Some say we are hopelessly divided, and by “we” I mean the people of the United States. The two presidents of this decade—Obama and Trump—have, in symbol and in substance, revealed to us the reality of our situation. Serious and persistent fault lines through our national life fall along matters of race, religion, economics, education, and geography.
Not since the Civil War has there been so much fear, hostility, and suspicion.
Perhaps a word from the most widely read antebellum author will give us a way forward. Had we heeded her advice then, we might have avoided the tragic war that ripped the country apart and inaugurated so many of the social and political ills that confound us still.
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. She was inspired, in part, by the real-life narrative of Josiah Henson, a talented slave living near Owensboro, Kentucky, who took his family across the Ohio River one moonlit night in 1830. He dictated his journey to freedom for publication in 1848; Stowe read it and started writing her own version of what she subtitled “life among the lowly”.
Her famous and influential book is a powerful indictment of social and political conditions at the time, to say nothing of its force in condemning the religious culture. A Christian herself and the daughter of a famous preacher—Lyman Beecher—Stowe followed up her heavily editorialized narrative with brief “Concluding Remarks”. There she laid out, in ministerial fashion, a call to action that consisted of three appeals.
The proper response, she contended, is a matter of feeling, praying, and doing.
“There is one thing every individual can do,” she wrote. “They can see to it that they feel right…. The man or woman who feels strongly, healthily, and justly on the great interests of humanity is a constant benefactor to the human race. See then, to your sympathies in this matter! Are they in harmony with the sympathies of Christ? Or are they swayed and perverted by the sophistries of worldly policy?”
Who can possibly say it better today?
Jesus himself enumerated what Stowe calls “the sympathies of Christ”—the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the stranger, and the incarcerated. We look around today and make our own list: COVID patient and grieving family, exhausted nurse and exasperated health official, bankrupt business man and unemployed woman, black man with the knee on his neck and brown child crouching in a cage, school child confined to home and parents balancing all the hard things of this terrible, no good, very bad year.
If ever there was a time for empathy, this is it—beyond ideology and theology, we need to feel right, as Stowe terms it, about the mental, emotional, and financial health of every person we meet.
“You have another power,” Stowe wrote 168 years ago, “you can pray”! Then, she asks, “Do you believe in prayer?”
It is still the question that counts—do we believe in prayer? Do we believe that prayer releases the physical and spiritual power sufficient to address the ills of our own day?
That really is the wrong way to frame the question.
Do we believe in a mighty and merciful God whose might and mercy are made present for us through this simple practice?
Do we believe enough to put aside the fear, hostility, and suspicion that keeps us separated from our neighbor and to meet together in a circle of prayer?
Will you join in prayer with those you rarely see, hear or appreciate and pray unto God that the soul of our nation might experience a time of hope and healing?
“But, still more.”
With that short introduction, Harriet Beecher Stowe comes to her third appeal, which I paraphrase as: do something! She names “the poor, the shattered, the broken remnants of families” seeking a “refuge” as the needs of her own day. Within a decade, the fleeing slaves were joined by the dying soldiers to compound the call to action.
We have our own needs today.
On top of the political divisions and ideological divides is the COVID; and beyond that is unemployment, bankruptcy, protests for equality, all without the benefit of sports, church, live entertainment, and any gathering for birthdays, weddings, funerals, or graduations. We are all in danger of succumbing to isolation, depression, disease, even death.
“You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. This is how prayer works.”
Those words of Pope Francis sum up the appeal of both Jesus and his devoted follower Harriett Beecher Stowe. It is a short, modern version of the 400+ page edition of that famous novel of 1852.
Feeling the need, praying for help, doing the deed. This is the antidote for the fear, hostility, and suspicion that threatens the soul of the nation. Let’s make it happen!
(November 2020)
