Durant asserted that history is color-blind, contending that a high civilization, given a favorable environment, could develop almost anywhere and under the auspices of any race. He excuses the blacks of Africa for not having produced any great civilization on the basis of inadequate climactic and geograph-. Poet Edwin Markham stands between Durant and Einstein. The picture appeared in the Jewish Daily Forward. He compliments American blacks, without mentioning any names, for having risen to high places in the professions, arts and letters in the last hundred years despite innumerable social obstacles.
Nevertheless, in Section II, "Biology and History" of The Lessons ol History, Durant, the professional equalitarian, underlines the fact that inequality is not only natural and inborn but increases with the complexity of civilization and that every invention is made or seized upon by the exceptional individual — making the strong stronger and the weak weaker.
Durant further points out that only those who are themselves the product of enfeebling blood mixtures talk about racial equality or preach that all men are brothers.
Instauration (FL), Volume 8, Issue 11, 1 October 1983 — Untitled [ARTICLE]
Utopias involving equality, he declares, are biologically doomed. In , Durant published a little book On the Meaning of Life, after he had collected a number of replies on this topic from well-known persons. He finally decided, "the secret of significance and content is to have a task which consumes all one's energies, lifts the individual out of himself and makes human life a little richer than before.
He fell somewhat short, however, of completing the last part. Ponderable Quote Except for one ethnic group, saying anything that can be construed as a racial slight is a no-no. The Japanese-American Citizens League, which is quick to defend other racial groups against unfair treatment, should also speak out against slander and injustice where Caucasians are the victim. Hopefully, we Japanese Americans do not subscribe to the liberal truism that discrimination against minorities is a terrible sin - but against majorities, it's fine and dandy!
My family is unusual by American Protestant standards in that we have been a single-denomination family since the 1 6th century. At the earliest appearance of John Knox in Edinburgh, my ancestors latched on to the Presbyterian faith and have clung to it through the centuries with legendary Scottish stubbornness. Most American Protestants have changed denominations like their shirts — Baptists yesterday, Methodists today, Lutherans tomorrow. With all the litigiousness of the Scottish character my ancestors and relatives have schooled themselves in Calvinist lore and viewed any other brand of Christianity with distaste and in the case of the Catholic and Episcopal brands outright hostility.
Leaving Scotland as Presbyterians, my forefathers and foremothers settled in Ulster as Presbyterians.
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Emigrating to the colonies in the 18th century to escape Anglican persecution, they ended up in North Carolina, where one of my forebears served as a soldier in the Revolutionary army in the Battle of King's Mountain, after having been blessed by the Presbyterian clergy and enjoined to smite the "legions of popery" -- the British Anglican troops. A century later, my grandfather refused to speak to my cousin for three years because at the height of the Great Depression she had accepted a job as an organist at an Episcopal church, a church "tainted with remnants of popery.
Being Southern and having no theological difficulty with slavery did not the Scriptures themselves enjoin slaves to obey their masters and thereby implicitly approve the "peculiar institution"? To a certain extent I regard myself as some kind of cowbird insinuated into a Presbyterian enclave. Like most Instaurationists, I suspect, I have wrestled long and hard with the problem of God and religion without reaching any conclusion.
Although still troubled by such problems, intellectually I am an agnostic. Aesthetically I am an Anglican Catholic and cannot fathom my family's loathing for ceremony and for a culturally pleasing form of religious service. However, I have never taken the step of dissociating myself from the Presbyterian Church, not having felt free to change in one generation the cultural and religious commitment of centuries of ancestors.
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I still regard the Presbyterian Church with nostalgia and affection, despite my lapse from a state of grace something my father says is theologically impossible since God's elect never lapse. When I was a child, Presbyterianism still stood for something more in America than just a front for social leveling and a stage upon which fellow travelers in clerics' robes could preach historical materialism.
Some of my fondest childhood memories dwell on the church camps and gatherings where we sang Scottish songs and danced Scottish dances.
To me all this was much more than a church; it was the symbol of our continuity in the New World, the focus of our heritage, culture and tradition. Recently, the two Presbyterian churches in America reunited at a general assembly in Atlanta, where I happen to live. Moved by warm recollections, heretic though I may now be, I found myself joining the procession which marched from Atlanta's World Congress Center to the City Hall to celebrate the reunification.
I really had not planned to participate. A lawyer, I was just emerging from a court appearance as the procession wound its way by the courthouse. Was predestination at work? In my childhood the Presbyterian clergy was a sober, solid, restrained group. In the procession I was shocked to see the contemporary clergy, especially the younger element, decked out in outrageous, flamboyant get-ups, sporting shaggy beards and shaggier hippie hairdos. Many of them, in imitation of the various groups who wear T-shirts with words explaining how their members "do it," wore T-shirts with the inscription "Presbyterians do it with restraint and dignity.
