Author Archives: G.S. Griffin

Foundations of Faith: A Comparative Analysis of Kohlberg, Erikson, and Fowler

Posted on by under Religion

Developmental psychologist James W. Fowler (b. 1940) posited in 1981 that the way in which men and women understand faith is determined by his or her construction of knowledge. One’s perception of self and one’s experiences in specific environments are more telling of how meaning is made from faith than how often one attends temple, mosque, or mass services, how well one knows church doctrine, or how much holy scripture one can recite from memory. While it is important to note Fowler writes from a Christian perspective (being professor of theology at the United Methodist-affiliated Emory University in Atlanta, as well as a Methodist minister), his vision of human faith development is not meant to be content-specific. It is meant to be applicable to all faiths, disregarding religious bodies to focus solely on an individual’s spiritual and intellectual growth. Fowler formulated “stages of faith,” drawing inspiration from the developmental theories of Erik Erikson and Lawrence Kohlberg, among others. Upon exploring Fowler’s stages, this comparative analysis will examine the ideas of Kohlberg and Erikson, analyzing how their theoretical structures influenced the formation of Fowler’s work.

According to Stephen Parker’s “Measuring Faith Development,” Fowler’s idea was that faith was formed by many interrelated and developing structures, the interaction of which pinpointed one’s stage (2006, p. 337). “Stage progression, when it occurs, involves movement toward greater complexity and comprehensiveness in each of these structural aspects” (p. 337). The structures include form of logic (one progresses toward concrete and abstract reasoning), perspective taking (one gains the ability to judge things from various viewpoints), form of moral judgement (the improvement of moral reasoning), bounds of social awareness (becoming more open to changing social groups), locus of authority (moving toward self-confidence in internal decision-making), form of world coherence (growing aware of one’s own consciousness and one’s ability to understand the world using one’s own mental power), and symbolic function (increasing understanding that symbols have multiple meanings) (p. 338). These are the bricks that build each stage of faith; as one is able to think in more complex ways, one advances up Fowler’s spiritual levels.

The stages of faith are primal faith (pre-stage), intuitive-projective faith (1), mythic-literal faith (2), synthetic-conventional faith (3), individuative-reflective faith (4), conjunctive faith (5), and universalizing faith (6). According to Fowler, during the pre-stage, an infant cannot conceptualize the idea of “God,” but learns either trust or mistrust during relations with caretakers, which provides a basis for faith development (Parker, p. 339). More will be discussed on this later. In the intuitive-projective stage, a child of preschool age will conceptualize God, though only as “a powerful creature of the imagination, not unlike Superman or Santa Claus.” During the mythic-literal stage, the child will develop “concrete operational thought,” and will view God as a judge who doles out rewards and punishments in a fair manner. In the synthetic-conventional stage, one will develop “formal operational thought”; the idea of a more personal God arises, and one begins to construct meaning from beliefs. The individuative-reflective stage at last brings about self-reflection of one’s beliefs. Parker writes, “This intense, critical reflection on one’s faith (one’s way of making meaning) requires that inconsistencies and paradoxes are vanquished, which may leave one estranged from previously valued faith groups.” As this occurs, and somewhat ironically, God is viewed as the embodiment of truth. Conjunctive faith is a stage in which one attempts to reconcile contradictions; while staying wary of them, he or she may see the nature of God as inherently unknown, a “paradox,” while still being Truth. Where certainty breaks down, acceptance of the diverse beliefs of others grows more pervasive. Fowler suggests the conjunctive stage may occur during midlife. Finally, if one can attain it, the universalizing stage is when one becomes fully inclusive of other people, faiths, and ideas. People hold “firm and clear commitments to values of universal justice and love” (p. 339).

It is important to note these stages do not represent a universal, concrete timetable for faith development. Each stage requires greater critical thinking and self-reflection (which is what makes Fowler’s model applicable to multiple faiths), and therefore not everyone will progress through them at the same rate or even attain the same level of development. Further, the model does not address those who abandon faith completely; it demonstrates only a progressive scale that suggests one either stops where one is or moves toward greater knowledge of self and one’s values, and more open-mindedness in regards to others and the nature of God Himself. For many, faith development may not be so simple, nor so linear. Regardless, Fowler’s work has had a great impact on religious bodies and developmental psychology (Parker, p. 337).

Fowler borrowed much from other theorists. Psychologist and psychoanalyst Erik Erikson (1902-1994) created a model for the psychosocial development of men and women, from which Fowler later drew inspiration. In lieu of a lengthy summary of Erikson’s (and Kohlberg’s) ideas, this comparative analysis will provide a brief overview, and focus more on the aspects that relate closest to Fowler’s finished product. According to Erikson’s “Life Span Theory of Development,” human growth goes through eight stages, each of which featuring a crisis that, if successfully conquered, will result in the development of a valuable virtue, such as hope, love, or wisdom. Erikson’s crises were: Trust vs. mistrust (infancy), autonomy vs. shame (toddlerhood), initiative vs. guilt (preschool), industry vs. inferiority (childhood), identity vs. role confusion (adolescence), intimacy vs. isolation (young adulthood), generativity vs. stagnation (middle adulthood), and integrity vs. despair (late adulthood) (Dunkel & Sefcek, 2009, p. 14). One’s ability to embody the more positive aspect of one of these pairs makes it likely one will do the same with the next positive aspect (p. 14).

Fowler liked Erikson’s trust vs. mistrust idea, seeing it as the very foundation of faith development. Clearly, trust becomes a critical theme as one is exposed to spiritual beliefs, the “known”-yet-unseen. Can one trust the holy book? Can one trust the priest, rabbi, or parent? It is interesting to consider how the development of trusting or distrusting relationships will affect future spiritual development. What are the results of the trust vs. mistrust conflict? Erikson felt that “for basic trust versus mistrust a marked tendency toward trust results in hope” (Dunkel & Sefcek, p. 13), which implies a lack of hope if unresponsive caretakers breed feelings of mistrust. While it was strictly Erikson concerned with virtues gained from each life stage, Fowler, in adapting Erikson’s first stage, provides in his model a single stage with conflict. It begs questions. Can one successfully enter the intuitive-projective stage without building trusting relationships in the infant pre-stage? If so, what is the impact of mistrust in stage 1, and all the following stages? Could it mean different perspectives of God (for instance, perhaps as less fair-minded during the formation of concrete operational thought in the mythic-literal stage)? Would one likely progress through the stages more rapidly, or more slowly? Hypothetically, one less trusting might be quicker to see problems and contradictions in faith, advancing to the individuative-reflective stage sooner. Further, Erikson believed “optimal psychological health is reached when a ‘favorable ratio’ between poles is reached” (p. 13), meaning a positive trust-mistrust ratio is all that’s needed to develop hope and move through the stage. Therefore, “a ‘favorable ratio’ indicates that one can be too trusting” (p. 13). What will be the impact on faith development for someone who has grown too trusting of people? By their nature, both Erikson’s and Fowler’s stages build upon each other. For Erikson, trust made it “more likely the individual will develop along a path that includes a sense of autonomy, industry, identity, intimacy, generativity, and integrity” (p. 14). If Fowler’s model is built on the same principle of trust acquisition, what will happen to faith when the foundation is not ideal?

