The Red Kimono: A Book Review about WWII Japanese Relocation Camps

 “Thank you for your remark about Gerald [O’Hara] who ‘recognizes that security can never be found apart from the land.’ No one else picked that up; no one seemed to think about it or notice it. And that depressed me . . . . And I felt . . . that I had utterly failed in getting my ideas over.”

—Margaret Mitchell in a letter to Gilbert Govan in 1936,
from The Irish Roots of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind
by David O’Connell

If you have read my previous post, a review of the book Camp Nine by Vivienne Schiffer, you will recognize the above quote from Margaret Mitchell in regard to the underlying theme of her renowned Southern novel Gone With the Wind.

There is a reason I repeat that quote here at the beginning of this review of another book titled The Red Kimono that, like Camp Nine, takes place primarily in the Arkansas Delta, specifically in my native Southeast Arkansas, and on the same subject: the WWII Japanese-American relocation camps.

In this review it is not my primary purpose to review these two books by comparing and contrasting them as I did in an earlier post titled “Bayou Bartholomew: Two Book Reviews.” However, some differences in the two books will be apparent to anyone who reads both of them, especially to anyone who has ever lived in the Arkansas Delta for any length of time. Some of these differences reflect the differences in the backgrounds and perspectives of the authors who wrote them and their goals or purposes in doing so.

The Basic Themes of Each Japanese Camp Book 

“You don’t write because you want to say something.
You write because you have something to say.”

—F. Scott Fitzgerald

In my review of Camp Nine, I noted that “my basic aim in writing this review is not to focus on the story or the camp itself. I hope rather to offer a glimpse into the fascinating and often incomprehensible locale in which the story takes place: the Arkansas Delta of the 1940s.”

Likewise, in my review of The Red Kimono “my basic aim . . . is not to focus on the story or the camp itself” but on the people who inhabited it and the effects that incarceration had on their lives and the lives of their descendants.

In so doing, I hope to call attention to the underlying themes of each book so they will neither be overlooked nor ignored as Margaret Mitchell feared for the theme of her own work.

For example, in response to my review of her book Camp Nine, the author Vivienne Schiffer sent me an email on April 12 stating:

“You really nailed everything I was trying to say. Like Margaret Mitchell, I am really gratified (and grateful) that you featured the excerpt where Henry said you can never appreciate your home until you see it through the eyes of strangers. As I was writing the book, it occurred to me that that is really the overwhelming theme of Camp Nine.” (Italics mine; to learn more about this and other themes in Camp Nine, see my previous post titled “Camp Nine: A Book Review with Quotes about the Delta.”)

Seeking to isolate the basic theme of The Red Kimono, I asked the author Jan Morrill to identify it for me. This is what she wrote back to me in an email on May 3:

“The themes in The Red Kimono (fear, racism, bullying, forgiveness) are as relevant today as they were when this story took place seventy years ago. Though the fear surrounding 9/11 certainly reminded me of the fear surrounding Pearl Harbor, almost daily, I see instances of ignorance that cause anger, fear, hatred, etc. with regard to differences in politics, religion, culture, class, etc. The Red Kimono compares the lives of those who choose to remain closed to those who open themselves to a discovery and appreciation of our differences.”

Thus, in these two books about the same place—written from the viewpoints of two young girls, one outside the camp and one inside the camp—what we have is a better insight into the lives of the two groups they represent. One author seeks to portray and thus better understand “[her] home as seen through the eyes of strangers” who are injected against their will into her familiar ancestral land; while the other author seeks to portray and thus explain her people’s loss of home and land and the effects that loss has on her people.

Jan Morrill (left, in “red kimono” top), at Rohwer relocation camp ceremony on April 16, 2013, standing behind Star Trek actor George Takei (in white shirt with box of butterflies in his hand to release) who was interned with his family in the camp as a child (photo courtesy of Pat Scavo; to magnify, click on photo)

As an Arkansan and a Deltan who has been living in Oklahoma in what I term “thirty-six years of forced labor and exile from the Holy Land,” I relate to both groups: those whose beloved home is disappearing before their very eyes and who are thus forced to abandon it; and those who are living in a land that is not theirs among people who know nothing about their home that is already lost to them. (For example, see my earlier post titled “Yo Recuerdo (I Remember).”)

To me, these twin issues of love and loss are the themes of both of these authors’ stories . . . and mine.

Some Important Differences Between
Camp Nine and The Red Kimono 

“In every [person’s] writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded.”

—Thomas Carlyle

One of the important differences in my review of Camp Nine and this review of The Red Kimono is due to the differences between the authors who wrote the books and, as seen above, their purposes in writing them.

