Blind Men Groping

1920: Berkeley Divinity School Accused

2008-06-27T14:48:00.000-07:00

Bill Jr:

In 1920, according to an undated news report, Berkeley Divinity School was turned over to the C.L.I.D. for three days. Representatives of the League taught all classes and a public meeting was held one evening with Dean Ladd presiding. The courses were conducted by Vida Scudder of Wellesley College who gave three lectures on the Franciscans, Prof. Norman Nash of Cambridge Seminary who lectured on the Church and Labor; W.B.S. Sr., who conducted a class on "labor agreements," and the Rev. G.A. Studdert-Kennedy, then on the Berkeley faculty and the National Messenger of the Industrial Christian Fellowship, a C.L.I.D. counterpart. (Studdert-Kennedy, of course, was the most famous chaplain of the British Expeditionary Forces in France during W.W. 1; a famous preacher and poet and, as a result of his witness as ‘Woodbine Willie’ in the trenches, had turned into a leading pacifist.)

Quickly, there was a negative response in Middletown and throughout the Connecticut church. The Berkeley trustees established an investigative committee. It was a famous conflict and both the report and Dean Ladd’s response tells a lot about the Episcopal ‘ethos.’

In June of 1920, following extensive study, the board of trustees issued a report responding to the charges that ‘the school was . . . a spawning place for Bolshevik propaganda, and radical Socialist principles.” As illustration of this a certain lecture given on December 19, 1919, by Mr. Wilfred Humphries was cited. According to the CHURCHMAN (July 3, 1920), Humphries was an overseas staff member of the YMCA from 1917, and rendered faithful service and piloted over one thousand refugees across Siberia and was the means of saving the lives of hundreds.

The report stated, however, that Humphries’ lecture was more or less a defense of the Soviet government and, while allowing that it would have been much better if the lecture had not been given, it had also been delivered at Smith, Vassar, Simmons, Clark and other New England colleges. The lecture was sponsored by the Intercollegiate Socialistic Society.

The lecture stirred up Middletown citizens and the Middletown Press, which said that the ‘school had been the centre of radical Socialism' for some time, and that the teachings there promote socialistic ideas.

The trustees' report says:

“So far as your trustees have been able to learn, however, Socialism in a radical or advanced form is not taught in the school. There was a course dealing with social problems introduced before Dr. Ladd became dean, in Dean Hart’s administration. The course, however, has not been pursued as actively in the last few years as before. As to the charge that young men are taught Socialism in the school, we find no evidence thereof, and the faculty deny that such is the case, and the students also deny it. The dean believes, however, in allowing a broad latitude in the curriculum, and in granting the students a wide liberty, with means for the discussion of many different subjects so as to give them an opportunity to look into the different problems of life. In this respect, however, we think that the students should be guided in their studies and be taught to discriminate carefully between the good and evil effects of the various theories presented to them for their consideration and investigation.”

The report exonerates Dean Ladd and any member of the faculty of approving "anything of a violent or revolutionary nature, and we further find, which fact is quite unnecessary, as is well known to every trustee, that the removal of the school to another location has nothing whatever to do with the question involved."

“As to the claim that God’s Word should be taught and that alone, we are quite in sympathy with it, but opinions may well differ in these days when the agencies for teaching and preaching the Gospel are so varied, as to whether that Word is not being taught by recognizing the manifold difficulties of the day and preparing men to meet them."

The Trustees’ report concludes with the statement that they are going to be more involved in the management of the school and its curriculum and that the Dean and some faculty should withdraw from some organizations, with the C.L.I.D. being implied as one of them.

Thus, Wm. Palmer Ladd issued an equally long response, expressing appreciation for the exoneration and then saying that he would not quit the C.L.I.D.:

“The committee thinks it unwise for the dean and members of the faculty ... to belong to such an organization. Why unwise? Is there anything unchristian or heretical in trying to make justice and love the controlling motive in all social conditions? No, the committee says, ‘there can be no objection to such a platform from the standpoint of Christianity, so far as the application of the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is involved.’ Is the society in any other way unchristian or un-Churchly? Has it been discovered in any serious fault? Have the bishops and others who have joined it suffered from their contact with it? None of these things is alleged. …

"...the reason given for withdrawing from the C.L.I.D. is not one which makes any appeal to the members of the Berkeley faculty. They do not desire to regulate their conduct with reference to the present state of the public mind and the standpoint of the citizen of the world whether a Christian or not. One would have thought that even a citizen of the world would prefer that a member of the faculty of a Christian divinity school should regulate his conduct not with reference to the world and the prevailing state of the public mind but according to the principles of the religion which he professes.”

