Category Archives: Events

The Nightmare of Talking Money

04 Saturday Feb 2017

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dock at sunset

The nightmare began when the court declared that “money is speech.” It was a variation of the old saying that “money talks.” The door opened for many wealthy people to set up and use pseudo tax-exempt non-profit organizations to take part in partisan campaigns. Then that idea spread into the churches. Individuals who wanted to endorse candidates for office funneled money through tax-exempt churches for partisan support, expanding the cash available that was unreportable and unaccountable to public interests. This was all in the name of the First Amendment.

A candidate appeared who had his own wealth, who could go where he wanted, stay where he wanted, and say what he wanted. He lied often, long, and loudly, and captured an extraordinary share of media attention with his outrageous antics, and he didn’t need to raise funds from anyone else in the ordinary course of campaigning. Wealthy people could go elsewhere and spend even more to prop up candidates who would do their bidding and who would be accountable to them personally. The singular wealthy candidate was just another form of “money speaking,” since he could not only use his own resources, but he could use his unusual platform to increase his own resources without needing to answer to anyone else, reveal his conflicts of interest, or follow the customary ethics of transparency and disclosure. His party shielded him from investigation and exposure of foreign entanglements in the hope that they could carry out their own platforms of experimental political change and revolution while he was in charge.

The candidate pretended to be the voice of common men overlooked and ignored by the rapid transformations of global economies. Wealth sought the cheapest labor and the highest rates of return without regard to the public interest where goods were manufactured or where they were sold. His decisions, once he was elected, simply cleared the way for more aggressive domination of the multitudes by moneyed interests. Money continued to talk with a louder voice. Soon it was understood that speech was not free in any form, not in the press, not in electronic media, not in the Internet, who were all controlled by a small concentration of special interests. The old principles of the First Amendment were hollow. Personal freedoms were identified with the freedom to force others to obey the conscience of the person who chooses to discriminate, instead of the freedoms of the person who is the target of discrimination. People with money had the freedom to oppress people without money.

The only Constitutional Amendment that would could not be abrogated in any form was the Second Amendment, and the more weapons and the more powerful weapons that one possessed, the more political power a person had. The resulting condition of a heavily armed population was neither “well-regulated” nor controlled by any police or military force serving the common interest. Private military units and paid bodyguards became the norm for those who could afford them. The random, careless, and accidental use of arms to injure and kill accelerated to become the leading cause of death among all people. People had developed the habit of scapegoating strangers and different ethnic groups; finally they turned on each other, neighbor against neighbor.

Society descended into chaos. The social contract was broken. What began as the security of wealth became the reinstatement of the “law of the jungle,” and life returned to being the “nasty, mean, poor, brutish, and short” life (as Thomas Hobbes had described it) of the “good old days.”

These were thoughts of the middle of the night when the mind entertains what darkness hides. The dream does not have to end this way. The creative mind can move the ending in another direction entirely as the day dawns.

Threatened with Expulsion

31 Tuesday Jan 2017

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Appointed by the Illinois Wesleyan Student Senate in my senior year to chair the Religious Activities Commission, I presided over the committee that organized the weekly chapel series, two annual lectureships by theologians or religious leaders, two symposia on current events related to the world of religion, and coordinated several volunteer groups, including the Student Christian Movement and the Community Tutoring Program. It was my third year serving on the commission in those latter capacities, and it was turning out to be a challenging year.

 

We determined that the Fall 1967 symposium would address the issues raised by the Vietnam War, and it was customary when dealing with controversial issues to have different sides well-represented. An expert in the history of Indochina agreed to come to provide background. Several of the IWU faculty agreed to serve on discussion panels. To present the case for the continuing conduct of the war we found a U.S. Defense Department analyst, Craig Spence. The cost of bringing these experts to campus had eaten most of our available budget. I asked for more funds.