In reality, Fowler’s model parallels Erikson’s even more so, in regards to Erikson’s psychosocial crises. Erikson saw the individual as being pulled by two opposing forces in each stage, the favoring of the positive force leading to new virtues. On the surface, Fowler’s stages may appear simple and gradual, the progression seeming to occur naturally and expectedly, or at least without specifics on how or why individuals progress to higher levels of critical thinking and new perspectives on God. What takes one from an unexamined faith in the synthetic-conventional stage to taking a long, hard look at contradictions and controversies in the next? It cannot be simple maturation, or everyone would make it to the final stages. There must exist something that holds people back, or drives them forward. Que Erikson and his crises. Erikson would say the individual must accept the force pushing forward and resist the one pulling backward. In his fifth stage, for instance, that which Dunkel and Sefcek deem “the most important” (p. 14), an adolescent faces the crisis of identity versus role confusion. The adolescent must form an identity in the social world, build convictions, choose who he or she will be (p. 14). Confusion, temptation, and doubt will impede progress. In Fowler’s model, a crisis certainly makes sense, only perhaps less of a ratio or continuum and more of a single event or confrontation. For example, what better way to explain the transition from the intuitive-projective stage to the mythic-literal stage than the moment when the parent tells the child Santa Claus isn’t real? That could begin the shift from imagination to logic, and with it a change in the child’s perception of God. Personally, this author sees his own transition into Fowler’s individuative-reflective stage as beginning the afternoon he read a work by the late evolutionary biologist and Harvard professor Stephen Jay Gould, who pointed out contradictions between the timeline of the Biblical story of Noah and modern archeology. Though different for each individual, such turning points provide Erikson-esque crises that explain one’s advancement through Fowler’s model.

The work of psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987) also inspired Fowler. Fowler’s form of moral reasoning structure was an adaptation of Kohlberg’s “Six Stages of Development in Moral Thought” (Parker, p. 338). Kohlberg theorized that as one ages, the way in which one justifies actions advances through predictable stages. His Pre-Moral stage saw children motivated to make moral decisions through fear of punishment (Type 1), followed by the desire for reward or personal gain (Type 2). Morality of Conventional Role-Conformity was spurned by the desire to avoid the disapproval of peers and to abide by social norms (Type 3), and later the wish to maintain social order by obeying laws and the authorities who enforce them (Type 4). In the Post-Conventional stage, people acknowledge that laws are social contracts agreed upon democratically for the common good, and are thus motivated to behave morally to gain community respect (Type 5). Finally, one begins to see morality as solely within him- or herself: One must be motivated by universal empathy toward others, acting morally because it is just and true, not because it is the law or socially acceptable (Type 6) (Kohlberg, 2008, p. 9-10). It is not difficult to see how Fowler viewed the development of moral judgement as being a crucial building block to the development of faith. Universal morality, like universal faith, are byproducts of deeper critical thinking, reflection, and cognitive ability.

In that regard, it is easy to see how well Fowler’s six stages and Kohlberg’s six stages align. Both move from perceptions and beliefs borrowed from and influenced by others, and motivated by selfishness, to perceptions and beliefs formed in one’s own mind, motivated by empathy and love. They both advance toward justice for justice’s sake. One might think the stages are pleasantly compatible. What’s fascinating, however, is that Fowler believed the majority of people remained in his third stage, the synthetic-conventional (with the few who advanced usually only doing so in their later years), but Kohlberg showed in his studies with children that “more mature modes of thought (Types 4–6) increased from age 10 through 16, less mature modes (Types 1–2) decreased with age” (Kohlberg, p. 19). (With age, of course, comes factors such as “social experience and cognitive growth” (p. 18).) He saw youths who addressed moral conundrums (such as his famous Heinz Dilemma) with the Golden Rule and utilitarianism (p. 17), noting that “when Type 6 children are asked ‘What is conscience?’, they tend to answer that conscience is a choosing and self-judging function, rather than a feeling of guilt or dread” (p. 18).

Clearly, the post-conventional moral stage can emerge very early in life. While keeping in mind Fowler’s form of moral reasoning structure may not be a perfect reproduction of Kohlberg’s ideas, it is interesting to consider the contradiction between an adolescent in the synthetic-conventional stage, an era marked by unexamined beliefs, conformity to doctrine, and identity heavily influenced by others, and a “Type 6” adolescent in the post-conventional stage of moral thinking, who uses reason, universal ethics, empathy, and justice to solve moral problems. Would not such rapid moral development lead to more rapid progression through Fowler’s model? With Type 4-6 thinking increasing so early, why do so few begin thinking critically of their faith and analyzing contradictions, and so late in life? Perhaps it is simply that Type 6 children are such a minority; perhaps it is they that will go on to reach the individuative-reflective stage. It would be intriguing to compare a child’s ability to answer moral dilemmas with his or her perspective on God and faith. How did the children of Kohlberg’s research view God? Surely some believed in God (and thus could be placed on Fowler’s model) and some did not. Was there a positive or negative correlation between moral decisions and faith? Were the children moving through Fowler’s stages more likely or less likely to develop higher types of moral thinking? Or was there no effect at all? Fowler, of course, might say there are too many variables in faith progression, that it requires advancement in multiple interactive structures; even if a child makes it to Kohlberg’s final stage of moral development, there are six other structures that affect one’s spiritual progress that must be taken into account.

While this comparative analysis places an emphasis on Fowler, that is not to say Erikson and Kohlberg’s works do not stand on their own, or that their theories somehow automatically validate his. Placing them side-by-side simply provides an interesting perspective that both raises and answers questions. Whether examining the moral, the psychosocial, or the spiritual, it is clear self-reflection and critical thinking are paramount to development. Kohlberg, Erikson, and Fowler were leaders in their fields because they understood and based their research on this idea. Their combined theories present a convincing case that as one grows, greater cognitive power and the confrontation of new ideas can change perspectives in positive ways, from forming one’s identity to learning love, empathy, and respect for others.