On the inside of the back cover of her book Camp Nine Vivienne Schiffer is identified thusly: “Vivienne Schiffer is a novelist and screenwriter who grew up in Desha County, Arkansas.” She is a native of Rohwer, the location of the WWII Japanese-American relocation camp and the scene of her book. Her mother, an Italian-American born and raised in the Delta, collected and preserved many of the artifacts from the camp on display in the camp museum in McGehee.

On the inside of the back cover of her book The Red Kimono Jan Morrill is identified thusly: “Jan Morrill was born and (mostly) raised in California. Her mother, a Buddhist Japanese American, was an internee during World War II. Her father, a Southern Baptist redhead of Irish descent, retired from the Air Force. Many of Morrill’s stories reflect memories of growing up in a multicultural, multi-religious, multi-political environment. She is currently working on the sequel to The Red Kimono.”

Jan Morrill

As such, it is natural that each of these two well-qualified authors with direct ties to the camp in Rohwer, Arkansas, wrote about it from different perspectives. Vivienne Schiffer’s story is narrated by Chess Morton, a young Italian-American girl who lives in a small village in the Arkansas Delta and whose life is simple and serene until the camp is built and her entire rural world is forever changed. Jan Morrill’s story is told from the point of view of three young people from California: a nine-year-old Japanese-American girl named Sachiko, her nineteen-year-old brother Nobu, and a teenage black boy named Terrence, each of whom suffers from the effects of their race and the consequences of it.

Thus, the one connection that ties all of these lives together is the Japanese relocation camp in tiny Rohwer, Arkansas, a place with which each of them becomes inextricably entwined in ways that none of them could ever have imagined.

As a result, my review of each book differs.

In my review of Camp Nine, as noted I focused not on the story nor on the camp itself, but on the place in which most of the narrative occurred: the Arkansas Delta of my own youth. I did so by lifting out and arranging by subjects important quotes about several key geographical and cultural features about the Delta: the Mississippi River, Levee System, and Lowlands; Delta Blues Music; Segregation and Southern Social Customs; The Land, Sense of Place, and “Delta Victims.” I concluded by listing links to posts about the Delta on my own blog.

In this review of The Red Kimono I do not follow that pattern of focusing on quotes about the Delta since that is not the area of the author’s personal background and experience, as it was with the author of Camp Nine. Rather I focus on the inhabitants of the camp and the effect of their incarceration on their lives both as individuals and as a people.

A Brief and Insightful Review of The Red Kimono

“Certainly without the history of my family, this story might never have been told. My mother, her family, and her family’s family were Japanese-American internees at Tule Lake, California, Topaz, Utah, and Jerome and Rohwer in Arkansas. From their history came the themes of judgment and isolation.”

—Jan Morrill, Acknowledgments, The Red Kimono

Despite the differences in Vivienne Schiffer’s narrative and Jan Morrill’s narrative, both primarily set in the Arkansas Delta of the 1940s, their historical novels based on the actual events represented and portrayed in this book are of immense importance.

Since Morrill is partially of Japanese descent through her mother who was an internee in one of the Japanese camps, Jan’s unique contribution to the subject of the entire forced Japanese relocation is her knowledgeable and personal portrayal though fictional characters of the terrible wrong that was done to them as a people, as families, and as individuals.

Jan Morrill at book signing of The Red Kimono in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on April 27, 2013 (to magnify, click on photo)

While Vivienne Gould’s narrative is invaluable in presenting an outside view of the effect of the Japanese relocation camps on the homeland and lifestyle of the people of the Arkansas Delta, both white and black, Jan Morrill’s narrative offers an invaluable inside view of what life was like for those who were forced from their own particular American homeland and lifestyle and shipped halfway across the country to be interned within the barbed-wire prisons called relocation camps.

As noted, the combination of these two viewpoints and experiences—complicated by the effects of racial, ethnic, and political tensions with black Americans both on the West Coast and in the Arkansas Delta—makes for a challenging and often tragic cultural conflict, one that is still being dealt with today in all sections of our nation.

It is that conflict that Jan Morrill reveals and addresses in this book based on the experiences of her own people and her own family.

This religious, social, racial, political, and cultural conflict, and Jan Morrill’s contributions to its eventual resolution through patience, understanding, and mutual respect, is made most clearly in the following online review of The Red Kimono:

The Red Kimono

“Jan Morrill’s The Red Kimono tackles the fear, bitterness and broken lives that arose from the evacuation of Japanese Americans into internment camps during the World War II, drawing upon her mother’s experiences to elevate history to a more intimate level.