 

I began to promote the plans for the symposium, using an art student volunteer for poster design, and, among other efforts, publishing the key documents that represented the sides of the conflict, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, various statements by North and South Vietnamese leaders and assemblies, and considerations of Just War theory and applications by ethicists. These documents were left in several areas of the campus for students who were interested.

 

Four weeks until the symposium, when we still had not secured a bona fide critic of the war, the Dean of Students summoned me to her office. She informed me that I should not secure someone to present a criticism of the war, I should stop distributing propaganda representing our enemy’s viewpoints, and, if I continued to undermine the reputation of the university that she had worked so hard to maintain, I would be expelled. Anything else that she said during the minutes that followed fell on deaf ears as I prepared my case. I was not alone in planning this program; other students and faculty were just as committed to it as I was. If the university was doing its job, it would consider different positions as objectively as possible. If she thought she could threaten me into submission on this, she was mistaken.

 

The next day I learned that no additional funds would be available. I called Staughton Lynd, a well-known academic and activist, who had written and spoken extensively about the war, and explained the situation to him. We could provide a modest honorarium, and I would drive to Chicago to bring him to campus and return him to his home after the presentations and discussions. He agreed to come.

 

I confided in the college chaplain and two other faculty members about the threats from the Dean of Students, and received reassurances from them, but I didn’t see any value in alarming the other students who were involved in planning the conference until and unless they experienced the same threats.

 

The symposium occurred with high participation, full reporting by the Bloomington Pantagraph as well as the Wesleyan Argus, and Staughton Lynd made a thorough presentation to a packed ballroom at the Memorial Student Center. Craig Spence said that the war would probably last another thirty years, if we intended to win it, and an important benefit could be the destruction of China’s nuclear arsenal. If it was evaluated as a debate no one won the symposium, but as a fair representation of views it accomplished its purpose. I mostly remember the extraordinary five hours on the road between Chicago and Bloomington, learning from Staughton Lynd, who shared his experiences with the human rights crisis in the United States as well as opposition to the war in Vietnam.

 

I didn’t hear any more from the Dean of Students, but a few weeks after the symposium, the Dean of Men called me into his office, and he warned me about the dangers of the passive aggressive anger that I had displayed in the fall. He didn’t know that I had that in me.

 

Plunging Into Detroit, 1966

30 Monday Jan 2017

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In the late 1960’s the “urban plunge” was an experience recommended to those who had not lived in an urban area or who had lived in a privileged area and had no direct experience of how the “other half” lived. The Methodist Student Movement was sponsoring a conference in Detroit in the summer of 1966. I was president of the MSM chapter at Illinois Wesleyan University, a farm kid, and I decided to go to the conference and, unknown to my parents (I was 19 after all.), expand that experience with an urban plunge.

Central Methodist Church, located on Grand Circus Park, hosted the conference, and several local leaders—professors at Wayne State University, political leaders, corporate leaders, and the president of the United Auto Workers, Walter Reuther—spoke to us, addressing the urban issues of the day. Reuther was particularly impressive, laying out the challenges to the auto industry, fully integrating the workforce, and expanding the base of unions internationally; he predicted the eventual decline of domestic industry, the unions, and the urban centers in the face of global competition, since people were not preparing for it.

Outside of the conference some of us wandered around and lived on the streets of Detroit. Much of the housing in many neighborhoods sat empty and decrepit. The immense Ford Rouge Plant stood empty. Segregated housing was the rule, and public services for the older neighborhoods were often scarce. I always walked around with one or two other friends from the conference, and we slept on park benches or in abandoned houses, and went to soup kitchens and day labor hiring centers. I never had more than a few dollars on me and dressed like I didn’t have much, which, of course, I didn’t. It was one of the richest experiences of my life, meeting people on the street—the veterans who had lost their way, the guy with an armful of watches that he would sell me, the children who begged during the day and turned their money over to an adult at the end of the evening, alcoholics, drug addicts, musicians and street artists, philosophers, people of all kinds. Throughout the weeks there I perceived no threat, other than the rodents and dirt of the streets. People were friendly, curious about us (We were college students here for a few weeks of the summer just to learn what we could.), willing to talk about their own lives, frustrations, and hopes. I discovered that all of these people were a lot like me under the skin. I could learn from them, but I had little to teach. That was the summer before the Detroit riots of 1967, and I wondered how poor people managed to live in the city, knowing they had no other home to go to.