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.

References

Dunkel, C. S., & Sefcek, J. A. (2009). Eriksonian lifespan theory and life history theory: An integration using the example of identity formation. Review of General Psychology, 13(1), 13-23.

Kohlberg, L. (2008). The development of children’s orientations toward a moral order. Human Development, 51, 8-20.

Parker, S. (2006). Measuring faith development. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 34(4), 337-348.

Addressing Sexuality

Posted on by under Politics

In Skirting the Issue: Teachers’ Experiences “Addressing Sexuality in Middle School Language Arts,” Laurel Puchner and Nicole Klein of Southern Illinois University interviewed 15 middle school language arts teachers from eight school districts across America’s so-called “Bible Belt” to investigate how the topic of sexuality is handled when it arises in the classroom. These were majority suburban areas, with majority white student bodies, all 15 teachers were white, and only three schools had majority low-income students (2012, p. 4). While this sample of teachers was nonrandom, small, and homogeneous, the study provided valuable insight into how middle school students are learning (or remaining ignorant) about sexuality.

Puchner and Klein found that sexuality came up frequently in school, and the majority of the teachers they interviewed “believed that frank discussion of sexuality issues would be beneficial for their students” (p. 6). The authors agree with them, citing studies that indicate open dialogue concerning sex helps students understand the importance of safety practices, understand how sex is portrayed in the media, and grow into sexually healthy adults (p. 2). Ignorance in this area perpetuates incorrect information and prejudice and violence towards the LGBT community (p. 2). They even suggest the curiosity and fascination surrounding sex can be used to spark interest in science, history, and literature, and that “it is useful for promoting democracy because sexuality is so closely entwined in the issues of racial oppression, gender oppression, class oppression, and sexuality oppression” (p. 2).

However, a “culture of silence” (p. 3) persists because teachers are afraid to go too far when discussing such a controversial subject. Many see the positives in open communication, but there exists a “benefit-risk tension” (p. 11) that requires teachers to mentally weigh risk versus reward for any situation in which sexuality arises. Teachers are fearful of angry parents and/or administrators, of losing their jobs (p. 13). And naturally, some simply don’t see it as the teacher’s prerogative to teach such issues (p. 12). In their conclusion, the authors push for a change in attitude: If the ignorance teachers perpetuate with silence has a negative impact on the sexual development of adolescents, this must change, and it should begin with dialogue between superintendents, principals, and teachers on how open an educator can be when discussing sexuality with students (p. 14).

I agree with Puchner and Klein’s stance. Conservative American culture tends to deem sexuality a dark secret that must be locked in the closet, despite the fact that besides the intake and expulsion of nutrients and oxygen, plus the sleep cycle, sex is the most common biological function of all life. If adolescents are not educated, they are left in ignorance. We need to move toward the belief that the benefits outweigh the risks. Students should not have to rely on their peers for information on sex. They should be able to count on respected parents and teachers to educate them, and although some adults may feel parents are the only ones with this responsibility, I believe the educator plays a critical role. When a learning moment arises from a novel students are reading in English, or a discussion on the gay rights movement in history class, or a lecture on anatomy in science, it should be taken advantage of and used as an opportunity to discuss and examine this controversial topic, to the ultimate end of producing informed and sexually healthy adults and eliminating the controversy entirely.

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.

References
Puchner, L., & Klein, N. A. (2012). Skirting the issue: Teachers’ experiences “addressing sexuality in middle school language arts.” Research in middle level education, 36(1). http://www.amle.org/portals/0/pdf/publications/RMLE/rmle_vol36_no1.pdf.

Jonathan Kozol’s Journey

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The author of Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope would probably frown upon any notion that the book is about him, but Jonathan Kozol’s observations at St. Ann’s Church in the Bronx are truly a journey of understanding and discovery, of both hope and tragedy. He builds friendships with poor inner-city children at an after-school program, learning about their experiences, attitudes, values, and beliefs. In a way, Kozol is a John the Baptist type figure, preaching a message that has nothing to do with him but at same time takes him on a journey through the wilderness. If John the Baptist humbled himself by eating wild honey and locusts in the desert, Kozol, a Harvard-educated man, humbles himself by spending his days exploring the destitute conditions of New York’s children. John the Baptist prepared the way for the coming of Christ. Kozol hopes to pave the way for change.

The children Kozol develops friendships with—Elio, Pinnapple, Tabitha, Lucia, and the others—live in a very rough part of the Bronx called Mott Haven. Their living conditions are grim. “All are very poor; statistics tell us that they are the poorest children in New York. Some know hunger several times a month…some have previously lived in homeless shelters” (Kozol, 2000, p. 4). Poverty is only the beginning of the horrors the children must endure. They are surrounded by drugs and gun violence. Disease is a widespread problem. The author writes that Mott Haven is “the nation’s epicenter for the plague of pediatric and maternal AIDS” (p. 3) and most of the children “have lost a relative or grown-up friend to AIDS” (p. 4). The area, like other inner-cities, remains a breeding ground for asthma due to exposure to harmful chemicals and pollution (p. 3). Kozol describes this problem as particularly painful for the elderly, but takes special pit on asthmatic children:

Asthma is a miserable illness for a child…play is a part of childhood and children cannot play with real abandon when they feel so bad. Even mild asthma weighs their spirits down and makes it hard to smile easily, or read a book with eagerness, or jump into a conversation with spontaneity. They learn somehow to live with these discomforts. Nearly a quarter of the children have to bring their pumps with them to school a church (p. 94-95).

For a time, the neighborhood was plagued by a waste incinerator, the description of which is one of the most terrifying and stomach-churning portions of Kozol’s book. He writes, “It’s a medical incinerator, burning what are known as ‘red-bag products’–hypodermic needles, soiled bedding, amputated limbs, and embryos—which are brought here every day from fourteen hospitals in New York City” (p. 87). The author notes that it took years of protest to get the machine shut down; all the while sick children grew sicker.

However, that one incinerator was just the tip of the iceberg. “In Hunts Point alone, immediately adjacent to Mott Haven, there are forty garbage and recycling facilities, one of them a plant that turns most of the city’s treated sewage into fertilizer. The stench that it gives off is so bad children ‘throw up on their way to school’” (p. 88). Pollution from cars and trucks aggravates the problem. The living standards of these kids astounded me. It is something I could only truly understand if I saw it with my own eyes. Perhaps that mentality explains why Kozol (and his friend Mr. Rogers) has spent so much time in the South Bronx, exploring the darkness in which these kids live. Without seeing, one cannot understand, and without understanding, nothing can change.

