• • • • • • •
Is there a spiritual path worthy of the term that does not include among its most precious beliefs a call for justice? “Justice, justice shall you pursue,” Moses demands of the ancient Israelites. “The Word of the Lord doth find its fulfillment in truth and in justice,” says the Qur’an. For Hindus, Lord Rama, the warrior king of India’s epic Ramayana, is the embodiment of justice. The traditions also link justice with love of the Creation and all that is in it. From that, it is easy to conclude that striving for justice is incumbent upon the Creation’s human offspring.
The Social Gospel movement is one such reading of Christian Scripture. It first stirred in Walter Rauschenbusch, the movement’s icon, through his turn-of-the-century experience as a Baptist minister in Hell’s Kitchen, an aptly named New York City neighborhood replete with crime, exploitation, and poverty. After witnessing similar deprivation in Europe, he began to write widely that Christians must work for social betterment, that the Kingdom of God requires personal and societal salvation.
Albert Schweitzer also responded to the inner call to act on behalf of others. A biblical scholar, theologian, philosopher, and musicologist as well as a physician, Schweitzer became world famous for his decades of medical work in Gabon (formerly French Equatorial Africa), where he treated thousands suffering from leprosy, sleeping sickness, and other ailments. The Nobel Peace Prize winner, a Christian, summed up his religious philosophy as a “reverence for life.”
Three women, all touched by Roman Catholic sensibilities, are included here. The best known is Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a uniquely twentieth-century religious celebrity. Diminutive, stooped, and garbed in her familiar blue-trimmed white sari habit, Mother Teresa jetted around the globe, meeting with all manner of people, her focus set on raising funds for her worldwide network of charitable programs, starting with Calcutta’s Nirmal Hriday Home for Dying Destitutes. Today the Missionaries of Charity, the order she founded, serves the “poorest of the poor” in more than one hundred nations. She lives on in death as her era’s ultimate example of selfless, loving service to others.
Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement and newspaper, epitomized lay social activism within the church. Like Mother Teresa, Day was grounded in a firm belief in the God-given dignity of every individual, voluntary poverty, prayer, and hospitality for the homeless, hungry, and forgotten. But she also challenged the political and religious establishment, staunchly defending pacifism in times of war and criticizing her church’s financial priorities. The Vatican has moved to canonize Mother Teresa. Ironically, it has also moved to canonize Day, a prospect that many of her supporters find odd.
Catherine de Hueck Doherty started out as an Eastern Orthodox Christian but became a Roman Catholic at age twenty. She began life in an aristocratic family in czarist Russia, yet it became her passion to serve God by caring for the poor and suffering. She founded Madonna House, which now has more than twenty facilities around the world where those in need are cared for. “A love that is not incarnate,” she said, “is not real love.”
Two Buddhist monks—both from Southeast Asia, both dissenters to war—are also included. Thich Nhat Hanh is from Vietnam; Maha Ghosananda is from Cambodia. Both threw themselves into the peace movements that sought to end the carnage resulting from decades of war in their countries.
Thich Nhat Hanh, in exile from Vietnam since 1966, pioneered the engaged Buddhism movement, which links social action and civil disobedience with meditative and other spiritual practices. The founder of France’s Plum Village Retreat Center, he continues to oppose oppression in his homeland. Maha Ghosananda, called Cambodia’s Gandhi, worked tirelessly to aid Cambodian refugees fleeing the Khmer Rouge and, after the 1991 peace accord, to effect reconciliation among his people.
Mawlana Muhammad Ilyas’s love was of a different sort. A Sufi, he had as his passion guiding Muslims back to Islamic tradition by training volunteers to go door to door to teach the faith, first in his native India and more recently across much of the Muslim world. Finally, we include Robert Holbrook Smith, cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), the organization that revolutionized recovery by making spiritual surrender to a Higher Power, however conceived, central to its program. In doing so AA exposed many to a pragmatic spirituality that often was also a lifesaver.
(1897–1980)
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Founder of the Catholic Worker movement, Dorothy Day was among the great Catholic lay activists of the twentieth century and an inspiration to faith-based social- and political-change movements worldwide.
Day’s youth in Chicago tenements gave her a taste of life at the bottom rung of society, as well as her first positive impressions of Catholic piety, from her friends’ parents. When her father found a decent job, the family moved into more comfortable surroundings. But, inspired by the books of Upton Sinclair and other social reformers, Day continued visiting low-income areas, finding beauty amid what most considered squalor.