One day a female friend and I got cleaned up and dressed up and went to a new high-rise apartment building in the urban renewal area just north of the downtown. We pretended we were a newly married couple looking for an apartment. The apartments were plain, small, and uninviting, and we finally had to admit to the nice woman who showed us around that $1000 a month was above our means. I couldn’t see how or why anyone would afford such a rental. Obviously most of the people we were meeting could not. We ate that evening at a Greek restaurant, spending some of my money hard-earned from loading and unloading trucks for a couple of days. We sat and watched as people came and went, finding or leaving something hidden behind the refrigerator that sat just outside the kitchen, but not staying to eat a meal.

I searched for the church that Rev. Reinhold Niebuhr had served for 13 years that had ended forty years before—Bethel Evangelical Church, two miles west of the downtown on Grand Avenue. What would be left of the German working community he served? It had become an African-American working community, and the building continued to serve, renamed Mayflower Missionary Baptist Church. I didn’t imagine at the time that I would eventually serve old German Evangelical Churches that looked a lot like it.

It is still hard to say exactly how those days in Detroit changed me, but they did. I was humbler, needing much less, but also less confident in my own ability to find any kind of success on my own. Anything worth doing had to be done together.

The Surprising Loss of My Virginity

30 Monday Jan 2017

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3 Owls

The fall of my sophomore year at Illinois Wesleyan began with high expectations. I had finished my freshman year with straight A’s. I had a steady girlfriend.  I was newly elected president of the Methodist Student Movement. I was enjoying my classes including “Greek II,” “Creative Writing,” and “Biology,” which I hadn’t gotten to take in high school. And I was preparing for the next summer to be spent in Mexico with a Catholic student work project. But after the first few weeks I began to suffer sharp pains in my back, which only grew worse as I grew weaker every day. Finally, early on one weekday morning in October, I made it into the dormitory bathroom with severe pain in my bladder and penis, pouring bloody urine into the toilet until I passed out. When I awoke and the blood was just oozing, I dressed and headed for the campus health service. I thought I was dying.

Nurse Velma Arnold looked at me knowingly as I explained what had happened. “You have VD,” she said. It took a minute for that to soak in, before I said, “But that is impossible.” And she said, “That’s what they all say. Obviously I can’t help you. You will have to see Dr. Cunningham. I will need to know who your sexual partners have been.” It was hard to make her believe that I couldn’t answer the last question, since I hadn’t had any. She finally let me go anyway.

Later that day, still in misery, I saw Dr. Cunningham, who seemed to take a broader view of the matter. He recommended that I drink as much beer as I could while I was waiting to see Dr. Killough, the urologist. He suspected that I was experiencing kidney stones or a urinary tract infection or both, which is what it turned out to be. Having never drunk an alcoholic beverage, and being 19, under the legal drinking age, on a campus where possession of alcohol was considered cause for expulsion, I was not inclined to take his advice about the beer. He didn’t give me a prescription for beer, but he did give me an antibiotic sulfa drug. By the time I saw Dr. Killough, a day or two later, and he confirmed the double diagnosis with a cystoscope, I was also beginning to show the hives of an allergic reaction to the sulfa drug. The cystoscope, experienced regularly during the next several months, along with a few days in the hospital over Christmas break, removed every ounce of false modesty that I had developed in my 19 years. I had discovered more about my own genitalia than I ever wanted to know.

 

 

I was not completely clear of infection or signs of kidney stones until the next summer. The plans for a Mexican work trip cancelled, I wished my Catholic friends and girlfriend farewell, took a summer course in the history of Christianity, and looked for something else to do.