After all this, one can hardly expect things to grow darker, but they do. Kozol tells us, “About a quarter of the fathers of the children in the after-school are now in prison or have been in prison, some of them a long way from the Bronx in various state penitentiaries and some nearby at Rikers Island” (p. 31). And what about the children at St. Ann’s whose fathers are long gone, who abandoned them and might as well never have existed? Who are these children who are surrounded by incinerators, drugs, poverty, and only see their fathers during visiting hours?

One answer would be “non-white children.” Jonathan Kozol aims to awaken those who cannot see the current race problem in America, who cannot see how dark the echoes of racism and discrimination have remained. The situation of the Mott Haven children is a testament to race relations of both the past and the present. Kozol says:

It is honest to observe, as well, that the community in which they live is one of the most deeply segregated concentrations of black and Hispanic people in our nation, with less than two tenths of 1 percent of the school enrollment in Mott Haven represented by Caucasian children, and that racial isolation here, as elsewhere in our nation, is accompanied by inequalities in education and high rates of joblessness (p. 4).

Race is a major theme throughout Ordinary Resurrections. Segregation that has persisted despite years of improvements in civil rights is one of the deeply rooted causes of the conditions of Kozol’s young friends. Inequalities in education and high unemployment create poverty. The author makes no bones about the gravity of either segregation-spawned issue. “Unemployment in the South Bronx, over all, remains at over 45 percent, according to the New York Times. It rises in the neighborhood served by St. Ann’s to over 75 percent, according to the pastor of the church and teachers in the local schools” (p. 4). And that was back in 2000. I imagine the economic recession of the past couple years may have made those number rise further. The families that are fortunate enough to have jobs scrape by on $10,000 a year, far below the poverty line (p. 44).

The prisons are deeply segregated. 92% of Rikers Island’s 20,000 prisoners are black or Hispanic and it “is believed to be the most racially consistent penal colony in the entire Western world” (p. 31). While criminals deserve condemnation, Kozol’s journey has allowed him to understand that social and economic injustices are the cause of these startling statistics. Where blacks and Hispanics cannot receive a quality education and then cannot find work, crime begins to look more and more like a viable option for bringing in money. Sometimes, people do not feel they have a choice. It might come down to stealing or starving, joining a gang or starving, or selling drugs or starving.

The author points out that “the racial make-up of the prison population and that of the population of Mott Haven are essentially the same. “The racial mix, such as it is, among the children of Mott Haven is represented by the presence of some 26 white children in a nonwhite population of 11,000 students in the elementary schools” (p. 31). A school and a prison, hopelessly interconnected, the conditions that affect the first inevitably feeding the other. Rikers becomes the next home for some after Mott Haven. At times, it comes sooner rather than later.To summarize the tragedy of the area’s 99.8% segregation rate: “two tenths of one percentage point [serves] as the distinction between legally enforced apartheid in the South of 50 years ago and socially and economically enforced apartheid in this New York neighborhood today” (p. 31). In decades, very little has changed in the South Bronx.

That is the “what” of the problem. The “why” is simpler to explain. While reading Ordinary Resurrections, one will inevitably wonder why things are the way they are for these families and St. Ann’s children. The current issue is an echo of a time of racial tension and hatred. The author explains:

In the vast expanses of the South Bronx, in which residential segregation was encouraged and accelerated by the conscious policies of realtors, banks, and city planners starting in the 1950s, and where federal housing subsidies in recent decades have been used to underwrite a set of policies and practices that deepened pre-existing racial isolation, tens of thousands of black and Hispanic children never see white children in their schools…they don’t know white children (p. 32).

For the horrid problems in this area of New York, we have to thank realtors of the past,who would not show black families homes in white neighborhoods. Some whites when moving from their homes would make it a condition that the house could not be sold to an African-American. Banks refused to loan money to blacks. City planners carefully designed neighborhoods to keep whites and blacks as separate as possible. This is why there are few white kids at St. Ann’s or in Mott Haven’s school, P.S. 30. Racist whites of decades ago made an extra effort to keep blacks and other minorities away from their children. Here Kozol prompts moral reflection. The sins of the last generation are still present in our own. Does that not make us as guilty as our parents? True change has not come close to glimmering in Mott Haven.

In some ways, prejudice continues among the powerful elite in New York. Mott Haven was not the first place in New York that the city attempted to install the medical incinerator. “It had been forced upon Mott Haven, very much against their will, by powerful financial interests after attempting to build a comparable burner on the East Side of Manhattan had been stopped by people there, who rightly feared the damage it would do to their children’s health” (p. 87). The pleas of Mott Haven parents fell on deaf ears. The incinerator was built and maintained for six years. Kozol notes that Mother Martha of St. Ann’s claims “the financiers…had close ties to City Hall” and “contrived instead to put it in the South Bronx not far from St. Ann’s, where asthma rates already were among the highest in the nation” (p. 87). Is it a coincidence that a heavily polluted section of the city, a petri dish for disease, was chosen as the spot for an unsafe incinerator? Is it a coincidence that the location is almost 100% black and Hispanic? How can one part of New York protest and win before such a machine is even built, and another can protest but see the machine erected and cause child illness for over half a decade before anything is done?

Moreover, why does the city spend $12,000 a year on students in northern New York, and only $5,000 on students in Mott Haven schools (p. 45)? Teachers are paid $20,000 more in northern suburbs (p. 45). The inequalities in resources, funds, and salaries are huge. In a unified school district such as New York’s, those at the top are making the conscious decision to treat schools in the South Bronx worse than schools in other areas. Kozol says, “No matter how these differences may be obscured or understated or complexified by civilized equivocation, they do tell us something about how we value Pineapple and Elio as human beings, both in their present status as small children who rely upon our decency and in their future destinies as adult citizens” (p. 45). While he does not spend a wealth of time writing on those who perpetuate the current problem, Kozol is clearly placing as much blame on current leaders as on the leaders of the 1950s. St. Ann’s children have not seen the decency they deserve.

Upon reading this essay thus far, one might think the injustices in New York are all Kozol writes about. This is far from the truth. He weaves these facts into a tapestry of his innocent conversations with the children of St. Ann’s after-school. He wants to shine a light on this dark corner of the country, but he also knows that inner-city children are widely misunderstood. Most of this book focuses on revealing who these children really are and depicting their vibrant spirits. It is a celebration of their courage, fortitude, faith, and positive attitudes, as indicated by Kozol’s subtitle, Children in the Years of Hope.