“The book opens with the bombing of Pearl Harbor; living in Berkeley, the Kimuras anxiously await news from Hawaii of their eldest son, Taro. In the days that follow, Michio and Sumiko try to make life as normal as possible for their other children, seventeen-year-old Nobu and nine-year-old Sachiko, preaching gaman (patience) and shikata ga nai (acceptance of the current circumstances) even as their own community turns against them. A senseless act of violence sets a chain of events in motion that leads not only to the Kimura family’s internment, but to the incarceration of one of Nobu’s closest friends.

“Morrill uses the viewpoints of three young protagonists to add depth to a period in American history that has been examined many times before; Nobu and Sachi’s experiences are contrasted with that of Terrence, an African American teenager who sought retribution for his father’s death at Pearl Harbor.

“What distinguishes The Red Kimono from other stories of the Nisei [sic] internment is its combination of raw emotional vulnerability and modern relevance. Morrill deftly exploits these dynamics—and the competing themes of race, grief, love and betrayal—in a compelling portrait of the Japanese American experience at the height of America’s ‘Greatest Generation.’”

—Nancy Powell, a freelance writer and technical consultant,
quoted by permission from Shelf-Awareness for Readers
for Tuesday, February 13, 2013,
at http://www.shelf-awareness.com/readers-issue.html?issue=172#m3283

Links to Author and Book

To visit Jan Morrill’s Web site, click here.

To order a copy of The Red Kimono from Amazon.com, click here.

To order a copy of The Red Kimono from Barnes & Noble, click here.

Camp Nine: A Book Review with Quotes about the Arkansas Delta

“When I first went north, I was surprised to learn that there were people in the world who did not know that Arkansas has both a delta and a culture that goes with southern lowlands.”

—Margaret Jones Bolsterli,
a native of Desha County near McGehee,
writing in Born in the Delta

“They [an outside film crew] asked me what it was like to come from a place [the Arkansas Delta] where your family has been for generations—it was impossible to put into words.”

—Vivienne Gould Schiffer, author of the book Camp Nine,
in personal email to Jimmy Peacock

In my last post I wrote about the opening of the WWII Japanese American Internment Museum in my hometown of McGehee, Arkansas. To learn more about that museum and the internment camps near McGehee that it chronicles, please refer to that post.

In that post I inserted a link to a book of historical fiction titled Camp Nine about the camp nearest McGehee. To learn more about the book, click here. To purchase a copy of it, click here.

That fictional work was written by Vivienne Gould Schiffer, the daughter of former McGehee mayor Rosalie Santine Gould who was instrumental in collecting, preserving, and displaying many of the artifacts from the camps.

In this post I would like to present a review of that book; however, not in the usual sense of that term. [To read two excellent reviews of the book describing its content, characters, and storyline, visit the Amazon.com Web sites listed above and then scroll down.]

Important Themes in Camp Nine

“Thank you for your remark about Gerald [O’Hara] who ‘recognizes that security can never be found apart from the land.’ No one else picked that up; no one seemed to think about it or notice it. And that depressed me . . . . And I felt . . . that I had utterly failed in getting my ideas over.”

—Margaret Mitchell in a letter to Gilbert Govan in 1936,
from The Irish Roots of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind
by David O’Connell

In this review rather than focusing on the story or the camp itself I hope rather to offer a glimpse into the fascinating and often incomprehensible locale in which the story takes place: the Arkansas Delta of the 1940s.

This is made easier by the fact that the story in narrated by a little girl named Chess who describes her own experience with the camp and its inhabitants—and the surprising effect it has upon her and her family—especially her view of herself and her sheltered world, as well as her limited and often false perspective of others who are different from her.

As I have noted in a personal email to the author, who gave me full permission and approval to quote these passages, the book is reminiscent of several other notable works about the South in general and the Delta in particular.

For example, Born in the Delta by Margaret Jones Bolsterli (from Watson, Arkansas, near the camp); A Painted House by John Grisham (who was born in 1955 in the same hospital in Jonesboro, Arkansas, as our younger son Keiron in 1970); To Kill a Mockingbird (especially the character of the narrator, a little girl called Scout); the book and film titled The Help (about the relationships between Southern black maids and their white mistresses in the 1960s);  both the play and the movie made of Tennessee Williams’ classic Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (set in the Mississippi Delta just across the River from McGehee); Crossroads (a 1986 film about an old black Delta man who tries to teach Blues music to a young white boy from New York); and especially Gone with the Wind (the classic 1939 Southern book and film that reflects so many of the themes in Camp Nine such as the importance of land and a sense of place).

It also shares some themes with my own coming-of-age story in the Arkansas Delta titled “Yo Recuerdo” (“I Remember”) and other posts of Delta quotes (mine and others’) on my blog (see the list at the end of the post).