Responding to the Kerner Commission Report

27 Friday Jan 2017

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hot-owl-southern-white-faced-owl-in-botswana-trying-to-keep-coolAgain in the last semester of my senior year, the Illinois Wesleyan Political Science Department gave two other students and me another opportunity to represent the school at a special gathering, the annual Public Affairs Conference at Principia College. (By that time I was also taking the first political science course of my college career.) The conference theme was “Combatting Racism.”

 

The agenda of the conference included a variety of experts. The immediate background of the theme was the February 29,1968, release of the Kerner Commission Report, formally called the President’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, which branded racism as the primary cause of the surge of riots that had recently swept several major American cities. It was the conference objective to consider and design programs and laws that would reverse the separation of America into two racial cultures that were separate and unequal. It was an ambitious undertaking, especially considering that minority groups were barely represented among the participants.

 

With the division into working groups, I found that my group had one young eloquent black man. He dispensed with the group assignment with the observation that we could imagine many fine ideas for state and federal action that would go nowhere. Instead, we could design goals for ourselves working in the families and communities in which we lived, and these might have some chance of accomplishing something if we were courageous enough to follow through. I was hooked, and so were the other members of the group. Around the circle we considered the actions and processes that would disturb the racism that prevailed where we lived. It was not comfortable, but it was real.

 

I had grown up in a northern community that was thoroughly segregated, even though it was only a few miles from Chanute Air Force Base. Air Force families of many racial backgrounds lived off-base, but only white families lived in Paxton, where people still boasted a “sunset law” that threatened any darker-skinned person who might be caught there after sunset. I had spoken about racial justice in the few sermons I was invited to preach in my home church, but I had not approached the members of the Paxton City Council that I knew, who had it in their power to renounce the “sunset” idea and prepare the town to be open to all.

 

Black friends lived in neighboring towns, but they would not risk coming to Paxton, even to take part in such common activities as bowling, seeing a movie, swimming, or roller-skating. I was welcome in their homes to eat meals and enjoy their company, and they were welcome in my home, which was miles from town in the countryside. The town’s segregating attitude had to change. That would change, I was confident, as the months went by.

 

We resolved to implement the plans we made.  The other groups reported ambitious government programs that would take large scale political action. Our group’s report seemed pale and meager in comparison. In hindsight, few of the ambitious goals that were formulated there, or in the Kerner Report, came to be embodied in actions in the decades that followed.

 

I returned to my home town and approached the public officials that I knew. To a one, they thought it was “too soon” or “too radical” to do what I was suggesting. Furthermore, the time for me to do the organizing that was needed even to accomplish such a modest goal was short, as I was preparing to marry and begin my graduate education in Chicago. There, in Chicago, I would learn what life in an integrated community was like, and how deprived my own background had been.

 

Fifty years later, returning to Paxton, finding a mix of people in the school system, working in the businesses, and living in the town, I wonder why it took us so long, and why we still have so far to go. There is still a lot of room for both large-scale and meager goals and the courage to embody them.

 

Celebrating Pierre Trudeau’s Election

14 Saturday Jan 2017

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When Pierre Trudeau was elected Prime Minister of Canada in the winter of 1968, Rick Kelsey and I were at Ann Arbor, Michigan, at a Canadian-American Conference, representing the Illinois Wesleyan political science department. I had never taken a poli-sci course at IWU, but Rick was the star student, my friend, and he persuaded Dr. Brown to take me along. Trudeau’s election electrified the conference. The status of Quebec and the possibility of its independence was one of the issues tackled by the conference, against the background of increasing division over the war in Vietnam in the USA. Trudeau was a French Canadian and an intellectual, committed to a united Canada as fully as he was to a multilingual nation. Quebec’s separatists were seeking a vote and sure to get one. Trudeau would seek to bridge the gap and keep Canada whole (which he did when four years later the vote for separation was defeated).

Canadian and US academics, students, and politicians joined in presentations and debates about the future, made murky by the hostility and polarization disturbing each of the neighbor countries. We might not be able to help each other find solutions, but at least we could commiserate and share our concerns.