He aims to combat the labels placed on inner-city kids. For too long, poor children have been looked upon as different from other kids, as part of a “culture of poverty” that makes them“quasi-children” or “morally disabled children” (p. 116-117). As if the kids at St. Ann’s are simply criminals-to-be or “premature adults” (p. 116). This prompts teachers to use “a peculiar arsenal of reconstructive strategies and stick-and-carrot ideologies that would wouldn’t be accepted for one hour by the parents or teachers of the upper middle class” (p. 117). Poor kids are looked upon differently, and are treated accordingly. However, as the multitude of conversations between Kozol and the children reveal, there is little difference between inner-city minority kids and white kids who come from wealthy backgrounds. If anything, Kozol explains they are more sensitive to the anxieties of others (p. 115) because of the world in which they live. They are in the world, not of the world. They are stronger than other children.

The St. Ann’s kids are selfless and sweet and even-tempered. The author describes many as being compassionate toward others and willing to comfort others. It’s as if the children understand what each other have to deal with every day. Seeing their interactions, I would conclude they think about others more than themselves. They are inquisitive, thoughtful, and hopeful. Their words tug at the heart.

One Tuesday afternoon I had an inconclusive conversation on the subject with religion with Pineapple and a girl named Jennifer, who is her cousin. Jennifer said she had a dream that she was visiting God. “There were no stores or restaurants,” she said. “You had to call out to get food, and someone would deliver.” She also said God had brown hair, “dark-brown, like mine,” and that she found out God was married, because, while she visited, “His wife came in and kissed Him.”

A boy who was sitting with us said he had been told that God is “with us in the world” and “not above us in the sky,” but Jennifer said it wasn’t so, that God “stays up in heaven” but “He breathes into the world.”

When I asked her to explain this, she was unable to do so, but Pineapple said, “It’seasy! Look—like this.” She filled her cheeks with air, then pushed them in like a balloon with both her hands and said, “Kapoof!”

Then she laughed and said, “I’m sorry. I was fooling.”

“I knew you were,” I said.

“We’re only children,” said Pineapple, and she handed out grape-flavored sour balls to everyone (p. 237-238).

Only children. With those words, Pineapple sums up the message of Ordinary Resurrections. Despite the segregation and poverty of Mott Haven, despite the injustices of New York’s elite, despite all the horrors of dangerous inner-city life, the children are still children, no different than any others. These kids must simply go through “ordinary resurrections,” or rise above loneliness and fear (p. 108), more often than others.

The above conversation is one of many the author has with the kids at St. Ann’s concerning God and His character. In the beginning of his journey, Kozol was rather uncomfortable with prayer and religion. He writes, “A child would look up and ask me, simply,’Can we pray?’ I would say yes, but I felt strange about this at the start, because I’m not a Christian and I’ve never been especially religious, not in formal ways at least. So I’d be hesitant at first, but I’d agree; and so I’ve ended up saying a lot of prayers without the certainty that I had any right to do this” (p. 7). For the children, “prayer, of course, is a pervasive part of life” and many kids seek the wisdom and spiritual guidance from St. Ann’s pastor (p. 245). Most of the children are firm in their faith, and are very open to discussing serious religious matters to the best of their ability.

Kozol once spoke about God to a little girl named Lucia.

“How powerful is God?” I ask.

“He’s powerful to make hearts,” she replies (p. 71).

Later:

“God needs to make hearts,” she told me firmly one day when I questioned her about this. It had an almost brazenly didactic sound.

Stephanie, who is older than Lucia, also speaks of “God’s heart,” and her own heart…I asked her once what she believed would make the world a better place.

“What would make the world better is God’s heart,” she answered. “I know God’s heart is already in the world. But I would like if He would…push the heart more into it” (p. 72).

It is my opinion that Kozol deeply admires the simple faith of little children. He asks so many questions of them. He is obviously curious, perhaps even jealous of what they have. Kozol has pain and fear in his own life, as his parents grow ill in their old age. He admits, “Perhaps the illness of my parents has enabled me to listen with less awkwardness to children’s prayers, and given me a reason at some moments to pray with them” (p. 7). As his journey of understanding continues, he becomes more comfortable with prayer and religion.

At the end of the book, Kozol joins the children on Easter Sunday for a service (p. 332).His mother’s illness prompts him to write, “Every time I leave her bedside she gives me three kisses, one on my forehead, one on my right cheek, and one on the left, and says, ‘God bless you,’and I say, ‘God bless you,’ in return. We never know which night will be the last one” (p. 336).Without a doubt, Kozol finds comfort through St. Ann’s kids and their faith. I believe that he realized how much strength such faith gave them, and has found the same strength more and more as he opens up to God. In the end, I think he found that certainty he spoke of, the certainty that he did indeed have the right to speak to and petition God.

Kozol believes things will get better in the South Bronx. Despite the darkness and evil there, the hope of the children has become his own hope. He spent seven years learning about who they are and where they come from. He believes the good he has found will wear away at the darkness until, many, many years from now, there will be none left. In the end of Ordinary Resurrections, he describes a present Pineapple gave to him:

It’s a landscape: grass and sky and one tremendous puffy-looking cloud…partly hidden by a hill, a jolly-looking thing with orange rays that look like dragons’ teeth and is supposed to be the sun…friends who see it here cannot decide if it’s supposed to be the end of the day or the beginning. Either way, I think that orange thing with dragons’ teeth is beautiful; and, at the risk of being sentimental about somebody whose sunny disposition brings a lot of joy into a world that has too many cloudy afternoons, I like to think it’s rising (p. 339).

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The Little Rock Nine

Posted on by under History

ED 6010 is the most racially diverse classroom I have ever been in. Let that disheartening statement sink in a moment. It is in part because Foundations of Education is a small class, without a doubt the smallest I have ever known, with 11 students. Three black students, eight white students, one white professor. I have never attended a class in which 25 percent of those present were African-American, a sad testament to the lack of diversity in both Overland Park, Kansas, where I grew up, and Springfield, Missouri, where I attended undergraduate school. These thoughts stirred within me because a memoir, Warriors Don’t Cry, was still fresh in my mind when I first entered ED 6010.