She won a scholarship to the University of Illinois in 1914. There she tended toward radical and socialist thought and dropped out after two years. She moved to New York and worked as a reporter for the Call, a Socialist newspaper, and later for the Masses, a magazine opposing America’s involvement in World War I. Day was imprisoned in 1917 for rallying outside the White House for women’s right to vote and was freed by presidential order along with the forty other protesters. Back in New York, she worked briefly as a nurse before returning to journalism in Chicago and then New Orleans.
Dorothy Day with Peter Maurin started the Catholic Worker, a monthly newspaper that took bold stands on many issues. Day made the newspaper’s ideals realities for many people.
Day’s upbringing was largely irreligious, but as an adult she was drawn to the Roman Catholic Church. In New York she started making latenight visits to a Catholic church where she was fascinated by the worship and by the church’s embrace of immigrants. In 1922 she lived with three young women in Chicago who attended Mass regularly and made time for prayer every day, which deeply impressed Day. She called prayer and thanksgiving the “noblest acts we are capable of.” When she had a daughter, Tamar Theresa Day, with her then common-law husband, Forster Batterham, Day had the baby baptized. After breaking with Batterham, she formally joined the Catholic Church, a move that briefly estranged her from some radical friends.
In 1932 Day met Peter Maurin, a Catholic social reformer who had embraced poverty and envisioned a social order based on the Gospels that would unite intellectual and worker. The two started the Catholic Worker, a monthly newspaper that took bold stands on many issues, advocating pacifism during World War II and support for conscientious objectors. Within three years the paper counted 150,000 subscribers. Day made the newspaper’s ideals realities for many people. She rented an apartment for ten homeless women and later rented another for men. Soon after, she moved the community to two buildings in New York’s Chinatown. The idea spread, and by 1936 there were thirty-three Catholic Worker homes throughout the country.
Day would maintain her pacifism—her most controversial stance—her whole life, virulently protesting the Vietnam war in her later years. Since her death in 1980, the church has taken steps to name her a saint, a move that has sparked controversy even among her supporters: some believe it is a fitting affirmation of what she stood for; others say her message will be diluted or claim that Day would have wanted money spent on her canonization to go to the poor instead.
HER WORDS
This work of ours toward a new heaven and a new earth shows a correlation between the material and the spiritual, and, of course, recognizes the primacy of the spiritual. Food for the body is not enough. There must be food for the soul. Hence the leaders of the work, and as many as we can induce to join us, must go daily to Mass, to receive food for the soul. And as our perceptions are quickened, and as we pray that our faith be increased, we will see Christ in each other, and we will not lose faith in those around us, no matter how stumbling their progress is.
—Catholic Worker, February 1940, p. 7
The great need of the human heart is for love, and especially do women’s lives seem empty if they are deprived of their own to love. Indeed, we know that the first commandment is to love, and we show our love, as St. Teresa said, for our God by our love for our fellows. And that is why a great emphasis must be placed on the works of mercy.
—Catholic Worker, November 1945, p. 1
Books by Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day: Selected Writings. Edited by Robert Ellsberg. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1992.
Loaves and Fishes. Foreword by Thomas Merton. Introduction by Robert Coles. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1997.
The Long Loneliness. Chicago: St. Thomas More Press, 1993.
On Pilgrimage. Foreword by Michael O. Garvey. Introduction by Louise Zwick. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999.
Books about Dorothy Day
Coles, Robert. Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1987.
Connor, Charles. Classic Catholic Converts. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2001.
Forest, Jim. Love Is the Measure: A Biography of Dorothy Day. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1994.
Miller, William D. Dorothy Day: A Biography. New York: Harper & Row, 1982.
Roberts, Nancy L. Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1994.
For a more complete list of books by and about Dorothy Day, see Coles, Dorothy Day, pp. 171–174.
Catholic Worker communities: 175 independent organizations around the world. Contact information at www.catholicworker.org/communities/commstates.cfm.
Other Resources
Newspaper: Catholic Worker, 36 East First St., New York, NY 10003; phone: 212-777-9617.
Web site: www.catholicworker.org. Official web site of the Catholic Worker movement.
Film/Videotape: Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story, Paulist Pictures, 1996.
“This work of ours toward a new heaven and a new earth shows a correlation between the material and the spiritual, and, of course, recognizes the primacy of the spiritual. Food for the body is not enough. There must be food for the soul.”
(1896–1985)
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A pioneer in Christian social justice work in Canada and the United States, Catherine de Hueck Doherty established the philanthropic religious community Madonna House, which now maintains twenty-three field houses throughout the world where the needy are fed and cared for.
De Hueck Doherty grew up in an aristocratic family in prerevolutionary Russia. She was baptized and received her early religious training in the Eastern Orthodox Church, but she also had considerable formative contact with Roman Catholicism, attending a Catholic school for much of her childhood in Alexandria, Egypt, where her father held a diplomatic post. She became a Catholic at the age of twenty but remained in many ways devoted to the Orthodox faith and its spirituality throughout her life.
