Current global upheavals can serve as a reminder of how vulnerable modern social expectations are. Looking back at past leaders of present western nations and the social engagements at those times can give great context to their place in political history. In the 1830s such social upheaval was happening at monumental proportions in what would later be called the second great awakening.
It may be hard to believe that the concept of childhood didn't exist prior to this time, poverty was largely seen as a punishment from God, or that some humans were seen as fit to enslave due to their racial heritage, but this was the state of many societies within the anglosphere and parallel european societies. Why it seems that societies and human nature tend to fall toward cruel and degenerate institutions, I do not know. What I do know, however, is that the moral and religious values or lack thereof have always been a bedrock of the way people view and consequently treat each other.
Within immense despair there seems to be a cycle of defiant love and hope that can wade even the most indignant forms of human conditions.
Names like Henry and Harriet Beecher and William and Catherine Booth come to mind when considering such figures in this recent history. Mr Beecher radically spun the views of a society that held onto a notion of a judgemental, indifferent God towards One whose essence is love.This was a revolutionary message to an American society that saw its most vulnerable members as those who deserved their lot in life and to whom scarps were given begrudgingly. Harriet Beecher’s spiritual life and hernest christian devotion allowed her to write a fictional book, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, from the realistic perspective of an enslaved man of african descent. A member of society whose hypothetical life outcome had no bearing on her own.
Individuals like William and Catherine Booth, founders of “The Salvation Army” dedicated their lives to reaching out to those on the margins of English society. They believed folks who suffered from things like alcoholism and child trafficking were never beyond the reach of God’s divine love and practical care.
So where does that leave us today? In these uncertain times, can such tender hearts and willing souls be found?
Until next time
In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the Word was God…In Him was life, and that life was the light of mankind.The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
- John 1:1, 4-6
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