I didn't separate them for one second, ever, never separate the Spirit from social involvement and responsibilities, ever. The Spirit cannot live without the body. This body or the body politic and the social community body cannot live without it, and your body will destroy or ruin your Spirit, and the community can ruin your Spirit, and you have the responsibility of getting that Spirit translated into some kind of decent behavior.
Well, Duncan, I find it a little contradictory because if my spirituality, which this church helps bring alive for me, drives me into feeling a sense of responsibility and greater responsibility and energy for involvement in correcting, assisting, going down to the Ray Tardis of this world or whatever, as you described, maybe it isn't the mission of the church. You said it's the mission of the church to give me a supporting role then in doing that, and I think that's a distinction that needs to be made because what I hear David saying, or I don't want to speak for David, but I think what the church has been trying to do is provide some opportunities and avenues for those of us who feel the need and the want to do it, but we don't have the connections or the drive or the whatever to go seek out, as you gave, the Ray Tardis of this world. I may need the church and some call it social action committee or some format by which to do it, but you know, it felt to me like you were being contradictory.
No, no contradiction at all. So, as individuals in the church, you say, I'm concerned about this
problem, whatever the problem is, violence or drugs or education, and you get some other people together, you say, are you concerned? And they say, yes. So, you say, let's do something.
I'm not excluding social action committees. That's a group of people in the church who say, we got to do something, and you get together and you go do it, and we encourage you to do it, and you do it on your own as a group, self-chosen group, and the church encourages you. There's no contradiction.
There's no argument about that. All the committees you can possibly have, wonderful, but they're committees of concerned citizens, concerned members of the church who want to express their spirit. You find your own way to do it.
I don't care who cares what it is, as long as it's your way, maybe running an alcoholic clinic or anything else. Doesn't matter. There's no contradiction there, Charles.
Okay, next question. On the social action now, I think, on our community, and I think it goes throughout other communities, the neighborhood associations, do we have any requests from any of the leaders there, or are we working at all with those neighborhood associations? Seems to me as if that's the evolution that can do the most good. Could answer that question himself.
Yeah, well, there are a variety of requests that come from time to time. Our handyman fix-up project, as a matter of fact, is being done in connection with the neighbors of Belknap Lookout Neighborhood Association. We're also working with First Community AME Church, which, as you know, is a project that was initiated by Judge Hillman, and they, as a matter of fact, are very much taken up with the project about trying to build an inner-city recreation center, which Sue and I were at a meeting just the other day, where we agreed it probably made sense to get the group of churches who are working on, in that grouping, to see if we couldn't help make that kind of a project come to pass.
Probably not with the million dollars that's going to the but there are always other millions of dollars out there, and we're probably going to be working on that. There are any number of places one can find social action projects, but I think having an infrastructure to help members in the church find the opportunities that they'll be comfortable with is a good idea. I just want to respond to a couple things I've heard.
Every step forward toward a better society is a step forward. You may take another half-step backward, but a step forward is a step forward, and I would defend the money for the zoo. I design zoos, and I'm not designing this one, but kids go over there.
Kids are brought from the inner city, and they see things that they've never seen before, and they spend the day over there. So a million dollars for the zoo as opposed to a million dollars for a food program or housing, that's a good argument. I think we need them all, but I would like to defend the governor's choice of putting a million dollars into our zoo, and I think our social action committee in this church over the years has been very, very good and supported
good projects, and I agree with Duncan.
The church should not be the one behind them. Maybe it's our social action committee or individual groups. We ought to continue that, and we ought to fund housing.
We ought to fund all those things, but I wouldn't knock out zoos, parks, or fisheries, or anything like that. Thanks, Judy. Just a quick announcement.
If there is anyone who particularly wants to be involved with this zoo issue, I have been meeting with the people who are on the Concerned Citizens Council, so get me your name and phone number, and I will inform you when the next meetings are coming up. Well, there's several problems, and that's why my criticism isn't as deep as you might think, and one of the problems is that we're shunned in many ways by other churches, and so a lot of the responsibility doesn't fall on us, but it falls on everyone. The other is we have a very difficult time in local ecumenical
ventures, because most of those ventures in the past, and particularly during Duncan's years, were all sort of Orthodox Christian ecumenical ventures.