From an early age de Hueck Doherty became convinced that the sufferings of Jesus—a common object of meditation in Catholic piety—are to be seen today in the suffering of the people around us and that by ministering to the needs of the suffering, one is literally in touch with God. It became her lifelong passion to serve God by caring for the poor and suffering.
She fled Russia with her husband, Baron de Hueck, after the Bolshevik Revolution and eventually settled in Canada. The couple divorced in the 1930s—around the same time Catherine was inspired by the words of Jesus in the Gospels: “Sell all you possess, give it to the poor, and come—follow me!” She decided to follow the command literally and went to live and work with the poor in the slums of Toronto, where she founded Friendship House. She established Friendship Houses in New York’s Harlem section, Chicago, and other cities in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1943 she married Edward Doherty, who became her partner in her work, and who with her founded Madonna House, a religious community of men and women devoted to serving God by serving others.
De Hueck Doherty never saw her actions as “social work” but rather as simply living the truth of Christ’s words: “What you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me.”
She never saw her actions as “social work” but rather as simply living the truth of Christ’s words: “What you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me.” For de Hueck Doherty, love was not abstract: love was giving clothes, or a cup of coffee, or a listening ear. “A love that is not incarnate is not real love,” she often said.
HER WORDS
Christ emptied himself for love of us. Consider the Almighty, and stop at the word Almighty, which encompasses everything that God is: beauty, truth, all His attributes. Jesus Christ, the second person of the Holy Trinity, descended into the womb of a woman as a seed. Do not try to apprehend or comprehend, but prostrate yourself before the most incomprehensible mystery of the tremendous love that God has shown.
—For This I Have Laid Down My Life
Books by Catherine de Hueck Doherty
Poustinia: Encountering God in Silence, Solitude, and Prayer. Combermere, Ont.: Madonna House, 2000.
Sobornost: Eastern Unity of Mind and Heart for Western Man. Combermere, Ont.: Madonna House, 1992.
Soul of My Soul: Reflections from a Life of Prayer. Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave Maria Press, 1985.
Organization
Madonna House Apostolate, 2888 Dafoe Rd., Combermere, ON K0J 1L0, Canada; phone: 613-756-3713; fax: 613-756-0211.
Other Resources
Web sites: www.madonnahouse.org. Web site of the Madonna House communities.
www.catherinedoherty.org. Official web site promoting de Hueck Doherty’s canonization in the Roman Catholic Church.
“A love that is not incarnate is not real love.”
(1929–)
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The supreme leader of Cambodian Buddhism, Maha Ghosananda is a radiant monk who has been called Cambodia’s Gandhi. Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda, whose name means “Great Joyful Proclaimer,” has worked tirelessly for peace and healing in Southeast Asia, directing compassion indiscriminately toward both the oppressed and their oppressors.
Maha Ghosananda was born in a farming village of Takeo Province, Cambodia, in the Mekong River Delta. Inclined to meditation and the monastic life from his youth, he was ordained a monk, with his parents’ blessing, at the age of fourteen. The first two decades of his life as a monk included rigorous academic study and earned him a Ph.D. in Buddhist studies at Nalanda University in Bihar, India. To complement his university training, he visited Buddhist centers throughout Asia, studying with some of the greatest contemporary masters from a range of traditions and schools.
In 1965, at the age of thirty-six, Maha Ghosananda moved to Thailand and became a disciple of the great meditation master Achaan Dhammadaro. During his years in Thailand, Cambodia was bombed by the United States, with a ground war following. Then came years of holocaust under the tyrant Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime, during which Maha Ghosananda’s entire family was killed.
Maha Ghosananda has continued to promote nonviolent means, not only for peace but also for solutions to a wide range of peace-threatening issues, such as deforestation and the use of land mines.
Maha Ghosananda threw himself with vigor into the nonviolent peace movement, doing all he could for his fellow Cambodians. He established temples in all the Cambodian refugee camps on the Cambodia-Thailand border and traveled from camp to camp to teach and encourage his people. The sight of him in his saffron robes is said to have stirred the Cambodian refugees to tears—by 1978 he was one of the last Cambodian monks left alive.
After the signing of the 1991 peace accord, Maha Ghosananda led the first of the Dhammayietra Walks for Peace and Reconciliation across Cambodia. When his nonviolent procession passed through villages, hundreds and sometimes thousands of people joined in the peaceful demonstration. He has continued to promote nonviolent means, not only for peace but also for solutions to a wide range of peace-threatening issues, such as deforestation and the use of land mines. He has been nominated four times for the Nobel Peace Prize.