In fact, I was so impressed by Camp Nine that I tabbed about twenty-five quotes and excerpts in it, almost all of them about the Arkansas Delta and particular aspects of it such as: the presence and influence of the Mississippi River and its vast levee system and verdant lowlands; Southerners’ attachment to the land; the importance to Southerners (especially Deltans) of a sense of place; the power of memory and the past; the nature and role of Blues music; the cultural dominance of racial bias and unwritten societal taboos, etc.

Many of these same themes were also addressed in the other books, plays, and films noted above, and especially in my own Delta writings.

Quotes and Excerpts from Camp Nine
About the Arkansas Delta

“To understand the story, one must understand the place, for the events could not have transpired anywhere else.” (p. 7)

“It was such a romantic notion that it bore no resemblance to the dangerous, depressed region that I knew so well. But Henry countered that no one could really appreciate one’s home except through the eyes of outsiders, and I’ve since come to accept that he was right.” (p. 67)

Following are some select quotes and excerpts from Camp Nine that relate to the Arkansas Delta. I have divided these quotes and excerpts into groups under subheadings loosely based on some of the same attributes of the Delta discussed in other sources and in my own blog posts on various aspects of the Delta (see the list at the end of this post). I have set these quotes and excerpts in quotation marks with my inserted comments in brackets, and my emphases in italics.

The Mississippi River, Levee System, and Lowlands

“Past the tenant shacks, the levee rose like an emerald mountain, and the Mississippi River, invisible on the other side, was even larger in my imagination. At the time, I didn’t appreciate how deeply the levee [and the river the levee was built to restrain] influenced our lives. Massive and splendid, it seemed to be alive, a colossal creature coiled beside us.” (p. 32)

The Mississippi River (to magnify, click on the photo)

“The Lincoln lurched suddenly down a small path, straight down the side of the levee. My stomach fell out from under me, and I gripped the door of the car until we came to a stop at the remnants of a . . . village. In front of me, stretching away from the levee, a quiet slough wound among banks of cypress trees hooded with Spanish moss.” (p. 155)

Arkansas City from the levee near Camp Nine (to magnify, click on the photo)

Delta Lake Enterprise near Wilmot, Arkansas (to magnify, click on the photo)

“Like the others, Willie’s shotgun house was arranged with one room after another, straight from the front door to the back. An African design that encouraged airflow through the structure, a shotgun house was so named because legend had it that a person could stand in the front door and shoot a shotgun, and the buckshot would go straight out the back door.” (p. 62)

Delta shotgun house (front view; to magnify, click on the photo)

Delta shotgun house (side view; to magnify, click on the photo)

“Crooked and wild, the bayou cut a narrow swath across the county on its way to the [Mississippi] river. Its impenetrable, chocolate-brown waters were home to countless turtles, lizards, and fish, including the fierce-looking remnant from prehistoric days, the alligator gar, with its bulging eyes and razor-sharp teeth. [Today after decades of being hunted to virtual extinction, the bayou would also be inhabited by genuine alligators.] Dotted along the bayou’s length was an occasional deep eddy, suitable for swimming only to the brave few. . . .

Alligator gar with the author’s father Joe Gould Jr. hidden behind the gar (photo courtesy of Vivienne Schiffer; to magnify, click on the photo)

“Nestled in a caved-in crook of the bayou was a deep pocket that had been carved from the bank by the swiftly moving current. The roots of giant cypress and oaks formed a living lattice as they reached from the bank to the base of the stream. The murky water inside the graceful, natural cage roiled with life. It was a water-moccasin [deadly poisonous snake] den to end all others.” (p. 60)

Bayou Bartholomew near McGehee, Arkansas (to magnify, click on the photo)

“I maintained that it seemed that Mark Twain couldn’t have been talking about the same Delta that I knew, although he spoke with real affection for the long gone city of Napoleon [Arkansas], once located on the banks of the Mississippi River merely a mile or so from the Morton Plantation. A large river port, it had been an important stop during Civil War times, and ambitions for the town had loomed large. But the river had its own ideas, and Napoleon had slid from its banks and vanished beneath the waves shortly after, leaving nothing but occasional artifacts buried under towering vines.” (p. 67)

 Delta Blues Music

Sonny Boy Williamson who played Blues music on the King Biscuit Time Blues show on KFFA in Helena, Arkansas, at the time of Camp Nine (to magnify, click on the photo)

“‘This here what they call the blues, Little Miss. You get the blues when life get you down, and you can’t do nothing but sing it out loud. Back in the levee camp, you ain’t got nobody. You all by your lonesome self. Colored folks can’t tell nobody the truth ’bout the things that happen to them. So they bury it in song. Blues song don’t never mean what it say. You got to listen past the words to find the truth. . . .