They weren't very ecumenical. Quakers weren't allowed in them. Jews weren't allowed in them.
Fountains feeders couldn't vote if they did get in them, and so on. So we were excluded, and by self-exclusion as well, we didn't participate. What I was talking about earlier is getting more involved in world religions, getting more involved in other religions like the Native Americans and others who are in this area, so that we not only broaden our own views of what religion is, but that we learn more about the religions that are around us.
You know, West Michigan has changed just in the last 10-12 years. We have large groups now of Buddhists. We have large groups of Hindus.
We have two Muslim mosques, and one way, if you're really interested in this, to get involved is to join the interfaith dialogue. I see some of you here this evening who are already belonging to that, but the interfaith dialogue is a very good group to join if you want to expand your religious consciousness, meet people of other religious faiths, and in the process learn more about your own. So we're involved in that, and I encourage people to get more involved in it.
Another way is to teach junior high, because that's what they do this year, seventh and eighth grade. They will spend the year visiting and being in dialogue with various churches, synagogues, temples in the area with the focus of meeting with other youth in those churches and synagogues and temples. So that's very much a part of our program for our youth to be able to have that experience and to know that they're part of a larger religious community in West Michigan than just a white Christian community.
That's been a great program, hasn't it? Yeah. Been a great program. But the other piece of it, Duncan, is that we've initiated this year is to try and have them look at how they can be in dialogue with one another, because too often we make it a social studies lesson and we don't engage in what at what points there is conflict and how you can build bridges, and that's what
we're trying to introduce now is to really own that there is conflict among the various faiths in the world and how you can build the bridges across.
I have a question about the term liberal, and I hesitated to ask it because it wasn't involved directly with the church, but as long as the zoo question has been brought up. The other night on television there was a debate between Whelpy and Engler, and Engler called Whelpy a liberal several times in a kind of a derogatory way, and I would like to hear the comments of our table here on the term liberal as used in that sense. Well, you know, since the rhetoric of Reagan and Bush and now the rhetoric of people like Limbaugh and Liddy, and now, as you heard the other night, the rhetoric of Engler, the word liberal has taken on a bad meaning, and if we liberals not go under that, if we become weak over it, if our knees start shaking and we say, hey, we're going to let you define us, we're not going to use the word anymore, that's silly.
The word liberal goes back to a Greek word meaning which is translated into liberation. It means freedom. That's all it means.
You know, that's the root of it. Why not be proud of the fact that we're in favor of human freedom, and don't let these clowns give us some other definition. I'm Dave Boyer, and I'd like to ask for any of you who would like to respond to this, are there any specific fears that you have about the future of the church? That's a biggie.
Yeah, if someone like you just asked if we were That's a big one, Dawn, or somebody. I have a lot of fears for the children, for the families, and I wasn't kidding when I was talking about talking about traditional family values, because I do think that there is a tendency now, particularly for all of us to go off on our individual journeys, and we are too busy pursuing two
careers, and making sure that our children have all the extracurricular advantages to really look at what really is at core important in our lives, and so we're raising a generation that are worried at 14 what their career is going to be, and not thinking about the values within their lives. There's not enough time to have a dialogue around what's most important, why I made choices as an adult that my kid can see, and I see that.
I see the church as the place that can counter that, and I worry that it won't happen. Both the properties and the finances, which are my areas of responsibility, this is a commercial bid of sorts. There is, I think, an important tension that we maybe want even to foster, that being the individual development, the personal realizations that need somehow to be wedded significantly, need to be married to the corporate, to the collective aspect of us.
You know, right now, quite literally, in the sanctuary, there is water dripping from the ceiling because we're in the process of repairing the roof. I have a concern, not only about getting it fixed, but I have a concern about our determination, and notice the word, our determination, to both preserve and to keep for not only ourselves, but for the children and for grandchildren and for generations not yet represented by human bodies here, a place for the kinds of things that we've been talking about, these various ideologies and tensions, as well as combinations of efforts. We need, we need a place.
We need to be us. So, along with the pursuit of our own self-actualization, if that's a contemporary phrase any longer, I hope that there is, with that, a determination for us to act, in particular now, as regards this site, this corner of Fountain and Bostwick. Now, I think both responses so far have pointed to what I have always considered to be the major tension in a liberal church.