HIS WORDS
I do not question that loving one’s oppressors—Cambodians loving the Khmer Rouge—may be the most difficult attitude to achieve. But it is a law of the universe that retaliation, hatred, and revenge only continue the cycle and never stop it. Reconciliation does not mean that we surrender rights and conditions, but rather that we use love in all of our negotiations. It means that we see ourselves in the opponent—for what is the opponent but a being in ignorance, and we ourselves are also ignorant of many things. Therefore, only loving kindness and right mindfulness can free us.
—Step by Step
Book by Maha Ghosananda
Step by Step: Meditations on Wisdom and Compassion. Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1992.
“Reconciliation does not mean that we surrender rights and conditions, but rather that we use love in all of our negotiations.”
(1885–1944)
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One of the twentieth century’s most influential Islamic figures, Mawlana Muhammad Ilyas founded the international revivalist Faith Movement, or Tablighi Jama‘at (“missionary society”), with the primary aim of guiding Muslims to adopt or readopt Islamic practices. A religious scholar and a follower of the Naqshbandi Sufi order, he achieved success by sincerity, persistence, and intense devotion to his cause. His movement has had significant impact not only in his native South Asia but also in Africa, Malaysia, Europe, and North America. Its major gathering at Raiwind near Lahore, Pakistan, is said to be the largest annual meeting of Muslims next to the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca).
Muhammad Ilyas Kandhalawi (the title Mawlana, which he acquired later, means “our master”) was born into a family of religious scholars in what is now the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. He was educated at a well-known center of Islamic learning and became a teacher at another major school. He began his missionary activities in the early 1920s among a group known as the Meos in Mewat (southwest of Delhi); they, like many people in premodern India, did not consider exclusive Muslim or Hindu identity to be important. Ilyas discovered that some Muslims there had even adopted the worship of Hindu deities, contrary to Islam’s emphasis on divine unity and monotheism. He therefore began, along with some of his disciples, to educate these Muslims in the basic teachings of their faith. Religious outreach, or spreading the truth of Islam, is called da‘wah in Arabic and is considered an obligation for all Muslims.
One of the twentieth century’s most influential Muslims, Ilyas’s movement has had significant impact not only in his native South Asia but also in Africa, Malaysia, Europe, and North America. Its major gathering at Raiwind near Lahore, Pakistan, is said to be the largest annual meeting of Muslims next to the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca).
Initially Ilyas worked to establish houses of worship and study throughout the region, but he soon determined that it would be more productive to train preachers to go door to door and instruct people in the religious practices of Islam. Resigning from his teaching position, he established the Tablighi movement with headquarters in Nizamuddin, a suburb of Delhi, in 1926. His efforts were so successful that some 25,000 people attended the first Tablighi conference, held in Mewat in 1941. Since the partition of India in 1947, the movement’s activities have been centered in Pakistan.
The unique feature of the program is that it depends on teams of ordinary volunteers—not professional educators—who travel from place to place, at their own expense, in order to teach fellow Muslims (conversion of non-Muslims is said not to be a primary aim). Mainly men engage in the itinerant preaching, although women also participate in the movement through educational and other activities.
At Ilyas’s death, leadership of the movement passed to his son, Muhammad Yusuf (1917–1965), under whom in 1948 the Tablighi movement began to expand across the Muslim world. By the late 1970s its international influence had become obvious. Since the movement today refuses to make its organizational structure public, some scholars and other observers question whether it is truly nonpolitical, as it claims to be. Ilyas himself—who founded the movement during a time of political turmoil between Muslims and Hindus in India—was said to have kept aloof from politics, concentrating solely on his religious task.
Despite his influence, Ilyas’s launching of a major grassroots religious movement has not received much attention from scholars. Undoubtedly that is because the movement is difficult to study, since its leaders do not believe in communicating through the media or writings, preferring communication from person to person, spirit to spirit. Ilyas wrote no books, and the literature on him and his movement consists mainly of inspirational and devotional writings in the Urdu language.
Books about Mawlana Muhammad Ilyas
Anwarul Haq, M. The Faith Movement of Mawlana Muhammad Ilyas. London: Allen & Unwin, 1972.
Masud, Muhammad Khalid, ed. Travellers in Faith: Studies of the Tablighi Jama‘at as a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2000.
Ilyas’s passion was da‘wah, the obligation to spread Islam’s teachings.