“‘That boy, David, he know the blues. Say it speak to him like no other. He lonely, too. Away from home. Got no one to show him the way.’” (p. 87)

“Willie stopped him. ‘That’s alright, boy, but you ain’t feeling it. It ain’t ‘bout many notes you can juke out that box [guitar]. You got to feel the blues. Try it again.’” (p. 107)

Segregation and Southern Social Customs

Segregated school in the Arkansas Delta in the 1940s (to magnify, click on the photo)

“‘The Delta [itself] is a prison.’” [Response to statement that the Japanese-American internment camp in the Delta was a prison.] ( p. 49)

“The convention of our day and region dictated that we live in a social contradiction of familiarity and distance. She [Ruby Jean, the black maid and cook] could never come right out and say what she really meant about any of us [the white family for whom she worked]. The rigidity of societal norms was as much a part of the landscape as the river itself.” (pp. 30-31)

“It was possible for the white people of Rook to interact with black people, and for the white people of Rook to interact with the Japanese [from the internment camp]. In each case, it was acceptable only if initiated by a white person. But contact between the blacks and the Japanese? How could I explain to David that it simply wasn’t done? I didn’t even understand it myself.” (p. 69)

“A white child could not have walked alone through the black community. Every town in the Delta, even a tiny burg like Rook, had both white and black sections, with the black inhabitants vastly outnumbering the white ones. Larger, louder, and more colorful, the black sections were separated by a thick rope of custom.

“But there were written rules as well. I recall once, on a trip to Pine Bluff as a small girl, having to go to the bathroom, badly, and being in such a clamor when we finally stopped at the filling station that I raced to the first door I saw. When I emerged, Mother waited placidly, but a small, disgruntled crowd of [white] men had appeared, watching me as the door opened. Above the door was a sign: ‘colored.’ I had breached the decorum. I can only imagine what would have happened if the circumstances had been reversed, if I had been a hurried black girl in search of a bathroom and had rushed into the door marked ‘white.’” (pp. 82-83)

“‘No, ma’am,’ I said [to Ruby Jean], breaching another convention. To my grandparents’ dismay, I addressed all adults as ‘ma’am’ or ‘sir,’ regardless of their race. Grandma had scolded Mother about my lapses of correctness on numerous occasions, and had tweaked me directly. In her view, black men and women did not deserve such respectful terms from white people. But Mother responded to her by smiling and saying I was such a polite child, I couldn’t help it.” (pp. 93-94)

“But it told me something about all of us, that we categorize each other according to our similarities and differences. Willie [an old blind black man] couldn’t see David [a Japanese-American boy]. But he could hear him [speak]. And his ears told him that David wasn’t from around here.” (p. 85)

“‘See?’ [said David to Chess. ‘You have] lived your whole life in the Arkansas Delta, and you can’t name me one [black] bluesman. And you know why? Because you’re a cultured, white woman. But I’m not white, Chess. I always thought I was, growing up [in California as a Japanese-American]. But I really didn’t know what white was until the United States government carved us out of the white race, set us on a plate, and served us up into a dark corner of Arkansas. That’s when I learned what white really is. It’s separate. It’s sheltered. It’s a race apart.’” (p. 193)

A Delta Belle holding a magnolia blossom and standing in front of an antebellum home (to magnify, click on the photo)

The Land, Sense of Place, and Delta “Victims”

The Arkansas Delta (the light-green area on the right side of the photo along the Mississippi River; to magnify, click on the photo)

“In the plantation world in which we lived, land was power. Those with it controlled those without it, pure and simple.” (p. 11)

“Mr. Hayashida [one of the Japanese-Americans from the internment camp] kicked a clod of buckshot [local term for the Delta soil] with the toe of his rubber boot. ‘Oh,’ he murmured, ‘this is good earth. Very good earth.’ He picked up a handful and broke it between his fingers. It fell to the ground in tiny balls like BB gun pellets [the source of the term “buckshot”]. ‘You just got to work with it [word italicized in original copy]. You can’t make it into something it’s not. Kind of like people, right? . . .