The second item, which Dean Ladd saw as much more important, was the issue of seminary management and the trustees’ involvement in curriculum control. After showing where such control could lead, he concluded:

“And what would ‘the public say?’ I think they would say that the Episcopal Church was a Church where those inauthority did not desire to make justice and love the controlling motive in all social conditions, not a democratic Church but a Church of the privileged classes, a Church where the clergy were not free to teach and act according to their honest convictions, and where even the future clergy of the Church were under the control of the wealthy and influential laymen and were trained up after a fashion which these same laymen imposed upon them. All this would be mistaken. As the committee says ‘the public does not always see clearly.’ But since the report has a good deal to say as to what the public at present thinks of the school it would seem fair to consider what it might think of the school and of the Church in case the committee undertook to arrange this whole matter after a manner acceptable to themselves.

"...The Berkeley Divinity School is, of course, desperately in need of money. And trustees and others have repeatedly said that no money will be forthcoming so long as our present policy continues. I hope this is not so. But if the school has to die in a losing fight for a policy, one feature of which is to try to make justice and love the controlling motive in all social conditions, I am quite ready to say, with Bishop Brewster [of Maine], ‘Then let it die.' Better so to die than to live on prosperously in an attitude of subservience and compromise.”

It was an interesting and early fight, which WBS, Sr., was to be embroiled in on many fields and in many arenas. Dean ‘Billy’ Ladd, that quiet scholar and liturgist, could get his dander up when pushed. It was he who sent Dad down to the New School to study with Scott Nearing, among others.

Berkeley was moved from Middletown to New Haven in 1928 and associated with Yale University and its Divinity School. And, in 1948, Bishop. Budlong, of Connecticut, as head of the trustees, gave WBS, Sr. a D.S.T. (honoris causa), in the same ceremony similarly honoring the Rev. Samel Shoemaker, rector of Calvary Church, N.Y.C.

Interlude: An Explanation of Time, of Place, of Thanks

2008-04-10T18:23:00.000-07:00

Bill Jr:

My father died in 1972. I write and edit at the College of Preachers at Mt. St. Alban in the spring of 1993. Too long a time has passed since his death. Polly, his parishioner and friend and my wife and colleague for 49 years now [63+ years now], and I collected materials at the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin (where the Episcopal Church Archives are located) and at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, Cal., two years after his death.

My mother, Dorothy Ibbotson Spofford, was sick with cancer when Dad died. While Polly looked after her, I cleaned our and I cleaned out the office and print shop on River Road in Tunkhannock, in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania. Infinite numbers of files, papers, old sermons, ancient magazines, letters and faded photographs, together with innumerable empty bottles of the cheapest bourbon whiskey, were discovered. All but the last were put in boxes and have traveled with the Spoffords for the past twenty-plus years. The multiple trash bags of bottles were taken to the Tunkhannock dump.

Dad was a parish priest, a social activist, a most competent investigative reporter and editor, a writer of friendly or angry notes to varied persons of renown and many of what he would call the proletariat, and, of course, all of this meant that he wrote much. And there it was....

And, in some sense, here it is. Among the materials was his proposed book, some of which appeared in THE WITNESS. It deserves to be shared, not because of him necessarily, but because, in many ways, he was in a unique place and role to observe, comment upon and lead some of the social actions concerns and forces of both the church and secular communities for his active decades.

Also, now, it seems that younger church members seem to think there was Francis of Assisi, passionate about the poor and God's creation ....and, then, the "March on Selma" and , later, "The Vietnam Spring". Dad was no St. Francis by a long shot, nor a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But he was a great observor and commentator and he believed that that when people were hungry, they should get bread, and when they were hurting, they should have healing. And, also, when they were sad and sorrowful, they should know joy and laughter.

Walter de la Mare wrote an epitaph for G.K.Chesterton following his death. It fits W.B.S. Sr.:

"Knight of the Holy Ghost, He goes his way,
Wisdom, his motley, Truth, his loving jest,
The mills of Satan keep his lance in play,
Pity and Innocence his heart at rest."

With any sort of discipline, we should let Dad speak for himself. But I, too, have been an editor and a parish priest and a lesser social activist, as well a journalist. My issues have been in areas of decayiing communities, whether urban or rural or in-between, and I probably l have written too much. I will trust friend to edit competently so that readers might get some 'new wine' out of what which may seem like "old skins".

The Church League

2008-04-10T17:31:00.000-07:00

THE CHURCH LEAGUE

From a type-written manuscript that may have been edited into final copy for THE WITNESS and included in Bill Sr’s original notes for A BLIND MAN’S GROPING.