(1910–1997)
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A Roman Catholic nun whose dedication to helping the poor in India earned her the name Saint of the Gutters, Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, an order of nuns devoted to serving the poor in Calcutta, India. Today the order has grown from twelve sisters in Calcutta to over three thousand worldwide. For her work she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
Mother Teresa was an Albanian, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, in what is now Macedonia. At eighteen she joined the Order of the Sisters of Our Lady of Loreto in Ireland, where she took the name Sister Teresa. She was sent to Calcutta to teach at Saint Mary’s High School, where she was beloved by the children, who gave her the nickname Ma. She later became principal of Saint Mary’s. During this time she learned Hindi and Bengali and helped in the care of the sick. In 1946, while traveling by train to be treated for tuberculosis, she received an inner “call within a call” and left Saint Mary’s to minister to the sick and poor in the slums of Calcutta. Two years later she left the Loreto community, received nursing training, and went to live among the poor.
In 1950 Mother Teresa founded her own order, the Missionaries of Charity. In addition to the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, she embraced a fourth vow of service to the poor. Soon after she opened the Nirmal Hriday Home for Dying Destitutes in Calcutta.
In 1950 Mother Teresa founded a new Roman Catholic order, the Missionaries of Charity. In addition to the traditional vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, she embraced a fourth vow of service to the poor.
HER WORDS
It is not enough for us to say: “I love God, but I do not love my neighbor.” Saint John says that you are a liar if you say you love God and you don’t love your neighbor. How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbor whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live? And so this is very important for us to realize, that love, to be true, has to hurt.
—Nobel Prize acceptance speech, 1979
The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.
—London Observer, October 3, 1971
Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.
—Documentary film Mother Teresa, quoted in New York Times, November 28, 1986
Books by Mother Teresa
Heart of Joy: The Transforming Power of Self-Giving. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Servant Books, 1987.
Mother Teresa: In My Own Words. New York: Gramercy Books, 1997.
A Simple Path. New York: Ballantine Books, 1995.
Books about Mother Teresa
Chawla, Navin. Mother Teresa. London: HarperCollins, 1996.
Muggeridge, Malcolm. Something Beautiful for God: Mother Teresa of Calcutta. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1986.
Spink, Kathryn. Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998.
For a more complete listing of books by and about Mother Teresa, see www.tisv.be/mt/book.htm.
Organizations
Missionaries of Charity, 45 A. J. C. Bose Rd., Calcutta WB 700016, West-Bengal, India; phone: 033-2447115.
Missionaries of Charity, 335 East 145th St., Bronx, N.Y. 10451; phone: 718-292-0019.
Other Resources
Web site: www.tisv.be/mt/indmt.htm. Mother Teresa’s official web site.
Audiotape Films/Videotapes: Biography: Mother Teresa—a Life of Devotion, A & E Biography Series, 1997; Intimate Portrait: Mother Teresa, Lifetime Home Video, 1999; Mother Teresa, by Ann and Jeanette Petrie, Petrie Productions, available at www.petrieproductions.com; Mother Teresa: In the Name of God’s Poor, dramatization starring Geraldine Chaplin, Hallmark/Family Channel; Something Beautiful for God, by Malcolm Muggeridge, BBC.
Audiotape: Mother Teresa, a musical tribute by Jeanne Hardt, recorded in English and Spanish, Songtek Productions, 1997.
“The poor are very wonderful people. One evening we went out and we picked up four people from the street. And one of them was in a most terrible condition. And I told the sisters: ‘You take care of the other three; I will take care of this one that looks worse.’ So I did for her all that my love can do. I put her in bed, and there was such a beautiful smile on her face. She took hold of my hand, as she said one word only: ‘thank you’—and she died.”
(1861–1918)
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Born in Rochester, New York, the son of a German-born Lutheran missionary, Walter Rauschenbusch became a leading spokesman in the United States for the Social Gospel movement, which seeks to rectify social and economic injustice in the name of Christianity’s prophetic tradition.
In 1886 Rauschenbusch was ordained a minister of the Second German Baptist Church in Hell’s Kitchen, a downtrodden New York City neighborhood. There, he saw firsthand an array of social ills, from disease and poverty to ignorance and drunkenness. While many in America blamed the poor for their situation, Rauschenbusch called upon Christians to take responsibility for the disadvantaged by instituting sweeping social changes. In 1891 he studied in Germany for a year and then traveled across Europe. He encountered conditions afflicting the working classes everywhere he went, reinforcing his belief that social reform is a Christian duty. In 1897 he became a professor at Rochester Theological Seminary and later taught church history there.
In 1907 Rauschenbusch published Christianity and the Social Crisis, in which he said entry into the Kingdom of God requires not only personal and individual salvation but also efforts toward the betterment of society. He became an icon of the Social Gospel movement, whose platform included the abolition of child labor and better working conditions for adults. Many of these ideas made their way into the organized labor movement of the early twentieth century and were eventually encompassed in the New Deal legislation of the 1930s. Rauschenbusch died in 1918.