Warriors Don’t Cry is Melba P. Beals’ harrowing account of the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. She and eight other black students attended the formerly all-white Central under the statutes of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, which determined the unconstitutionality of racial segregation in public schools. While it is perhaps a miracle the “Little Rock Nine” survived the unimaginable terrors of physical and verbal abuse inflicted during their year at Central, the Supreme Court case that made it possible was a miracle in itself. Amazingly, the Brown case of 1954 was a unanimous decision. It shocked the white world. “Chief Justice Earl Warren worked hard to achieve the compromises necessary for a unanimous decision because he believed that the full court should be behind such a dramatic order” (Fraser, 2010, p. 293). The rulings of many court cases balance on the edge of a knife, with a single deciding vote tipping the rulings one way or the other. How monumental, that such a controversial case, arguably the most controversial in decades, would be without dissent.

The Court declared, referring to black students, “to separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone” (Fraser, p. 294). While the decision determined that separate could never be truly equal, a great step forward to be sure, the Court did not immediately order desegregation. “A year later the Court finally ordered school desegregation, but only ‘with all deliberate speed.’ The lack of a timetable encouraged the southern states to resist” (Norton et al., 2005, p . 810). And resist they did.

Little time needs to be spent explaining why white crowds gathered around Central High to protest and physically prevent integration, or why whites from other states journeyed to swell their numbers, as did local cops, or why Arkansas Governor Orval E. Faubus sent 250 National Guardsmen to block Melba and her friends from entering the high school. Centuries of racial prejudice and hatred explain that. Each generation taught the next how to think and behave towards blacks. Melba was struck, bruised, and burned with acid. She was ridiculed and tormented and spat on. Most of her abuse was inflicted by white students within Central. The other eight suffered just as badly. Melba recalls being cornered and persecuted in a school bathroom:

I looked up to see a flaming paper was coming right down on me. Girls were leaning over the top of the stalls on either side of me. Flaming paper floated down and landed on my hair and shoulders….

“Help!” I shouted. “Help!” The door wouldn’t open. Someone was holding it—someone strong, perhaps more than one person. I was trapped.

“Did you think we were gonna let niggers use our toilets? We’ll burn you alive, girl,” a voice shouted through the door. “There won’t be enough of you to worry about.”

I felt the kind of panic that stopped me from thinking clearly. My right arm was singed. The flaming wads of paper were coming at me faster and faster. I could feel my chest muscles tightening. I felt as though I would die any moment (Beals, 1994, p. 164).

I was struck by how much worse each day became for Melba. Perhaps it was my knowledge that her efforts would lead to change and would better the lives of African-Americans in the long term, but I fully expected conditions to improve for the Little Rock Nine given enough time. How wrong that assumption was. The death threats continued and intensified. The name-calling persisted. Efforts to physically and mentally harm the black students only became more organized, more desperate, more sinister. After hundreds of pages depicting such abuse, it hurt to read more, yet it continued. Melba and the others went through hell, and their struggle naturally evokes pity.

I did not at all expect to feel pity toward the white students, the abusers themselves. Do not misunderstand me, each tormentor is responsible for his or her horrific actions, and justice should be wrought upon them all. They will have God to answer to. At the same time though, those kids were indoctrinated. They were not born with a hatred for the black race. Their parents and teachers taught them to hate. They taught them that blacks were inferior to whites, that it was acceptable to disrespect, cheat, and abuse them. I pity the kids because they were brainwashed, molded into bigots by people who were molded in the same fashion. Researcher Kenneth B. Clark’s findings, which influenced the Brown case, stated, “Children learn social, racial, and religious prejudices in the course of observing and being influenced by the existence of patterns in the culture in which they live” (Fraser, p. 297).

The cycle continues today in some families. Perhaps that will be the most important thing to keep in mind when I am an educator. Besides parents, teachers are the strongest influences and role models to children. It will be my responsibility to inspire attitudes of equality and respect and understanding, even—no, especially—if it challenges what students are hearing at home.

In her own home, Melba received support from her brother, her mother, and especially her grandmother. It was a different story in the black community as a whole. While some neighbors approved of the Nine’s actions as a catalyst for change, others opposed it and ostracized Melba and the others. After the school year ended and the Nine had spent time around the country being honored for their accomplishment, Melba recalls, “We had come home, to Little Rock, back to being called ‘niggers’ by the segregationists and those ‘meddling children’ by your own people. Our friends a neighbors resented not only the school closure but most especially the negative economic impact our presence in that school had on our community” (p. 307). Some African-Americans, like Melba’s distant father, opposed what the Nine were doing because it made Little Rock even more dangerous for their people. Vandalism and violence against blacks increased, and neighbors saw Melba as only inflaming an already tense relationship. Not only was it more dangerous on the streets of Little Rock, blacks were rejected in grocery stores and employment positions even faster and more harshly than usual, in retribution for integration.

Melba felt the strain of ostracism as keenly as that of racism. She was abandoned by her old group of friends, who were “not willing to die” (Beals, p. 216) with her. She was not invited to parties, and her sixteenth birthday party was a lonely one. She found strength and friendship in the other members of the Nine: Elizabeth, Ernest, Gloria, Carlotta, Minnijean, Terrence, Jefferson, and Thelma. Unfortunately, the situation grew more dire for Melba. Her mother was fired from her teaching position. “Her superiors told her they were taking away her contract because she had allowed me to participate in the integration of Central” (p. 286), Melba writes. Only through exposing the mistreatment to the press did Melba’s mother get her job back (p. 294). Throughout the integration process, the press would prove to be a primary force in raising awareness, stirring sympathy for the Nine, and keeping the situation at Central from spiraling into chaos. With the world watching, perhaps white supremacists were held back from their most evil designs.

Melba’s faith throughout this crisis was astounding, and it clearly sustained her. She declares on page two, “The experience endowed me with an indestructible faith in God.” Her diary entries are often prayers to God, and she often mentions times when she prayed for Him to keep herself and her family safe. Trusting God during times of crisis and pain is possibly the most difficult thing to do as a Christian; it is often easier to blame God. Melba’s reliance on Him is as admirable as it was steadfast.

Melba and the other eight would never have gotten in the front door of Central without President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and sending in the 101st Airborne Division to protect the students and see to it integration took place. Governor Faubus challenged the authority of the Court and of the federal government in his effort to enforce segregation, and Eisenhower made a bold move in sending troops to demonstrate the power of federal over local government. There is controversy over the president’s thoughts and motivations, but Melba, her mother, and her grandmother looked upon him favorably for the decisions he made. Melba herself appreciated the Screaming Eagles’ protection, particularly that of her bodyguard Danny, and was sad to see them go (Beals, p. 162). Melba understood that Eisenhower was enforcing the decree of the Court (Beals, p. 145). However, I believe writing off Eisenhower as solely standing up for the federal government’s authority, as some might, is too simplistic.