-o0o-

Bill Sr:

The efforts of the Rev. Byron-Curtiss, and the few who stuck with him, to keep the Church Socialist League alive was short lived. Curtiss had published the SOCIAL PREPARATION from time to time, carting them to Church gatherings where he would buttonhole people to subscribe and with the meagre funds pasy the printer and perhaps have a bit left to carry on the work. The General Convention was to meet in the fall of 1919 in Detroit and I was assigned the task of gathering materials for the magazine to be distributed there. I have searched through libraries for a copy of that num ber without success...i am still curious about who contributed articles. [Bill Jr. Note: In Dad’s office, and now in the national church archives, was one copy of that number with its most impressive list of contributors.] I know that I went after big shots and as I recall it, got them. One I know responded, since I still have his letter stuck away in a strong box. The address is 10 Adelphi Terrace, london, W.C. 2; the date, 4th August 1919, and the signature, in very tiny script for such a bold man, G. Bernard Shaw. The letter:

"Your invitation to me to address an Encyclical to the Protestant Episcopal Church of America would, if I complied with it, expose us to the retort that you are not the Primate and I am not the Pope.

"Besides, if the blood of millions of their fellow creatures did not move the Protestant Churches to protest,nor the Catholic Churches to proclaim that in the kingdom of heaven there are no frontiers, can you suppose that a few drops from my ink bottle would have any effect on them? I am duly flattered by your assumption that the man who would not listen to Christ would listen to Bernard Shaw; but the Churches have come out of this war so badly that if they did listen to me now, I should ask, like the Greek orator, ‘What foolish thing have I said?’

"All the men and women in America to whom anything I could say would be likely to appeal seem to be in prison, where my words cannot reach them. If any of the few who were faithful to a religion which I, being only a connoisseur and not a devotee, do not profess, are still at large, I can only congratulate them. I can hardly congratulate the Churches on having missed a supreme opportunity; for I am afraid that supreme opportunity may have been their last.

"As I am by family tradition and baptism an Irish Protestant, perhaps I had better add that of all the ecclesiastics in our pseudo-Christendom, the Pope and the late Roman Catholic Bishop of Limerick set an example which only a few British and American Bishops had the grace to follow.”

Besides distributing this number of Social Preparation, the last ever published, the C.S.L. conducted a forum at the Convention led by the Rev. Irvin St. John Tucker, Socialist party member of Chicago, who had been tried for his anti-war stand during World War One and had been convicted, along with Victor Berger. But it had not been easy for the government to lock up these men for every time they tried, Berger would embarrass the authorities by again being elected to Congress by his Milwaukee constituency. Tucker was a master at running meetings so that these affairs in Detroit were exciting and attracted large crowds.

But it was a swan-song. There was no money whatever to carry on, so finally the few remaining C.S.L. members decided to give up and join the new Church League for Industrial Democracy, of which that great soul and social pioneer, Bishop Charles Williams (Michigan) was the president.

It was not long afterward that Richard Hogue resigned as executive secretary --forced out really because of marital difficulties which would have been embarrassing for an organization working within the Episcopal Church with its rigid canons on divorce and remarriage. The Rev. Francis Barnett was made acting secretary and he carried on for a time from a church center in New Hope, Pa., where the Rev. Samuel Booth, later bishop of Vermont, and my old friend, Charles Collett, had charge of a number of rural missions, attempting to do in the rural field what we had originally planned for Chicago -- earn their living as farmers while running the churches on the side.

[Bill Jr Note: Charlie Collett was on of the ‘Berkeley Four’ of class of 1917. The fact that he was doing non-stipendiary church work was also significant and that he and Samuel Booth were trying it in then rural New Hope indicates that, perhaps, there may have been a bit of influence on the Roanridge and regional training programs of the National Town-Country Institute under P.B. Henry Knox Sherrill and his town-country executive, the Rev. Clifford L. Samuelson. The latter was always a member of CLID, together with his wife, Elizabeth, one of the daughters of the Bp. of Idaho, Frank ‘Pat’ Rhea.]

The executive committee of the League also appointed the Rev. Farr of New Jersey as field secretary for the east and asked me to fill the same position in the mid-west. A large part of my time was spent preaching sermons, giving courses at summer conferences, and, indeed, working myself in wherever I could in an effort to tell as many as possible what the League stood for and enroll them as members.

[Bill Jr. Notes: Dad seemed to have used the chair of the Executive Committee, Vida Dutton Scudder, as his ‘supervisor’. There are several letters from him enthusiastically telling of his trips to Wisconsin, through Illinois, up into Minnesota, etc., speaking and seeking. And, then, he would get frustrated and depressed, particularly with the lack of concern of the rectors of large churches. If he bumped into someone sincerely interested in the labor-cause in the Episcopal Church, he would send her that person’s name and exclaim that they might be candidates for the national committee of CLID. One of these persons was the socially concerned Dr. William S. Keller of Cincinnati who, not too much later, would found the program that became the Graduate School of Applied Religion. Reading these letters as his son, I can only wonder once again what the young Dorothy was doing in their apartment in Chicago, with two young children.