“‘The land here is very unusual,’ he said, stopping where the brown earth ended and colored [plowed] rows began. ‘Doesn’t like to retain the water. Wants to always send the water somewhere else, so you get flooding all the time. I think I understand it though.’ He surveyed the bright distance toward the levee as the cicadas tuned up in the low branches of the trees that surrounded us. ‘That river over there is the mightiest river in the world. It wouldn’t do for there to be just any dirt around here. The dirt must have its own strong personality. It won’t back down to the river. It won’t back down to men. You have to understand it and work with it. Not against it.’” (p. 121)

Large-scale farming of the Arkansas Delta in the decade before the opening of Camp Nine (to magnify, click on the photo)

“‘Camp Nine,’ he [Chess’s grandfather] said. ‘That was your land. I know you know it ’cause your mama chewed my ass about it for a whole year. . . . Fifty years ago, this land wasn’t anything but canebrakes and bottomland. Now there’s opportunity as far as the eye can see. If you stop to think about what’s fair, the Delta will pass you flat by, girl. Do you hear me?’” (p. 164)

“As much as I had dreaded this encounter, my grandfather was offering me something no one else ever had: a sense of my place in the mystery of the Delta.” (p. 157)

“‘You can’t turn your back on everything and run away because you think you’re in love. Just when you find it,’ [Chess’s mother] said, ‘it slips right through your hands! And God help you, you better have something else in your life to take its place.’” (p. 177)

“‘There was no one else to take over the place.’ It’s the truth, but as I say it, I realize I’d never considered any other choice. I should have wanted to leave, I should have wanted to sell the land and live a sophisticated, exciting life in a distant city, but the Delta is in my blood. No other place could ever be home.” (p. 191)

“‘Are you serious? Can you really not comprehend all this?’ I’m stunned by what seems to be real fury on his part. ‘Chess, this is the Delta. This is a crazy, dangerous place. The things that happen here shouldn’t happen to people. Anywhere. And your family . . . were at the center of it. You were just a sheltered little girl. How could you have handled that kind of responsibility?’

“I’m no longer that little girl, but I suddenly feel foolish to even have been who I was. He is right. How could I have comprehended the pain that was, and still is, a daily part of life here”? (p. 195)

“I know that Camp Nine was something that should never have been. It destroyed lives and separated families; it interrupted joys and brought, in their stead, wretched sorrows. But the experience was mine, too. On a deeper level than I had ever understood, Camp Nine [like the Delta itself] had defined my life [and the lives of all who have ever lived there]. The misery of thousands had shone a light on who I was, on who we all were, here in the Delta. Would I have ever known these things without their sacrifice?” (p. 196)

Links to Some of My Blog Posts about the Delta

“Wish I Was in the Land of Cotton I” (with quotes about the Delta)

“Wish I Was in the Land of Cotton II” (with quotes about the Delta)

“Additional Quotes about the Delta”

“My ‘Bucket-List Trip’ II: The Arkansas Delta”

“Return to the Arkansas Delta: A Review”

“Days Gone By: A Delta Passing”

“Bayou Bartholomew: Two Book Reviews” (To view an hour-long video about Bayou Bartholomew with views of real alligators, alligator gar, Spanish moss, cotton fields, bayou baptisms, bayou steamboats, plantation homes, and examples of Blues music, Southern Gospel music, etc., click here and then scroll down and click onto the start arrow in the black box in the post.) 

“A Gathering at the River”

“Some Southern Stuff V: Sense of Place”

“Some Southern Stuff VI: Love of the Land”

“During Wind and Rain: Another Delta Book Review”

Links to News Reports of the Opening of
the WWII Japanese American Internment Museum

To read an Arkansas State University report with a photo of George Takei giving his address at the opening of the WWII Japanese American Internment Museum which took place April 16, click here.

To view a brief video of an Arkansas television station news report on the opening of the museum with Takei’s comments, click here.

Source of Photos

All of the photos in this post were personal snapshots except the alligator gar photo provided by the author of Camp Nine and the following:

1. The photo of the Mississippi River was taken from The Mississippi River by Ann McCarthy (Crescent Books, New York, 1984).

2. The photo of Blues musician Sonny Boy Williamson was taken from: http://eboutique.ric-vintage-records-shop.com/WebRoot/Orange/Shops/d3d8e5da-2056-11de-a9cd-000d609a287c/4ADC/E9F9/1F20/327F/258E/0A0A/33E9/B816/33-SonnyBoyW-KingBiscuitTime-1.JPG

3. The photo of the Delta segregated school was taken from: http://www.blackpast.org/?q=perspectives/remembering-brown-silence-loss-rage-and-hope

4. The photo of the Delta Belle was taken from: a travel brochure published by the Helena Advertising and Tourist Promotion Commission, 622 Pecan, P.O. 495, Helena, Arkansas 72342; (501) 338-6583.

5. The map of the Delta was taken from an online source.

6. The photo of large-scale farming in the Arkansas Delta was taken from a post card published by the Delta Cultural Center, 95 Missouri Street, Helena, Arkansas 72342; (501) 338-8919.