A philosophical voice belonged to the leading American politician present there, Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine.  He was both realistic about the severity of the problems and optimistic about the likelihood of resolving them, uniting Canada with the new leadership provided by Trudeau, and finding a way out of quagmire war in Vietnam, with the growing awareness that US efforts could not accomplish what the Vietnamese people themselves did not support.  During that year he would become the Democratic Party vice-presidential candidate, and, as doubtful as I was about Humphrey, I felt hopeful about the man Muskie I met in a small group that evening. The Labatt ale tasted good, too.

The confidence in Trudeau was well-placed, as his leadership became an inspiration to many people around the world, providing major improvements in Canada’s welfare and economy. The political divisions continued in both countries, but persistence did resolve the issues that seemed intractable for the next generation at least.

I learned that a young man of my age, with my same name, would soon be residing in Toronto, seeking Canadian citizenship and avoiding the draft. I was in no danger from the draft, but his actions would place my name on a suspicious list for a few years. Other US citizens would trade their citizenship for the that status in Canada, and somewhat more rarely some would come south.

Fifty years can give some perspective, and make us pause and ponder. Justin Trudeau now serves in his father’s office, and Canadian separatism appears quiet for the time being. Partisan division in the US has returned with a vengeance as war and fear again provoke American reactions, and the newly elected US President brings baggage in corruption and questionable motives that remind us of the President elected in 1968. The University of Michigan still sponsors forums for commiserating with each other’s problems, and Labatt ale is still good.

Starting Out and Starting Over

04 Wednesday Jan 2017

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Through ten years, between 1964 and 1973, scholarships, fellowships, and grants got me through college and seminary. I worked and studied mostly through the benevolence of others. The savings from my work before college disappeared in costs for the first year. What I earned during the summers or working during the school years disappeared almost immediately. I felt fortunate to leave the years of private institutional education with no debts and no bank account, a talented wife and two small children. I needed a job.

For months I interviewed with churches and church-related institutions. I felt qualified to be a pastor, or a college or hospital chaplain, or a librarian based on years of working in and for libraries.  My academic record no longer impressed anyone. My denominational connections were tenuous. Clearly wealthy suburban congregations did not see anything in my resume or presentations that convinced them. I was going to start small or as an assistant to someone. Who and where?

In the interviews I was my own worst enemy. I asked questions that no one wanted to hear. How often do you examine social issues, such as race and war and poverty and hunger, in preaching and study groups? How many bible study or issue study groups do you have? (Study groups? What are they?) Is the church involved in serving its community? Providing food, housing, help in finding jobs? (I couldn’t find my own job, let alone help someone else find employment.) One church was offended when they bragged about the success of their dartball teams, and I asked them what dartball was. The discussion went downhill after that. Clearly I was on a different wavelength than my interviewers.

Along the way, the United Church of Tilton, where I had served part-time for a year as a pastoral intern, asked me to come for an interview. Tilton was an industrial village at the edge of the much larger community of Danville, Illinois. The General Motors Foundry was the largest employer, but there were several other factories and a railroad yard in the town. This congregation had blended a few Methodists with a few Congregational-Christians and started over. They built a new building, in large part with volunteer labor, and they had started building a new parsonage. They only had thirty members, but they obviously had courage and faith. Would I take the chance to be their first full-time pastor in decades?

I had grown up on a farm fifty miles away, but this mostly union-member, blue collar community, with decidedly southern accents, was like foreign territory. Racial prejudice lay barely under the surface of a lot of comments, and a college education was suspect among some of them. Biblical literalism was the standard, and the church songbook came right out of old-time Gospel radio. Could I serve them?

The commitment and devotion of this small group won me over. They took a chance on me, and Jan and I took a chance on them and accepted their invitation. A year later they gathered around me in an ordination. Within a few years the membership had doubled and then doubled again and again. Their per capita stewardship led the Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ, although the composition of the congregation looked decidedly different than most of the rural and urban congregations of the UCC.