[The Executive Committee, with the departure of Mr. Hogue, tried hard to convince the young scholar and embryonic professor at E.T.S., Norman Burdette Nash, to become executive secretary of the CLID. He, according to a four page letter he wrote to Mr. Wm. Cochran of Baltimore, considered it long and hard. He then decided that his field was academia. One wonders whether the seminary professor would have turned into the headmaster of St. Paul’s School, Concord, or Bishop of Massachusetts, if he had accepted. At any rate, the lot then fell on the young editor of THE WITNESS, who was getting the magazine out weekly and, at the start, presumably also running St. George’s Church.]

The small Church organization, with a membership which varied with the times from 1,000 to 2,500 sought to convince the followers of Christ that Bishops of the Episcopal Church were right when they declared in a Pastoral of 1922: "that an outstanding and ;pressing duty of the Church is to convince its members of the necessity of nothing less than a fundamental change in the spirit and working of our economic life." Or to quote a later pastoral letter of the bishops (1933): "The Master’s concern for the under-privileged and neglected folk was repeatedly manifested in his habit and teaching. That millions of our people are denied the common necessities of life, that approximately one-third of our population is beloe the poverty level, that there is widespread want in a land that is abundantly productive make evident the lamentable inadequacy of existing economic systems. With these conditions the Church is immediately and vitally concerned. If our present Christian civilization produces these ills then obviously it has departed from the right principles enunciated by Christ.”

[Bill Jr. Note: The 1933 pastoral, written as the New Deal was struggling with the amelioration of the so-called Great Depression sounds very close to what contemporary theologians, liberation type or otherwise, call “God and Christ’s option for the poor”. The CLID seemed to always function in this manner theologically, sociologically and purposefully. It is why it sent Dad into the strike situations in the textile and coal industries.]

So we talked and we wrote; we taught and we lectured. One of the big opportunities which we always
grasped was at the General Conventions, where the leaders of the Church gathered every three years. We always ran a forum, insisting upon our right, along with other unofficial organizations of the Church, to a p;lace for meetings int he conventin hall and a listing of our meetings in the official program. This was generally opposed by the bigwigs but we always managed to win out. The hottest fight was over the meetings held at the Cincinnati convention in 1937.

Six weeks before the Convention was to open, William T. Manning, sometime rector of Trinity Church and bishop of New York, the largest and wealthiest congregation and diocese in the Church, wrote letters to the four Church weeklies protesting the League’s meetings. ‘There is widespread dissatisfaction,’ he declared, ‘and among many of our people a stronger feeling than that. In view of its militantly partisan and radical character many are questioning both the proprietyand the fairness of giving such special prominence at our Convention to this organization with its daily meeting which, it is announced are to be held in the Mayfair Theater located in the Convention Hall.’

His letter was printed in three of the weeklies and, had that been all, the controversy doubtless would have been a brief battle of words within the Episcopal Church, soon simmering to nothing. But Bishop Manning, gifted int he ways of publicity, prior to mailing his letter to the Church papers, called in reporters of New York dailies and handed it to them. It was for this reason that Guy Emery Shipler, editor of THE CHURCHMAN, refused to print it, writing Bp. Manning: ‘It is not accepted journalistic practice to print letters addressed to the editor which have already appeared int he news columns of other journals. In the case of your own letter I had already read it in full in the daily press before it was received at the CHURCHMAN office.’

The New York papers all printed the bishop’s letter. It was picked up by the wire services and sent all over the United States. So for the weeks immediately before Convention not only the Church press, but newspaspers and secular weeklies were giving front page to this hot scrap in the sedate Episcopal Church.

Merwin K. Hart, president of the N.Y.State Economic Council, organized a new group for the sole purpose of fighting the CLID, his Church Layman’s Association. His letters too were printed in the papers and, of course, answered by us. And as bishops and delegates arrived in Cincinnati they were handed a document signed by Mr. Hart, called ‘WHAT ABOUT THE CHURCH LEAGUE FOR INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY AND THE RADICAL MOVEMENT IN THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH?” It declared that Edward Lambe Parsons, the bishop of Califronia and president of the League, was at least tainted with Communism since he was also vice-chairman of the American Civil Liberties Union. Mary van Kleeck, head of the industrial studies of the Russell Sage Foundation, and Vida D. Scudder, professor at Wellesley, vice-presidents of the League, likewise were branded dangerous persons. I was the worst of the lot since I was connected not only with the Civil Liberties Union but was also a member of the executive committee of the League Against War and Fascism and was chairman of the North American Committee for Spanish Democracy.

As for the speakers listed for our forums, according to Mr. Hart’s appraisal, each and every one of them were men who should not be listened to by Episcopalians since they had enough to do in dealing ‘with those eternal spiritual verities which neither shift nor change. This task of infusing greater spiritual life is a vast one.’