Opening of WWII Japanese American Internment Camps Museum

“. . . for all the Japanese-Americans who were part of the history of these [internment] camps we want to help share their history with the world.”

—Cindy Smith of the Arkansas State Parks, Recreation, and Travel Commission, quoted by Rachel Denton Freeze, editor, in the McGehee Times, March 13, 2013

Recently a press release was issued about the April 16 opening of the WWII Japanese American Internment Museum in my hometown of McGehee, Arkansas.

As a supposed security measure after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and other American military facilities in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, thousands of Japanese-Americans, most of them American citizens, were forced to leave their homes on the West Coast and were transported to ten internment camps in the interior of the United States.

Two of these camps, the only ones in the South, were located a few miles north and south of McGehee in the Mississippi River Delta. Until relatively recently, little was known or published about these camps and the effects of the forced removal on the lives of the Japanese-Americans involved in this mass eviction and containment.

Rosalie Gould, former mayor of McGehee, was instrumental in collecting and preserving many artifacts from the internees which make up the exhibits in the new museum depicting their daily lives far from home in an isolated and often hostile environment.

Here then is the press release which was published in the McGehee Times with a photo of the building in which the museum will be housed. This release will be followed by additional information and links to Web sites with interesting photos and videos about this almost unknown—or intentionally forgotten—incident in American history. The press release is set in italics for ease of identification.

Press Release on the Opening of the
WWII Japanese American Internment Museum

The McGehee Industrial Foundation announces the opening of the WWII Japanese American Internment Museum in April. It will house the exhibit “Against Their Will,” interpreting the history during World War II when the Japanese American population was moved from the West Coast to ten internment camps across the country.

Two of those camps, Jerome and Rohwer, were located in Southeast Arkansas. More than 17,000 Japanese American citizens were relocated to the two camps. Most returned to their homes following the war, and the U.S. government formally apologized in 1988.

While living in the camps, families were provided schools, hospitals, recreation and organizations. However, they were forced to leave behind their homes and jobs.

Actor and author George Takei (Star Trek, Celebrity Apprentice) moved with his family to the Rohwer camp when he was 5. Last summer wayside signage was installed at the memorial cemetery at Rohwer, with audio by George Takei. He is expected to attend the museum dedication, April 16, along with Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe.

Former McGehee mayor, Rosalie S. Gould, began a dream of embracing this history more than 30 years ago. Her friendships with returning former internees enhanced the awareness of this dark time in American history. Her vast collection of art, documents and memorabilia was donated to the Butler Center (Little Rock) in 2010.

The museum is located in the south end of the historic railroad depot, 100 S. Railroad Street, downtown McGehee. Landscaping was designed by the McGehee Beautification Committee. It will be open to visitors at no cost Tuesdays through Saturdays. For more information call 870-222-9168.

April 16
1 p.m. dedication
1:45 reception
1:45 museum opens
3 p.m. museum closes
Guests encouraged to drive to Rohwer
3:30 dedication of signage & remarks at Rohwer Memorial site.

Cindy Smith
McGehee, Arkansas
Chairman
Arkansas State Parks, Recreation & Travel Commission

McGehee Times Article on the Preparation for the Opening of the Japanese American Internment Museum 

On Wednesday, March 13, 2013, the McGehee Times published a follow-up article on the April 16 opening of the new World War II Japanese American Internment Museum.

In that article the writer, Rachel Denton Freeze, described some of the preparations being undertaken on the exhibit to be displayed in the museum. She notes that the exhibit, which tells the story of the Japanese-Americans confined in the camps, was originally a part of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s “Life Interrupted: Against Their Will.”

According to Rachel, the first Japanese-Americans arrived at the Rohwer camp in September 1942, which is the month in which my wife Marion was born a few miles south in the small town of Dermott, Arkansas. By November, the population of the camps in Rohwer and Jerome peaked with nearly 8,475.

“One of the Rohwer camp’s most famous internees, actor George Takei who first gained fame in the ‘Star Trek’ television series and movies as Sulu, is expected to be on hand for the museum dedication,” notes Rachel.

She goes on to quote Cindy Smith who states, “It’s important that the history of the Japanese-Americans is remembered and honored. . . . Not just for Mr. Takei, but for all the Japanese-Americans who were a part of the history of these camps. . . . We want to share their history with the world.”

“Takei’s visit alone with the network television coverage is expected to bring national attention to the new museum and the history of the relocation camps,” notes Rachel.

The collection of materials from the camp internees preserved by Rosalie Gould is “truly unmatched” and “unique” among the other relocation camps.