We had our challenges there. School desegregation, poor economy and loss of jobs, religious fundamentalism and the critical judgment of other Christians, problem pregnancy counseling, competition among congregations for members and support, physical and emotional abuse in families, drugs and alcohol—these all brought plenty of tearful times. We also had successes—reorganizing the abandoned town cemetery, senior adult meals, youth programs and work trips, men’s and women’s and couple’s fellowship experiences, and, yes, study groups. After seven more years I thought that it was time to move on and seek new ministries, and let them show that their faith could keep growing with new leadership, which of course they did.

A Panegyric Upon Plymouth

24 Thursday Nov 2016

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The only time I have been invited to preach at a college chapel service was for Illinois Wesleyan University just before Thanksgiving in 1969. I chose the presumptuous title of “A Panegyric Upon Plymouth” as my sermon title, drawing from Soren Kierkegaard’s “A Panegyric Upon Abraham” and the historical fictions surrounding the founding of Thanksgiving as a national holiday.

A panegyric is supposed to be an oration or public address in praise of something or someone. By using the scripture of the Pharisee and the publican as the scripture text for the sermon, my praise was reserved for the publican who approached God humbly and with repentance, in contrast with the Pharisee who proudly thanked God that he was not like other people because he was so much better. With no small amount of sarcasm, I compared the Pharisee to the usual message of thanksgiving in America and expressed the hope that we would learn to use the publican as a model instead.

My delivery was not so good that evening. I recall that my wife compared it to a dirge, since it was slow and halting. I was nervous and had never preached to a college audience in such a formal setting. My mentor, Chaplain Bill White, gave me the benefit of the doubt and said that sometimes it takes a while for a message to sink in and later people come it understand it better. Probably they would understand it from someone else who spoke it more effectively.

Maybe no one else understands that message better, but I do. If the legend of Thanksgiving bears any truth, it is in the generosity and good will of the Wampanoag people in helping the pilgrims to survive, even though the Wampanoag themselves had suffered the worst decade of their own existence as a people. As a result of the pilgrims and the actions of later puritans, we can attest that “no good deed goes unpunished.”

When President Barack Obama addressed the Arab nations in Egypt early in his presidency, expressing regret for some of the actions and attitudes represented in United States’ interventions in the Middle East (never using the word ‘apology’ although that was later used by Obama’s critics), my thoughts returned to my earlier diagnosis of American pride. We have not learned to be humble supplicants to a gracious and merciful God. Our ideas of American greatness are distorted and deadly to the future of the earth. We need to appreciate the humanity that we share with people everywhere, and realize the failures that also come with that humanity. We need to learn humbly from each other. We can only be grateful that God has given much more, much more than we deserve, and perhaps we will have more chances to do some good with what we have received.    

The Group Called ‘Us’

22 Tuesday Nov 2016

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I didn’t learn how the group got started. When I joined them in the fall of my senior year in college, in 1967, they included a mixed racial group from Bloomington and Normal, several men and women, working a variety of jobs, laborers and professionals, a few Illinois State University professors, never more than a dozen people at any meeting. They met to talk about the issues of race and class in those Twin Cities and to identify and participate in actions that might improve those relationships. The era of street demonstrations seemed to be ending, and some of these people clearly had been involved in that kind of action, but they were looking for other things to do.

I had first met some of them when we demonstrated against a dentist at the edge of campus, who would not serve an African-American client. At the edge of campus yet! The obvious place for students to go if they were having a toothache! She invited me to come to a meeting of ‘us.’

They never had a name. They didn’t seem to have or be an organization. As usual some people were more vocal than others, and they spoke respectfully to each other, even when they disagreed about what they should do. When they decided to do something, they went ahead with those who were ready, even though not everyone ever took part in everything they did. They were simply ‘us.’