Rauschenbusch called upon Christians to take responsibility for the poor and disadvantaged by instituting sweeping social changes.
Love creates an enjoyment of contact and a desire for more of it, a sense of the worth and human beauty of those we love, pride in their advancement, joy in their happiness, pain in their suffering, a consciousness of unity.… This is the wide sense in which we must use the word love if we are to realize the incomparable power and value of love in human life. Our understanding of life depends on our comprehension of the universal power of love. Our capacity to build society depends on our power of calling out love. Our faith in God and Christ is measured by our faith in the value and workableness of love.
—Dare We Be Christians? pp. 25–26
If love is the greatest thing in the world and if it is the prime condition of social progress, what of the Christian religion, which has identified itself with faith in love? … It clearly needs active personal agents who will incarnate its vitalities, propagate its principles, liberate its undeveloped forces, purify its doctrine, and extend the sway of its faith in love over new realms of social life. Dare we be such men? Dare we be Christians? Those who take up the propaganda of love and substitute freedom and fraternity for coercion and class differences in social life are the pioneers of the Kingdom of God; for the reign of the God of love will be fulfilled in a life of humanity organized on the basis of solidarity and love.
—Dare We Be Christians? pp. 46–47
Books by Walter Rauschenbusch
Christianity and the Social Crisis. Nashville, Tenn.: Westminster John
Knox Press, 1995.
Christianizing the Social Order. New York: Macmillan, 1912.
Dare We Be Christians? Reprint, Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim Press, 1993.
For God and the People: Prayer of the Social Awakening. Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1910.
The Social Principles of Jesus. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1916.
A Theology for the Social Gospel. n.p.: Wipf and Stock, 1996.
Books about Walter Rauschenbusch
Fishburn, Janet Forsythe. The Fatherhood of God and the Victorian Family: The Social Gospel in America. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982.
Minus, Paul M. Walter Rauschenbusch: American Reformer. New York: Macmillan, 1988.
Ramsey, William M. Four Modern Prophets: Walter Rauschenbusch, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gustavo Gutiérrez, Rosemary Radford Ruether. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1986.
Sharpe, Dolores Robinson. Walter Rauschenbusch. New York: Macmillan, 1942.
“Our understanding of life depends on our comprehension of the universal power of love. Our capacity to build society depends on our power of calling out love. Our faith in God and Christ is measured by our faith in the value and workableness of love.”
(1875–1965)
• • • • • • •
One of the world’s most famous humanitarians, Albert Schweitzer was a physician, philosopher, theologian, and musicologist. Although Schweitzer was a true citizen of the world whose philanthropy knew no national, racial, or ideological boundaries, it was his missionary work in Africa that won him the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize. His religious philosophy is summed up in his famous phrase “reverence for life,” which implies love and compassion toward all living things. He made a significant contribution to biblical scholarship by demonstrating that any search for the “historical Jesus” is inherently subjective and scientifically insufficient, because of the lack of nonbiblical sources, while affirming the mystical spirit of Jesus and emphasizing the eschatological aspects of his teaching. Schweitzer gained renown as an organist and wrote a major study of Johann Sebastian Bach, which stressed the religious nature of his music.
The son of a Lutheran pastor, Albert Schweitzer was born in Kaysersberg, Upper Alsace, which was then in Germany and is now in France. In 1899 he received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Strasbourg; in 1900 he earned a doctorate in theology as well and was ordained as the curate of the Church of Saint Nicholas in Strasbourg. Out of compassion for human suffering, he began to study medicine in 1905 and earned his M.D. from the University of Strasbourg in 1913.
Schweitzer’s religious philosophy is summed up in his famous phrase “reverence for life,” which implies love and compassion toward all living things. One of Europe’s most renowned musicians and thinkers, he gave it up to study medicine and become a doctor to the disadvantaged in Africa.
HIS WORDS
Only when we are able to attribute a real meaning to the world and to life shall we be able also to give ourselves to such action as will produce results of real value. As long as we look on our existence in the world as meaningless, there is no point whatever in desiring to effect anything in the world.
—The Philosophy of Civilization, p. xiii
Nothing of value in the world is ever accomplished without enthusiasm and self-sacrifice.
—The Philosophy of Civilization, p. xiii
Those who regard the decay of civilization as something quite normal and natural console themselves with the thought that it is not civilization, but a civilization, which is falling a prey to dissolution; that there will be a new age and a new race in which there will blossom a new civilization. But that is a mistake. The earth no longer has in reserve, as it had once, gifted people as yet unused, who can relieve us and take our place in some distant future as leaders of the spiritual life.