After World War II, “Ike” was the most popular man in America (Kunhardt et al., 1999, p. 36) and throughout his presidency, he would avoid strong stances on controversial issues to protect that popularity (p. 40). He wanted to avoid dealing with civil rights directly, preferring to let race relations improve without government interference, but it is clear that Ike “disapproved of racial segregation” (Norton et al., p. 810). Ike was concerned about losing party votes in the South by acting on civil rights (Norton et al., p. 810). Boldly stepping in to force integration upon an angry southern populace ran counter to Ike’s way of doing things. He put aside concern for politics, a graver concern with popularity, and an aversion to controversial issues to do what he knew was right. Melba writes, “He had stepped over a line no other President dared cross” (p. 309).

According to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission, Ike disliked racism, purposefully appointed federal judges who believed in civil rights, forced civil rights legislation through Congress, officially integrated the White House and the Army, and fought discrimination in the workplace (EMC website, 2011). In 1953 Ike said, “I believe as long as we allow conditions to exist that make for second-class citizens, we are making of ourselves less than first-class citizens” (EMC website, 2011). There was more to Ike’s decisions than the federal-state battle. He honestly wanted change and cared about the fate of the Nine.

So did Melba’s protector, a young member of the 101st Airborne named Danny. Judging from Melba’s accounts, Danny proved to truly care about her well-being. Though a soldier under orders, Danny’s commitment to Melba surpassed his instructions. This is possibly due to the soldiers being from the North, where more respectful attitudes toward African-Americans existed. “He looked me directly in the eye” (p. 135) is the first description Melba offers of Danny. A short, poignant sentence. If nothing else, it speaks of respect, even before they knew one another. Danny would later make sure Melba’s tormentors saw him and would stare them down (Beals, p. 136). He washed out her eyes when a student doused them in acid (Beals, p. 173). He protected her at every turn, but also offered her advice. That was certainly not in his job description. “’Patience,’ Danny said. ‘In order to survive this year you will have to become a soldier. Never let your enemy know what you are feeling’” (Beals, p. 161). Melba writes:

I feel specially cared about because the guard is there. If he wasn’t there, I’d hear more of the voices of those people who say I’m a nigger…that I’m not valuable, that I have no right to be alive. Thank you, Danny (p. 145).

Clearly, Melba thought much of Danny and cared about him. I believe their relationship was special to both. Danny could easily have withheld advice or not spoken to or looked upon her with respect. Those were not his orders. He did them anyway. Though Melba admits, “I will never know if he only behaved that kindly because he was a great soldier or a good person or both” (p. 202), Danny’s actions indicate he sincerely wanted to help and protect a student fighting for change.

Change was Melba’s aspiration. Throughout Warriors Don’t Cry, Melba often mentions the northern city of Cincinnati, which she visited before integration began. It implanted a vision in her mind of what life in the South could be like:

For me, Cincinnati was the promised land. After a few days there, I lost that Little Rock feeling of being choked and kept in “my place” by white people. They weren’t in charge of me and my family in Cincinnati. I felt free, as though I could soar above the clouds (p. 30).

She refers to Cincinnati in her dairy on September 3, 1957, the first time the Little Rock Nine attempted to enter Central High:

Dear Diary,

It’s happening today. What I’m afraid of most is that they won’t like me and integration won’t work and Little Rock won’t become like Cincinnati, Ohio (p. 46).

Melba discovered in Ohio that African-Americans could walk with pride, without having to step off the sidewalk for white people, that bathrooms and other facilities were integrated, and that white people smiled at her and treated her family with decency (Beals, p. 30-31). She found equality. Her aspiration was to bring similar change to Little Rock. In the beginning, Melba believed that just by crossing into the white world she could present herself and show whites there was no need to treat her differently. She was young, and her naïve belief that change could come quickly is understandable. How devastating it must have felt, after Melba survived an entire year at Central, when “Governor Faubus had the last word. He closed all of Little Rock’s high schools” (Beals, p. 306-307) to prevent another year of mixed classrooms. Personally, I felt a twinge of relief reading that. Melba and her friends would be spared another year of hell. The move, from a certain point of view, also reeked of desperation and defeat on Governor Faubus’ part.

Despite the setback for integration, Melba can rest assured today that she was a significant part of the civil rights movement. She wrote Warriors Don’t Cry based on her diary entries, local newspapers kept from the time period, and her memory. Though memory can fade and change over time, I believe the story she has told is accurate and trustworthy, and is supported through other sources. Besides, far worse things have been done to African-Americans in this country’s history. Melba writes, “I marvel at the fact that in the midst of this historic confrontation, we nine teenagers weren’t maimed or killed” (p. 309). Her purpose in writing this gripping narrative was not to glorify herself.

I believe she wrote this because most history textbooks devote mere sentences to the story of the Little Rock Nine. The college textbook A People and a Nation provides a paragraph (Norton et al., p. 810). One paragraph can never explain what truly happened at Central High, and Melba knew the need existed to tell the whole story, no matter how painful it was for her and regardless of how painful it is to read it.

Melba writes:

I began the first draft of this book when I was eighteen, but in the ensuing years, I could not face the ghosts that its pages called up. During intervals of renewed strength and commitment, I would find myself compelled to return to the manuscript, only to have the pain of reliving the past undo my good intentions. Now enough time has elapsed to allow healing to take place, enabling me to tell my story without bitterness (p. xvii).

It took over 30 years to write. It took hours to read.

Melba Beal’s legacy can be seen in ED 6010, a peacefully integrated course. This Foundations of Education class is welcoming and respectful. I am blessed by both where I live and the time in which I live. In 1954, de jure integration was achieved. In 2011, de facto integration is incomplete in many parts of the nation, but much improved in 60 years, with significant thanks owed to Melba Beals, the rest of the Little Rock Nine, and their struggle.

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Reference List

Beals, M. P. (1994). Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High. New York, NY: Washington Square Press.

Fraser, J. W. (2010). The School in the United States. New York, NY: Routledge.

Kunhardt Jr., P. B., Kunhardt III, P.B., Kunhardt, P. W. (1999). The American President. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.