They talked about education and they placed books and articles in accessible places and took part in forums. They talked about legal actions and involved some lawyers. They talked about electoral politics and recruited a candidate for alderman. That’s where I found a place, canvassing neighborhoods for the candidate for alderman. Bloomington had never had a black alderman. They didn’t succeed in that campaign, but it set the stage for another try, which was successful.

I remember going house to house, having the door slammed in my face by some white folks, given a respectful but distant hearing by some, and welcomed by a few. (It was good experience for ‘cold calling’ on behalf of a church and its message.) Mostly I remember the houses of black and Hispanic folks. In those days, when we came to their doors, my fellow-canvasser and I were welcomed. So much so, that often we were invited inside to sit at table, and our hosts offered us something to eat. At noontime, instead of a reprimand for interrupting their meal, we were offered a dinner, and such a dinner it was! Stereotypical as it may sound, fried chicken, greens, home-baked bread, applesauce, and hominy were on the menu that day, and I didn’t mind any stereotypes at all as I enjoyed it.

When I think of Thanksgiving, a number of such events come to mind, but none more gracious than that one, nor as promising of a better future.

Making Dreams Come True

12 Saturday Nov 2016

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hot-owl-southern-white-faced-owl-in-botswana-trying-to-keep-coolThe evening before the election, I heard Donald Trump say, “I will make all your dreams come true.”

I have a lot of dreams. Since the days of studying both Carl Jung and Gestalt Therapy, I have taken my own dreams and other people’s dreams seriously. These may not be the dreams Donald Trump had in mind, but sleeping dreams reveal much about us and the world we live in.

In the days before the election of George W. Bush, I dreamed repeatedly about going to war with Iraq again. A year before 9/11 and two years before the Second Iraq War, there had been enough talk about Saddam Hussein as a devil that the dreams were understandable. My dreams were chaotic and yet clear in their aversion to the prospect of war in Iraq. As Iraq fell into chaos after our “victory” had been declared, the news became a daily experience of déjà vu.

Before the election of Donald Trump, I had a series of automaton dreams, with people crawling out of a trunk that an orange-headed man had opened. The automatons were zombie-like and yet their faces were full of expression. Their smiles were broad and fixed and their eyes were bright, as they screamed and yelled obscenities and attacked other people, including my friends and family and me, because we were not like them. We did not “belong” to this order of Pandora. Sometimes they attacked people of color and foreigners, sometimes same sex friends and couples (“We’re just friends; we’re not married,” I heard them say, defending themselves.), sometimes crippled and helpless people who just melted under the assaults, as the attackers called them “freaks” and “losers.” They even attacked scrawny children, clothed in rags, who fell under their trampling feet. Once I had my hands around the neck of one of the attackers, and I squeezed her throat, until I stopped myself, and said, “I can’t do this. (I’m becoming like them.).” When I awoke, I’m glad to report, Jan was sleeping soundly at my side, undisturbed and unthreatened. The dream reoccurred with small changes, and I supposed they resulted from the frequent media footage of Donald Trump rallies.

I studied at Chicago Theological Seminary with Franklin Littell, historian of the rise of fascism in Europe, and Andre Lacocque, a biblical scholar who experienced the years of the Third Reich, and whose teaching of Daniel and Job were framed by those experiences. My dreams are often affected by memories of what I’ve learned and by the echoes of those years in the words and actions of extremist leaders and groups of all kinds. It doesn’t take much to reawaken the dreams-turned-nightmares—a straight-armed salute, a swastika or similar angular symbol, the waving of certain flags, especially the Confederate flag. Even our own Pledge of Allegiance, recited with too many flags, too many uniforms, too many people, gives me the creeps.

Mass deportations of millions , indiscriminate stop and frisk, silencing and demonizing dissent, shredding the social safety net for the underclass and the already impoverished and the desperately ill, expanded militarization of the police and search and seizure in our neighborhoods, climate and war refugees crowded into mass camps and prisons across the earth—all of these are nightmarish prospects that have been spoken aloud and celebrated. I pray these dreams are not the ones Donald Trump had in mind when he promised to make all our dreams come true.