—The Philosophy of Civilization, p. 39
Books by Albert Schweitzer
The Animal World of Albert Schweitzer: Jungle Insights into Reverence for Life. Edited by Charles R. Joy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1950.
J. S. Bach. 2 vols. Reprint, New York: Dover, 1988.
The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. Reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography. Reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
The Philosophy of Civilization. Reprint, Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1987.
The Primeval Forest: Including on the Edge of the Primeval Forest; And, More from the Primeval Forest (The Albert Schweitzer Library).
Reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede. 1906. Reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Reverence for Life: The Words of Albert Schweitzer. Edited by Harold Robles. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993.
Books about Albert Schweitzer
Brabazon, James. Albert Schweitzer: A Biography. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000.
Marshall, George N., and David Poling. Schweitzer: A Biography. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Organizations
Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, 330 Brookline Ave., Boston, MA 02215; phone: 617-667-5111; web site: www.schweitzerfellowship.org.
Schweitzer Institute, P.O. Box 550, Wallingford, CT 06492; phone: 203-697-3933; e-mail: info@schweitzerinstitute.org; web site: www.schweitzerinstitute.org.
Other Resources
Videotapes: Albert Schweitzer, 1958; The Light in the Jungle, starring Malcolm McDowell, 1992; Le Grand Blanc de Lambaréné (The Great White Man of Lambaréné), French-language movie, by the Cameroonian filmmaker Bassek ba Kobhio, presents an unfavorable view of Schweitzer and the colonial era in Africa, 1994.
CD: Albert Schweitzer Plays Bach, organ music, 2 vols.
“Only when we are able to attribute a real meaning to the world and to life shall we be able also to give ourselves to such action as will produce results of real value.”
(1879–1950)
• • • • • • •
Known to many today simply as Dr. Bob, Robert Holbrook Smith cofounded Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) with William Griffith Wilson and revolutionized the field of recovery by making spirituality—surrender to a Higher Power—a foundational element. Although some still debate the organization’s position that alcoholism is a disease, AA remains the largest organization of its kind in the world, helping millions of alcoholics and inspiring the formation of other Twelve Step addiction recovery programs.
Born to a prominent family in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, Smith became a serious drinker while attending Dartmouth University. His drinking continued while he was a premed student at the University of Michigan. Smith settled in Akron, Ohio, and established a practice after completing his surgical residency at City Hospital.
Unlike many other Prohibition-era drinkers, who had to make do with “bathtub gin,” Smith was able to obtain pure grain alcohol, which was available at pharmacies with a doctor’s prescription. He managed to maintain his medical practice despite his addiction and began to use large doses of tranquilizers to calm his tremors.
In 1933, prodded by his wife, he attended a meeting of the Oxford Group, a Christian fellowship that advocated the Four Absolutes: honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love. The group practiced the principles of self-survey, confession, restitution, and service to others—concepts that later grew into the Twelve Steps of AA.
Robert Holbrook Smith (Dr. Bob) revolutionized the field of recovery by making spirituality—surrender to a higher power—a foundational element.
In 1935 Smith met Bill Wilson, a fellow alcoholic who had already quit drinking. Wilson moved into his home with the encouragement of Smith’s wife and members of the Oxford Group. On June 10, Smith took his last drink. This date is generally acknowledged as the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, although in the early days AA was still a part of the Oxford Group. Smith and Wilson began working with patients in Akron who were hospitalized for alcoholism, using a combination of medication and prayer. Anonymity became a foundation of the group, and Smith and Wilson became known as Bob S. and Bill W.
HIS WORDS
Our Twelve Steps, when simmered down to the last, resolve themselves into the words love and service. We understand what love is and we understand what service is. So let’s bear those two things in mind. —Address at the first international conference of Alcoholics Anonymous, Cleveland, Ohio, 1950
It’s about accountability. If we are helping others, then we must stay focused on our sobriety and we are constantly being reminded of the tools we learn in our recovery groups for living “substance free.”
Just like our walk with God. We must stay in His word, pray and meditate on His word, and surround ourselves with people who are also believers of God. Yes for accountability and for growth and knowledge in God’s precepts.
The two go hand in hand—accountability to God first and to other addicts by helping them in their recovery walk.
—Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, pp. 76–77
Books about Robert Holbrook Smith
Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1980.
Robertson, Nan. Getting Better: Inside Alcoholics Anonymous. New York: William Morrow, 1988.
Organization
Alcoholics Anonymous, Grand Central Station, P.O. Box 459, New York, NY 10163; web site: www.aa.org.
“Our Twelve Steps, when simmered down to the last, resolve themselves into the words love and service. We understand what love is and we understand what service is. So let’s bear those two things in mind.”