All the ones I've served, all the ones I've seen, the major tension is that between community and individualism. We promised a place where people can be individuals, where they can be free, where they can do their own thing, you see, all of that's nice. But we're also a church.
We're a community. We have to make collective decisions. We have to solve problems together.
And those two things are always, always in tension, always in tension. Other churches can just tout the community. And there are some liberal churches that just tout individualism.
In this church, there has to be some kind of marriage, as Don said, a perfect marriage between those two very important values. And we have to pull it off. I'll give you an example of that.
One example, we had a committee appointed by the board to ban smoking in this room. Committee was appointed of smokers and non-smokers. Committee met for a year.
They decided, after other alternatives, to ban smoking in this room. They took it to the board. The board unanimously agreed, too, to ban smoking in the room.
I got a letter two weeks later from a nice, nice fellow. He resigned from the church. Church had stepped on his, as he said, his democratic rights.
Now, that's the kind of issues we're dealing. I can give you 50 examples like that. We respect the individual, and yet we have to make community decisions.
In that case, it was for people who have lung problems and bronchial conditions, you see. But we get into it all the time, and that's a tension that confronts us on so many, many different kinds of occasions. It seems like this has been in liberal, at least for a long time, and this church meant there were no ultimate answers.
Everything was open and free, and there were no ultimate truths, no ultimate answers. And yet, I guess I never really understood or was made to understand that those weren't controversial ways of being or speaking. If there is a sacred, if there is something higher that guides our life, don't we have to recognize that in all ways, whether it's working through a social action
committee, whether it's working with our children, don't we have to always come from something higher, you know, some point higher than our ego or our social concerns? And do we, as a church, I know years ago we used to try and make everybody comfortable, the agnostics, the atheists, the ex-everybody that might get their backs up about hearing the word Jesus or whatever.
We tried to make a home for everybody, and I don't really know if as a church we have stood for the sacred, if we have stood for the search for our individual spirits. I know individual people do, but do you think as a church we stand for that? What you do in the Catholic school? Well, I do. I mean, and I think it is the spirit in which we do things.
In terms of social action, someone asked me, they were taking a group of junior high kids to the inner city, and this was in Washington, D.C., to work in a soup kitchen for a week, and she said, what's the most important thing they can do while they're there? And to me, the most important thing they could do was to look into that human being's eyes and see themselves, to recognize that inner relationship, and that was more important than seeing how much soup you put on the table, but you had to be in that soup kitchen to do it. And I think that here we will say, as a value, it's important that you see that person with their inherent worth and dignity, which is different than a social action institution that says, make sure they have enough soup to eat. If there are no questions, we are approaching nine o'clock, and I would like to ask Judy to summarize our evening.
Right. Yes, in keeping with our celebration of 125 years, I have 125 succinct statements to make, right? I don't think I could possibly summarize this this evening. I think we certainly know we've got some common threads, and that we hopefully have given these people 125 topics to discuss and present to us in the years in the future of our church.
But I'm just going to do a little refreshing for a summary for you. I'm gonna start down here. I don't know if you can read that, but from a process, values, and principles, and then the content.
So those are the words that I wrote down, that hopefully that can refresh your memory a little bit about some of the things that Bruce is concerned about as far as the future of our church. Sue talked about how we advance our tradition, and the two things that stuck out in my mind when she talked were mentoring and modeling, things that we can do a better job of in the future. And Don, I wrote choice by the people.
It was really of the people, by the people, for the people, but those were certainly words that came out of his discussion with us tonight. So maybe that'll refresh your memory a little bit on that. What did I say? David, I wrote down the meaning of liberalism may be in the muck of reality.
Well, wish you'd have written my piece. I hope, I hope that I captured it right. And what did we put here for Don? We put liberalism with a big X over it.
Is that good? So we have a lot yet to debate, but we appreciate the group of people who put this together. I think it was an important conclusion to our month of celebration. We appreciate all of you coming, and I think that we are adjourned.
I'm sure the people will be happy to carry on the discussions a little bit more if you want to, but
wewill haveothertimestodothisagain. Thankyouall forcoming.