I arrived in Cincinnati the day the Convention opened to be met by a flock of reporters. They put us on the front pages and we stayed there. Samuel F. Houston, Philadelphia financier, introduced a resolution the first day to have the League thrown out of Convention. Bt the motion to bring the subject up for immediate discussion was defeated and went to committee. Meanwhile the House of Bishops, always more liberal on social and economic questions, defeated the resolution by a fantastic vote with but four bishops voting to support the position taken by Bishop Manning. So we had our forums, and we had them where they were scheduled to meet, in the Convention hall. The House of Bishops met on the top floor, reached by an elevator. After this vote, I came down on a crowded elevator with the Bishop of New York.

“Do you plan to attend our forum today, Bishop Manning,” I asked.

‘Do you think I could find a seat?’ he asked with a smile.

‘If you get there early. We are going to play to packed houses, thanks to you and Merwin Hart.”

Everyone laughed, including Bp. Manning. I had frequent tilts with him and I testify that he always fought on principle, hard but impersonally. The last time I saw him was in front of Wanamaker’s in New York where we chatted amiably for twenty minutes about our various squabbles.

As for our Cincinnati meetings, the speakers were Norman Thomas, head of the Socialist Party; Laurence Oxley, on the staff of the U.S. Dept. of Labor; Prof. Reinhold Niebuhr of Union Seminary, described by Mr. Hart, interestingly enough in light of later developments, as ‘one of the best known radicals in the United States. Like most of the others, he dis-believes in the American System --has spent a large part of his life in subversive activities.’

Also speaking were Howard Kester, a young minister who was at the time seeking to improve the life of southern tenant farmers by running a model farm in Mississippi sponsored by Sherwood Eddy and others; Roger N. Baldwin of the Civil Liberties Union (‘the worst communist of them all’ - Mr. Hart); A.J. Muste of the Fellowship of Reconciliation; Murray Lincoln, secretalry of the Farm Bureau Federation and Homer Martin, who came in for particular attack in those days since he was doing something about getting auto workers into at the time of the United Automobile Workers of America.

Chairman of the meetings were Bp. Benjamin Brewster of Maine, a vice-president of the League; Bp. Parson, president; Bp. Wm. Scarlett of Missouri; Bp. Henry Knox Sherrill of Massachusetts (and then Presiding Bishop); Mr. Charles P. Taft of Cincinnati who later served as president of the Federal Council of Churches; Mr. William F. Cochrane of Baltimore, treasurer of the League ; Bp. Charles K. Gilbert of New York, also a vice-president of the League and, as a suffragan bishop, subordinate to Bp. Manning but who nevertheless said from the forum platform that if there was any misunderstanding about the CLID meetings it was certainly not the fault of the organization. “The CLID,” he declared, “was only interested in underprivileged humanity, as Christ was, and is an organization to which I am ;proud to belong.”

This episode should not end without a word about the Matthews family of Cincinnati: Mrs. Mortimer Matthews, her daughter, Elizabeth, and son, Stanley. Months before the Convention CLID membership of that city had met to discuss what should be done about racial segregation at the time of the Convention. Elizabeth Matthews, at that time president of the national Womens’ Auxiliary of the Church, and Miss Mary Johnston, likewise and national figure of the Church, merely said: ‘We will take care of it.” How I never knew, but there was no segregation or discrimination in the hotels or restaurants of the city, at least during the Convention.

Stanley Mattews, an architect, spent many hours each day promoting the forums in various ways. As for Mrs. Mortimer Matthews, generally looked upon as the most influential Episcopalian in the diocese of Southern Ohio, when I arrived at the Convention Hall, she was in the basement with hammer and nails fixing up the CLID booth where, during the Convention, she and my daughter, Marcia, then a student at nearby Antioch College, sold and gave away what Mr. Hart considered ‘subversive literature’. While Mrs. Matthews was driving in a nail, Bp. Henry Hobson, host to the Convention, stopped to ask her to take the responsibility for some job or other. Her reply was; ‘This is more important. Run along now, Henry, and find someone else for that an let Bill and I attend to the CLID.’

Three years later, at Kansas City, the story was much the same. Again resolutions were introduced to have our meetings thrown out. The vote this time in the House of Deputies was a bit close but we nevertheless won, with a good many deputies being convinced by Dean Sidney Sweet of St. Louis who said: ‘What’s the use of doing this? Throw the League out of the convention hall and they will hire a larger one across the street--and pack it too.’

The speakers at that Convention were Roger Baldwin, with the host bishop of West Missouri as chair; Carey McWilliams of California with Bp. Gooden of Los Angeles, chair; Jack McMichael, president of the American Youth Congress, with Bp. Huston of Olympia, chair; Josephine Roche, coal o;perator of Colorado, with Bp. Malcolm Peabody of Central New York, chair; Max Yergen, president of the National Negro Congress, with Bp. Beverly Tucker of Ohio as ch.; Jack Foster, missionary to China, with Bp. Sherrill as chair. Our headliner was to have been John L. Lewis, then president of the C.I.O. I had gone to Washington to see him on appointment some months before to invite him. I was told by his office that he was in an important conference with several Senators, but that he was to be in New York shortly and would see me then.

