The Native Language of Good Intentions

I note last week, we discussed the impossibility of purity, like the vegan who drives a VW Bug on tires made with the fats of animal by-products. I was reminded of her this weekend, as an Alternate Delegate, examining Resolutions proposed for vote, at the Annual Council of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia.

There are times when you feel at home even if you've never been there before: cresting a ridge in Laguna Hills to encounter a sparkling Pacific ocean in the bright morning sunshine; drinking a pint of Guinness in the Dublin pub where Joyce held court; drinking another pint in another pub in Oxford where Lewis and Tolkien spoke of their work in progress; bargaining for a suit on Orchard Street in the Lower East Side neighborhood where my father was born; standing in solidarity with other pot-bellied gray-beards singing "By the Time We Got to Woodstock," at a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young concert, even though I wasn't blessed to attend the festival.

The symbolism of the naieve vegan resonates even though I haven't the fortitude to join her. Council Resolutions, as a whole, on recognizing and fighting global warming, inclusiveness, recognition/support for Latino/Native Americans, against Payday Lending, for Sudan Divestment, and for a just and humane immigration policy, all speak the familiar native language of a household with good intentions.

In 1935, Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, a neer' do-well who found his only business success eight years later as the murderous Vichy Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, ran for office in Paris, on the platform: "stronger authoritarian government, a more agressive foreign policy, the reduction of taxes, the revision of naturalisation laws, repatriation of unemployed foreigners living on public relief, the suppression of trade unions and parasitic organizations, and the defense of the birth rate and the family."

Languages of resolutions and campaigns doesn't change much over the years and plays itself out in decisions, large and small, over and over. On the Freakonomics audio tape, the author describes a KKK marketing slogan of the 1920's that proclaimed Yesterday, Today, Forever, which brought to mind another moment seventy-five years later in our parish hall where a woman speaking against inclusivity said God is the same Yesterday, Today and Forever. We've just concluded a family debate in our home on whether its right to join a health club whose distant owners reputedly fund political causes to which I'm opposed.

It's always instructive to study not only what oppressors have written and said, but how ordinary people responded, and made graduated decisions, to either abet, ignore, or oppose, injustices perpetuated by the respective powers of their time.

Of the intellectuals who so opposed Vichy, Clive Davis wrote, "As true scholars, they refused to be drawn into the tacit, tautacular, bargain by which Vichy's cooperation with the invader was seen as a pragmatic strategem to preserve the eternal France. They could see how that bargain attacked the eternal France in its essence. As true heroes, they were not content to keep their heads down until it all blew over: they guessed correctly, that too much could be blown away."

I heard an activist at Council say his goal was to move the clergy inclusivity resolution, in its original purity, to a vote unconnected to any other resolution, especially, the more controversial proposal of same-gender blessings, for he knew if that happened, it would constitute its demise. Alas, it transpired just as he predicted. While the clergy inclusivity resolution wasn't killed outright, the structure of the committee that originally examined it was re-named, and a new commission, recommissioned, to study it some more.

A blurb in the January/February Atlantic Magazine dispels the stereotype of the average terrorist as primarily recruited from amongst the ranks of the poor; a new Oxford study reveals, that of 404 militants, from 131 countries, an astonishing 178 (over 40%), were university-trained engineers. The authors speculate the "emphasis on structure and rules, and on finding singular solutions to complicated problems may fit neatly with Islamist notions of the ideal society - and in support of this hypothesis, the authors cite surveys from America, the Middle East, and Canada indicating that engineers are more likely than other professionals to be religious and right-wing."

As examination of all Resolutions brought forward unmistakenly captures that Council had good intentions; indeed, the outcome of most votes seemed inevitable. I couldn't have conceived, for example, although debate on the floor grew somewhat heated, that the resolution on just and humane immigration policy wouldn't have passed.

The ideal of justice is pure, as are all ideals. Patience is required; something I lack; I avow especially that personal and corporate purity in this world is impossible; I'm therefore in no position to demand purity of anyone or anything else. Even so, I'm compelled to wonder, while we cautiously deliberate resolutions on inclusivity, are there mothers who fitfully weep over imprisoned sons in Nigeria tonight?

As a member of a Continuing Church that's received steadfast Diocesan support, I'm forever grateful to the Diocese; the existence of our parish, in itself, we were told repeatedly at Council, serves as inspiration for others. Although, not cradle, I'm home, within the Episcopal Body, as nowhere else, even though, we, at times, choose to override our good intentions by donning the hardhats of engineers rather than wearing the dreadlocks of vegans who drive VW Bugs on tires manufactured with animal fats.