Some would actually give vent to periodic shrieks and exclamations on the order of Holy Rollers. They seemed to think it especially commendable to seek out scattered blacks among the marchers and kiss, hug and fondle them. Clerical garb was worn by only a tiny few. A canny Scot knows how to minimize expense and make maximum benefit of his time. God shows his favor upon his elect by bestowing material bounty upon them, etc. Having paid my bill, I saw Mayor Andrew Young walking across the lobby to speak to the celebrants from the City Hall steps. Since, to my surprise, there were no guards or police, I strung along with his party.
One verse of this song was judiciously omitted, as it is from the latest hymnals: Though with a scornful wonder, Men see her [the Churchl sore oppressed, By schism rent asunder, by heresies distressed; Vet we our watch are keeping, And saints cry out how long, Until this night of mourning Yields to the morn of song. Since Andrew Young is not a Presbyterian but a member of the Disciples of Christ or some other fundamentalist group, the singing of this verse might have been considered impolitic. The censorship could also be considered as a sign of the coming reunification with other denominations.
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A great fuss was made over Atlanta's black boss. I doubt seriously whether a white non-Presbyterian mayor would have been called upon to play such a dramatic role in the reunion of the church. I noticed a number of very expensively and tastefully dressed young Presbyterian women in the crowd the kind who populate the League of Women Voters or the Junior League. They were all shook up by Young, whom they insisted on calling "Andy. Mayor Young please excuse my reactionary distaste for "Andy" expressed his happiness with the reunion, which he hoped would spread to Methodists, Baptists and others, so all the races would gettogether in one integrated church.
This idea was received with rapturous applause, which shows how unPresbyterian the Presbyterian clergy has become, since it implies union with churches which an orthodox Presbyterian can only view as heretical.
Young lost no time whipping the crowd up with his florid African oratorical cadences. It was disappointing to see Scots responding to a kind of tom-tom demagoguery so alien to their character. Standing a few yards from the mayor were several rather dignified personages in kilts who responded to his subSaharan gesticulations with quiet, restrained smiles. Were they representatives of the Kirk of Scotland or merely American Presbyterians dressed up in traditional Scottish costume? Who knows?
That they were ignored and shouldered aside in the ceremonies would seem to prove they were representatives of the Kirk. After all, the current feeling in the church is that we must abandon our Old World roots because the handful of black Presbyterians cannot identify with anything Scottish.
For this reason the song books for young churchgoers have been progressively dropping Scottish folk songs and substituting Negro chants and spirituals. Some of them, like one called "Aka' Simba," are nonsensical and meaningless, not to say degrading and undignified.
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On the periphery of the throng and generally ignored was a bagpipe band, whose location was perhaps a subconscious indication of the direction the church has taken with regard to its heritage. The celebration over, the marchers dispersed and made their way back to the World Congress Center, still busily seeking out blacks to hug and kiss along the way. Of interest was the reaction of the news media. Actually, the number of black Presbyterians is microscopic, since the simple, quiet Calvinistic ceremony is totally alien to their hyperemotional religious habits.
Because of the blackoriented media coverage, the public could be forgiven for not understanding that the event was a geographical reunion of the Northern and Southern churches, both overwhelmingly composed of whites or, more precisely, American Scots. The united church elected as its first moderator one J. Since he was a member of the Southern church, this was hailed by the poor, gullible middle-of-the-roaders as a "victory" for the less numerous and mildly more conservative Southern congregations.
It has been my misfortune to have been acquainted with Taylor. Although I do not relish being the bearer of bad tidings to conservative Presbyterians, I must hasten to disabuse them of their illusions. Taylor was perhaps the most trendy radical of all of the radical chic clergy in Atlanta. I am certain he has not changed since he moved to North Carolina. Long an outspoken champion of "civil rights," as well as more exotic and bizarre causes, he used to sport African Nigerian clothing as he went about the city to emphasize his repudiation of white "racism" and his total identification with the Third World way of life.
So much for this great concession to traditional Southern Presbyterians! As Thomas Wolfe said, "You can't go home again. And it's oh that I'm longing for my ain folk, Though they be but humble, poor and plain folk. I am far across the sea, But my heart will always be, At home in dear old Scotland, With my ain folk. Ponderable Quote It's difficult for me to. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't do any drugs - which automatically makes you on the bottom of everyone's social list. A lot of time I find myself sort of ostracized just because. I'm very straight When I first moved out here everybody told me, "You have to go to the right parties, you have to do 'coke'.
Black Americans constitute one of the most important voting blocs in the contemporary political environment. The increasing representation of blacks in Congress, city halls, and state legislatures is only the most visible sign of black political influent e. As ot the census, there were 17,, blacks of voting age in the United States. This represents Four states — New York, Calitornia, Texas and Illinois -- have a black electorate of 1 million or more. The heaviest concentration of black voters is in the South, where Slightly over halt Probably the most important distributional feature of the black vote is its heavy concentration in six Northern states that have been extremely important in presidential elections because ot the large number of electoral votes they command: Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Westward Ho!/Chapter 2
No presidential candidate since Dwight Eisenhower in has won the presidency without winning at least three ot these six states. In a closely contested election a cohesive black vote can easily be decisive in all of them. Muc h ot the black population, especially outside the South, is concentrated in the urban areas New York City and C hicago head the list with over 1 million blacks each.