Some time later I got a phone call: ‘This is John L. Lewis’ said the voice on the other end of the wire. Thinking that someone was pulling my leg, I replied: ‘Oh, yeah! This is Franklin Delano Roosevelt!’

But it was Lewis and I spent an hour with him in a suite of a New York hotel. He consented readily to speak at our forum in the fall, and we then went on to talk aout the status of the workers and what could be done to better their lot. An extremely gentle man, with tremendous concern for the underdog, was the impression I got of him.

But his meeting never came off --too bad, for it would have packed the largest hall in Kansas City. However, Lee Pressmasn of the C.I.O. called me the day before it was slcheduled to tell me that Mr. Lewis could not come but was sending a substitute who would read his prepared address. I knew that this would be a dud so declined and, instead, we kept Jack McMichael over for a second day.

It was not until I returned to New York that I found out why Lewis had been unable to come to Kansas City --our meeting was scheduled for the same evening that John L. Lewis made his famous nationwide broadcast backing Wendell Willkie for president of the United States.

-o0o-

Bill Jr:

Dad relished the memories of his disputes with Bp. Manning and, particularly, he rejoiced in the success of the CLID forums in Cincinnati. By the Kansas City gathering, three years later, the issues of the international crisis were dividing liberals as to whether they were pacifists or anti-fascist or what ‘color’ of leftists! Indeed, the John L. Lewis endorsement of Wendell Willkie had something to do with this, also, since Lewis, apparently, thought FDR was a supporter of ‘malefactors of great wealth’ and wasn’t truly helpful to the C.I.O., despite the fact that Willkie was a quintessential business man.

Also, among other things, Dad liked to put on meetings. One of his teachings to his son was that one always counted the reservations and estimated attendors before a meeting and, then, set up fewer chairs than the reservations. ‘It looks and feels better to have to bring in other chairs and tables,’ he said, ‘than to have to have to take some empty ones away.’

I have attended many General Conventions. The two most exciting I attended were in Seattle, just before I was elected a Bishop. I went as a deputy to the meeting of the Episcopal Church Women and my experience was similar to Dad’s in Cincinnati, i.e. in respect to the role of women. So, too, I am pleased that I have at least one historic first...i.e. I am the first ‘official delegate’ to the E.C.W.’s Triennial to be seated in the House of Bishops. Barbara Harris, of course, was the first woman there, but I was the first E.C.W. deputy! And the other was my first as Bishop of Eastern Oregon. It was a special convention called as a result of decisions made in Seattle having to do with conflicts over the G.C.S.P. (General Convention’s Special Program), and concerned with interracial issues of justice and equity. It was held on the campus of Notre Dame...it was cheap, it was conflictual, it was tough...it was for me, Pentecostal or Spirit-filled. Others, obviously, felt otherwise. I roomed with the young bishop of Okinawa and Guam, Ed Browning, who, in 1985, became Presiding Bishop.

Bill Sr's original Introduction

2008-04-01T16:19:00.000-07:00

Bill Jr:

His friends had been asking for Dad to write an account of his social action and other works for years. He introduced his 'BLIND MAN'S GROPING' in March, 1955, starting it with letters from two friends. One was Mary van Kleeck, who had been director of industrial studies for the Russell Sage Foundation and officer of C.L.I.D. [the Church League for Industrial Democracy] from its beginning. They had worked with each other on the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union, also. The other was the Rev. Canon Charles A. Martin, head-master of St. Alban's School, Washington, D.C., who was a co-trustee with Dad of the 'Bishop Robert Paddock Foundation' The gropings of a blind man, then, start with this justification...

-o0o-

Bill Sr.:

[Charles Martin] commends the idea but says he cannot imagine me writing memoirs. He does not state his reason but maybe it is because it brings to mind a person who is on the shelf, voluntarily or otherwise, who bores others by relating past events. But as Mary van Kleeck says, 'current issues had their beginnings in the past and their history, especially when it is unfinished business, can be made to illuminate the present.'

Webster says that a memoir is an account of events and acquaintances in which one has had a part or interest. If that is it, then memoirs is OK with me. For my plan is to relate events that are as fresh as today's Congressional investigations --are in fact based on a recent one where I testified. I was there forcefully reminded of the truth of Mary van Kleeck's statement that 'current issues had their beginnings in the past' that it sure is 'unfinished business' adn that anyone going up against the Washington boys realizes how it 'illuminates the present.'

In relating events I will of course have a lot to say about those who played their part in them--people who, for the most part, have battled for a more Christian world, and not too successfully if you take a short range view. A newspaper is before me: bombs that can utterly destroy an area 7,000 square miles; a million and a quarter U.S. soldiers stationed at 950 bases scattered over the earth. Not much Kingdom of God there.