(1926–)
• • • • • • •
In exile from his native Vietnam since 1966, the Buddhist monk, scholar, and author Thich Nhat Hanh is a politically and spiritually inspirational figure to many. Pioneer of the concept of engaged Buddhism, he combines social action and civil disobedience with traditional Buddhist meditation practice and spirituality.
Thich Nhat Hanh, or Thây (“teacher” in Vietnamese), as his followers call him, was born in central Vietnam. He became a Buddhist monk at the age of sixteen and by twenty-four had founded the An Quang Buddhist Institute, a center of Buddhist learning in South Vietnam. In the early 1960s Thich Nhat Hanh came to the United States for two years to study and teach comparative religion at Columbia and Princeton Universities. When the war broke out in Vietnam, he returned to his homeland and undertook a program of social action that included founding a peace magazine, lobbying world leaders to stop the war, and launching the School of Youth for Social Service, which brought Buddhist peace workers to the region.
In 1966, when he was forty, Thich Nhat Hanh’s peace activism caused him to be banished from Vietnam by the governments of both the Communist north and the non-Communist south for his role in undermining the war effort and opposing the violence that he saw as destructive and meaningless. Even though the region is no longer unstable, he has not been allowed to return home.
Thich Nhat Hanh has traveled the world with the mission of spreading Buddhist thought and a message of mindfulness, respect for life, generosity, and reconciliation.
After his exile Thich Nhat Hanh traveled the world spreading Buddhist thought and a message of mindfulness, respect for life, generosity, and reconciliation. He also continued his advocacy of nonviolence, addressing college audiences and political leaders alike. In 1967 the nonviolent peace activist Martin Luther King, Jr., nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Well into the 1970s, Thich Nhat Hanh orchestrated rescue missions for Vietnamese trying to escape political oppression. He also led a Buddhist delegation to the Paris peace talks that helped broker an accord between Vietnam and the United States. In 1982 he founded a retreat center and Buddhist community in France called Plum Village, where he offers spiritual lessons in mindfulness, the practice of existing wholly in the present moment. He also continues to travel, drawing crowds from all races, religions, and nationalities.
HIS WORDS
On the altar in my hermitage in France are images of Buddha and Jesus, and every time I light incense, I touch both of them as my spiritual ancestors. I can do this because of contact with these real Christians. When you touch someone who authentically represents a tradition, you not only touch his or her tradition, you also touch your own. This quality is essential for dialogue.
—Living Buddha, Living Christ, pp. 6–7
Meditation is not to get out of society, to escape from society, but to prepare for a re-entry into society. We call this “engaged Buddhism.” When we go to a meditation center, we may have the impression that we leave everything behind—family, society, and all the complications involved in them—and come as an individual in order to practice and search for peace. This is already an illusion, because in Buddhism, there is no such thing as an individual.
—Being Peace, p. 47
Books by Thich Nhat Hanh
Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames. New York: Riverhead Books, 2001.
Being Peace. Edited by Arnold Kotler. Illustrated by Mayumi Oda. Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1987.
Fragrant Palm Leaves: Journals, 1962–1966. Translated by Mobi Warren. Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1998.
The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation. Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1998.
Living Buddha, Living Christ. New York: Riverhead Books, 1995.
The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual on Meditation. Translated by Mobi Ho. Boston: Beacon Press, 1987.
Zen Keys. Translated by Albert and Jean Low. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1974.
Organizations
Plum Village: Upper Hamlet (for men): Le Pey, 24240, Thenac, France; phone: 33-5-53-58-48-58; fax: 33-5-53-57-34-43; e-mail: UH-office@plumvillage.org.
Plum Village: Lower Hamlet (for women): Meyrac, 47120 Loubes-Bernac, France; phone: 33-5-53-94-75-40; fax: 33-5-53-94-75-90; e-mail: LH-office@plumvillage.org.
Green Mountain Dharma Center (for men): P.O. Box 354, South Woodstock, Vermont 05071; phone: 802-457-2786/9442; fax: 802-457-8170; e-mail: stoneboy@vermontel.net.
Green Mountain Dharma Center (for women): P.O. Box 182, Ayres Lane, Hartland-Four-Corners, VT 05049; phone: 802-436-1103/1102; fax: 802-436-1101; e-mail: MF-office@plumvillage.org.
Deer Park Monastery: 2499 Melru Lane, Escondido, CA 92026; phone: 760-291-1003; fax: 760-291-1172; e-mail: deerpark@plumvillage.org
Other Resources
Web site: www.plumvillage.org. Official web site of Plum Village.
“Meditation is not to get out of society, to escape from society, but to prepare for a re-entry into society. We call this ‘engaged Buddhism.’”