No author. (2011). Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission website. Retrieved from http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/Civil-Rights.htm

Norton, M.B., Katzman, D. M., Blight, D. W., Chudacoff, H.P., Logevall, F., Bailey, B., Paterson, T. G., & Tuttle, W. M. (2005). A People and a Nation. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

The Taiping Rebellion

Posted on by under History

The Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) was a devastating conflict in China between a growing Christian sect under Hong Xiuquan (1815-1864) and the Qing Dynasty government (1644-1911) that resulted in the deaths of over ten million people. Opinions differ as to whether this was a religious or political war, and while elements of both are generally agreed to be involved, an understanding of the overwhelming significance of religion’s role seems nonexistent. While the political forces within Hong’s “God Worshippers” did want to solve the internal turmoil in China, and certainly influenced events, the Taiping Rebellion was a religious war. It was more the influence of the West, not the problems at home, that sparked the violence. While many revolutions had occurred before this with no Christian influence, examining the viewpoint of the God Worshippers and the viewpoint of Qing militia leader Zeng Guofan (1811-1872) will make it exceedingly clear that without the influence of Western religion, the Taiping Rebellion never would have occurred.

From the point of view of Hong Xiuquan, religion was at the heart of everything he did. The origins of his faith and his individual actions immediately after his conversion explain his later choices and those of his followers during the rebellion. According to Chinese scholar R. Keith Schoppa, Hong had a vision he was vanquishing demons throughout the universe, under orders from men whom Hong later determined to be God and Jesus Christ. Hong believed that Christ was his older brother and Hong was thus “God’s Chinese son” (71). Hong studied “Good Works to Exhort the Age,” in which Christian author Liang Fa emphasized that his own conversion stemmed partly from the need to be pardoned of sin and partly from a desire to do good deeds to combat evil and eradicate it from his life (Cheng, Lestz 135). Reading Liang’s writings after the life-changing vision brought Hong to Christianity. It is essential to note that, as Schoppa puts it, “In his comprehension of the vision, Hong did not immediately see any political import” (71). All Hong was concerned about at this point was faith, not the Manchu (Qing) overlords. He was so impassioned he would “antagonize his community by destroying statues of gods in the local temple” (Schoppa 71). What Hong would have done with his life had he not become a Christian is impossible to say. He had repeatedly failed China’s all-important civil service examination; perhaps he would have taken up farming like his father (Schoppa 71).

Instead, he formed the God Worshipping Society. According to Schoppa, certain groups that joined declared the demons in Hong’s vision were the Manchu, and had to be vanquished (72). It was outside influences that politicized Hong’s beliefs. Yet even through the politicization one will see that at the heart of the matter is religion. The very society Hong wished to create was based on Christian ideals. Equality of men and women led to both sexes receiving equal land in Hong’s 1853 land system, the faith’s sense of community led to familial units with shared treasuries, and church was required on the Sabbath day and for wedding ceremonies (Schoppa 73). Christianity brought about the outlawing of much urban vice as well, such as drinking and adultery. One might argue that behind all these Christian ideological policies were long-held Confucian beliefs. According to the 1838 work “Qian Yong on Popular Religion,” eradicating gambling, prostitution, drugs, etc. was just as important to the elites and literati (those who have passed the civil service examination) as it was to Hong (Cheng, Lestz 129-131).

While there were indeed heavy Confucian influences on Hong’s teachings (evidenced by their Confucian adaptations to the Ten Commandments and the proceeding hymns found in Cheng and Lestz’s “The Crisis Within”), Schoppa makes it clear that “the Taiping Revolution was a potent threat to the traditional Chinese Confucian system” because it provided people with a personal God rather than simply the force of nature, Heaven (75). The social policies that emerged from Hong’s Christian ideals, like familial units and laws governing morality led Schoppa to declare, “It is little wonder that some Chinese…might have begun to feel their cultural identity and that of China threatened by the Heavenly Kingdom” (76). The point is, Hong never would have become a leader of the God Worshippers had Western Christianity not entered his life, and even after his growing group decided to overthrow the Manchu, the system of life they were fighting for and hoping to establish was founded on Christian beliefs. Just as Hong smashed down idols in his hometown after his conversion, so everywhere the God Worshippers advanced they destroyed Confucian relics, temples, and altars (Cheng, Lestz 148). The passion of Hong became the passion of all.

On the other side of the coin, it was also the opinion of the Manchu government that this was a religious war. As the God Worshippers grew in number, Schoppa writes, “The Qing government recognized the threat as serious: A Christian cult had militarized and was now forming an army” (72). Right away, the Manchu identified this as a religious rebellion. “It was the Taiping ideology and its political, social, and economic systems making up the Taiping Revolution that posed the most serious threat to the regime” (Schoppa 73). This new threat prompted the Qing to order administrator Zeng Guofan to create militia units and destroy the Taipings. “The Crisis Within” contains his “Proclamation Against the Bandits of Guangdong and Guangxi” from 1854. Aside from calling attention to the barbarism of the rebels, Zeng writes with disgust about Christianity and its “bogus” ruler and chief ministers. He mocks their sense of brotherhood, the teachings of Christ, and the New Testament (Cheng, Lestz 147). Zeng declares, “This is not just a crisis for our [Qing] dynasty, but the most extraordinary crisis of all time for the Confucian teachings, which is why our Confucius and Mencius are weeping bitterly in the nether world” (Cheng, Lestz, 148). Then, in regards to the destruction of Confucian temples and statues, Zeng proclaims that the ghosts and spirits have been insulted and want revenge, and it is imperative that the Qing government enacts it (Cheng, Lestz 148). This rhetoric is not concerning politics and government, Manchu or anti-Manchu. Zeng makes it obvious what he aims to destroy and why. He views the rebellion as an affront to Confucianism. The Christians, he believes, must be struck down.

With the leader’s life defined by Christianity, with a rebellious sect’s social structure based on Christianity, with the continued destruction of Confucian works in the name of Christianity, and with the government’s aim to crush the rebellion in the name of Confucius and Mencius, can anyone rationally argue that the Taiping Rebellion was not a religious war? A consensus should now be reached! The rebellion’s brutality and devastation is a tragedy when one considers the similar teachings of both sides of the conflict, the Confucian call for peaceful mediation of conflicts and the Christian commandment not to kill. The Taiping hymn that accompanies the Christian sixth commandment says, “The whole world is one family, and all men are brethren / How can they be permitted to kill and destroy one another? / The outward form and the inward principle are both conferred by Heaven / Allow everyone, then, to enjoy the ease and comfort which he desires” (Cheng, Lestz 142).

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References

Cheng, Pei-kai, Michael Lestz, and Jonathan D. Spence, eds. The Search for Modern China, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), 128-149.

Schoppa, R. Keith. Revolution and its Past (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2011), 71-76.