When such news gets me down there are a couple of things I do; spend an afternoon in the anthropology wing of the Museum of Natural History in New York. There you see the development of life on this planet from slime to a U.S. Senator and leave singing with the certain knowledge that the Senator is not the end of God's creation.

Or I can read or listen to G. Bernard Shaw,. The most stimulating debate I hear -- it's on a long-playing record --is between Charles Laughton as the Devil and Charles Boyer as Don Juan. The Devil makes out a good case for his religion of Love and Beauty; that 'love is good to look at; that music is good to hear; that love is good to feel; and that they are all good to think about and talk about."

And he has more ample grounds today for saying whast Shaw had him say fifty years ago: "I tell you that in the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine.----When he goes out to slay, he carries a marvel of mechanism that lets loose at the touch of his finger, all the molecular energies, and leaves the javelin, the arrow, the blowpipe of his fathers far behind. In the arts of peace Man is a bungller.---The power that governs the earth is not the power of Life but of Death; and the inner need that has nerved Life to the effort of organizing itself into the human being is not the need for higher life but for a more efficient engine of destruction. The plague, the famine, the earthquake, the tempest were too spasmodic in their action; the tiger and crocodile were too easily satiated and not cruel enough; something more constantly, more ruthlessly, more ingeniously destructive were needed; and that something was Man, the inventor of the rack, the stake, the gallows, the electric chair, of athe sword and gun; above all of justice, duty, patriotism and all the other isms by which even those clever enough to be humanely disposed are persuaded to become the most destructive of all destroyers."

But Don Juan describes the Devil's friends, the worshipers of Love and Beauty, as the dullest dogs he knows. "They are not beautiful; they are only decorated. They are not clean; they are only shaved and starched. They are not dignified; only fashionably dressed. They are not educated; they are only college graduates. They are not religious; they are only pew-renters. They are not moral; they are only conventional. They are not virtuous; they are only cowardly. They are not even vicious; they are only frail. They are not artistic; they are only lascivious. They are not prosperous; they are only rich. They are not loyal; they are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; n ot public spirited, only patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not determined, only obstinate; not masterful, only domineering; not self-controlled, only obtuse; not self-respecting, only vain; no0t kind, only sentimental; not social, only gregarious; not considerate, only polite; not intelligent, only opinionated; not ;progressive, only factious; not imaginative, only superstitious; not just, only vindictive; not generous, only ;propitiary; not disciplined, only cowed; and not truthful at all --liars everyone of them to the backbone of their souls."

Over against this Devil's crowd he puts those who serve the Life Force: "He who seeks to discover the inner will of the world, in invention to discover the means of doing that will, and in action to do that will by the so-discovered means.---I tell you as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it. That is the law of my life. That is the working within me of Life's incessant aspiration to higher organization, wider, deeper, intenser self-consciousness, and clearer self-understanding. It was the supremacy of this p;urp;ose that reduced love for me to the mere pleasure of a moment, art for me to the mere schooling of my faculties, religion for me to a mere excuse for laziness, since it has set up a God who looked at the world and saw that it was good, against the instinct in me that looked through my eyes at the world and saw that it could be improved...When the Spaniard learns at last that he is no better than the Saracen, and his prophet is no better than Mahomet, he will arise, more Catholic than ever, and die on a barricade across the filthy slum he starves in, for universal liberty and equality. Later on, Liberty will not be Catholic enough: men will die for human perfection, to which they will sacrifice all their liberty gladly.---I tell you gentlemen, if you can show a man a piece of what he now calls God's work to do, and what he will later on call by many new names, you can make him entirely reckless of the consequences to himself personally."

The frontier of hell and heaven, as Shaw says, is only the difference between two ways of looking at things, and in doing things since activity is the only road to knowledge.

That, basically, is what this story is all about for in its thought and action the C.L.I.D. has always stood with Don Juan and is on the frontier of heaven, however much some people have tried to place it on the frontier of hell.

-o0o-

Beginnings (cont'd)

2008-03-28T14:21:00.000-07:00

Bill Jr:

Dad (left, ca. 1944) refers to his father as uneducated. Technically, he was but I remember him as an avid reader, an explorer of cemeteries and epitaphs, both strange and grand in his Masonic apron and white gloves, and his drug store in Claremont was ever a joy to visit, replete with strange bottles and aromatic with exotic smells. Where he became competent in the ‘chemist’s field is unknown to me...probably through apprenticeship. At any rate, he and Grandma Marcia were given a full page spread in the Claremont paper on the occasion of their fiftieth wedding anniversary. She was from Newport, N.H., closer to Lake Sunapee where the family had a summer home on Star Island, a short row from Mr. Morgan’s dock at Burkehaven.

Also, I am not confident that Dad’s account of life at Trinity was without intellectual power. The fact that he was the lyricist and comedian in many shows, as well as cheer-leader at many games, indicates that he did have fun. A verse in a poem written for the 50th anniversary of the Class of 1914 in June 1967 goes:

Then Spofford with his curly hair
Who led the cheering, in the air
He’d leap, and lead us with a grin,
I hear him now, ‘TRIN-TRIN-TRIN-TRIN!’

Also, on the basis of his writings, it is obvious that he learned much at both college and seminary. He moved well in the company of academic circles always and many distinguished university and seminary professors worked with or around him during his vocational years. Among them were Fredrick Grant, Reinhold Niebuhr, Vida Scudder, Massey Shepherd, Joseph F. Fletcher and Charles A. Martin, long time head of St. Alban’s School on the grounds of the National Cathedral.

A son’s memories are rich with being on the campuses of Wellesley, Sewanee, Kenyon and Hood colleges during summer months as Dad, together with other distinguished faculty, were presenting their ideas to the gathered conference goers. There was a period when these Chautauqua-like conferences were very popular, as were the varied Church Congresses, and many Episcopalians were enriched by these experiences...as well, I am sure, many movements towards ordained ministries stimulated. I must admit that, now, I remember mostly some white owls on the Gambier campus; stalling our Model-A Ford on the road up to the University of the South and Dad running desparately after us as Mom, behind the wheel, threw it into neutral and we started to flow ever more quickly backwards and, of course, the always pleasureable baseball games. As a youngster, it was at such gatherings that I learned both to respect and not be awed by bishops..It is rather hard to knock them when they played hard, made what I viewed as pitiful errors trying to turn a double-play and, besides, they didn’t seem to mind the kids taking their turns at bat.

Beginnings

2008-03-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

Bill Jr:

The Spoffords in America are descended from John Spofford of Rowley, Mass., who had emigrated from England in 1638 at the age twenty-six. The Spofford name appears in the "Doomsday Book", the record of the lands of England as parceled out after the Norman conquest. It derives from "Spa"...a spring of mineral water and "Ford"...to cross by wading and the family 'myth' was that probably the first one of that name ran a tavern by a stream where travelers and locals with a thirst could meet, drink and swap lies.

So, too, there was a family motto: "RATHER DEATH THAN FALSE OF FAYTH." A record from Pilgrim days describes tough times in the colony; the governors in Salem weren't distributing the grain to one and all. So John went down to Salem as head of a delegation to protest and, then, he was arrested for swearing and being blasphemous. At the trial, he won his case by pleading that he had not been blasphemous but, rather, was swearing religiously and simply quoting Provebs 11:26:

The people curse those who hold back the grain
but a blessing is on the head of those who sell it.

It seems an apt tale for many Spoffords we have known and, surely, fitting for W.B.S. Sr.

It was Benjamin, fifth generation descendant of John, who moved from Boxford, Mass., to Danville, N.H. and started the New Hampshire clan. Then, of course, it must have been the frontier and probably for that Benjamin the 'suburbs' of Salem and Boston were getting too crowded and staid.

Image: Approx. 1896. Clockwise from upper left: Benjamin Spofford (b. 1821), Charles Spofford (b. 1863), Charles Byron Spofford (b. 1894?), William Benjamin Spofford [Bill Sr.] (b. 1892)

Blind Men Groping

2008-03-21T20:04:00.000-07:00

The characters:

Bill Sr: Rev. William B. Spofford, Sr. (April 5, 1892 - October 9, 1972). Episcopal clergyman, editor of The Witness, Christian curmudgeon.

Bill Jr: Rt. Rev. William B. Spofford, Jr. (January 28, 1921 - ). His only son. Episcopal clergyman and bishop. (Pictured, ca. 1995, with Polly, his wife of 64 years, and 4 grandchildren)

Tim: Tim Spofford (September 22, 1945 - ). His oldest son, blogger.

The blog:

More than twenty years ago, my father (Bill Jr.) began to edit the papers that my grandfather, Bill Sr., had assembled before his death as a planned autobiography, with the title "Blind Man Groping." Dad's manuscript consisted of Grandpa Bill's articles, letters and other writings, together with Dad's introductory or contextualizing commentaries. Despite a lot of research, correspondence, and dust raised by combing old files and archives, the project was never completed. It has been largely dormant since 1984 or so, when I copied Dad's manuscript, in triplicate, to 3-1/2" floppies and consigned them to a desk drawer, in the successors of which they remained until recently.

Awhile ago, after hunting down a floppy drive (a WHAT?), I tried to retrieve the files. One disk after another, and one computer after another, produced, "Disk in Drive A: has not been formatted. Format now? Y/N" Nevertheless, eventually I was able to find, on my own hard drive as well as on Dad's Mac, the 40 or so files that made up his unfinished manuscript.

That manuscript will be published here, under its original title, changed only from singular to plural to include and honor both of the authors. The files from which the text is taken have very few clues of the intended sequence. I've used what clues there are to order the text as intended, as best I can, and otherwise will be publishing them in more or less chronological order.

Tim Spofford
Portland, Oregon