“We’re desperately trying to make contact with people from the area who have memorabilia they would like to share with us,” says Cindy. “We want to do more than just install this exhibit. . . . These stories [and other memorabilia and artifacts] are amazing and deserve to be shared with the world.”

Rachel notes that there are two books of historical fiction about the camps available to the public: Camp Nine by Vivienne Schiffer and The Red Kimono by Jan Morrill. For more information about these books, see the next section.

Rachel closes her article by stating that for information on the museum or dedication readers should contact Cindy Smith at (870) 222-8576 or Jeff Owyoung at (870) 222-2886.  She points out that the museum also has a Facebook page which can be found under “WWII Japanese American Internment Museum.”

Links to Books and Videos about the
WWII Japanese American Internment Camps

To view a twenty-five-minute video titled “Singled Out” about the history and impact of the WWII Japanese American Internment Camps throughout the United States and especially the two at Rohwer and Jerome, Arkansas, with comments from former internees about their experiences there, click here.

To view a very moving twelve-minute video titled “Relocation Arkansas” about the camps in Arkansas, especially the one at Rohwer near McGehee, click here. It features scenes of the flat Arkansas Delta, the cotton fields and cypress sloughs that surrounded the camp, and comments from Japanese-Americans who were confined there, as well as Arkansans Bill Clinton, former U.S. president and governor of Arkansas; officials of the programs and efforts to preserve the camps’ history; and Rosalie Gould, former mayor of McGehee, who was instrumental in preserving the artifacts of the camp and reviving interest in preserving them and the memory of the camps and their internees.

To view a video about the oral history of the camp at Rohwer, click here.

To view a seven-minute video interview with Japanese-American actor George Takei about his experience at the Rohwer camp and why he and his family were later sent to an even more restrictive camp in California as “enemy aliens,” click here.

To view a twenty-six-second panoramic view of the cemetery at the Rohwer Japanese-American Internment Camp, click here.

To visit a site from the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture with information, photos, and links to sites about the Japanese relocation camps in Arkansas: click here.

To view a site of oral history titled “In Their Words” with more than a hundred hours of memories of Arkansans during World War II, click on the title.

To visit a site about the historical novel Camp Nine written by Rosalie Gould’s daughter Vivienne Schiffer based on the Rohwer WWII Japanese-American relocation camp, click here. To purchase the book from Amazon.com, click here.

To visit a site about the historical novel The Red Kimono by Jan Morrill, click on the title.

Addendum: Attribution and Personal
Reminiscences of the “Jap Houses”

For virtually all of the information and links in this post I am indebted to my McGehee High School classmate from the MHS Class of 1956 Pat Scavo, known then as Patsy McDermott and still called affectionately Patsy Mc. (See my earlier posts titled “My First Encounter with the Music of Elvis” and  “Moments to Remember.”)

As noted in the videos above, after WWII the barracks and other buildings at the Rohwer relocation camp were either torn down or broken up and sold to local residents to be used as homes, school buildings, businesses, etc. Almost everyone from McGehee and the surrounding area, including Patsy Mc, my wife Marion, and I vividly recall these buildings—called “Jap houses”—many of which are still in use in the area. For example, in our school days many of our schoolmates lived in converted “Jap houses,” and the band room, cafeteria, outdoor classrooms, and other school buildings were barracks from the Rohwer camp.

Here is a statement from Patsy Mc whose father Loyd McDermott was principal of McGehee High School during our school days:

“My experiences living in the re-modeled barracks will be with me always. One of those houses is still standing in Arkansas City [our county seat on the Mississippi River just ten miles east of McGehee and a few miles southeast of the Rohwer camp].

“I really did not live in McGehee [immediately after the war], but when we returned in 1950 we were ‘given’ one of the houses behind the cafeteria as part of Dad’s salary. Other people lived there alongside of our house. I think the football building was also a barracks house.

“And then we moved to Arkansas City in 1954 and guess what? Another ‘re-location’  house. That one is still being used in AC.

“I remember also going to basketball games between McGehee and Desha Central [a school near the Rohwer camp], and they were played in the gymnasium that was left standing at the camp. There were murals [from the camp] all around the building above the bleachers.

“We just did not talk about it much, as a family or community. Maybe because it [the Japanese-American internment] was too ‘fresh.’”

My wife Marion, who was born in 1942 while her father was overseas in the U.S. Army, recalls reading the historical novel Camp Nine (see reference and link above) and the effect it had on her:

“I think you will enjoy the book. The author’s name is Vivienne Schiffer. She changes the names of the towns, but those of us familiar with the area can figure out what town she is talking about.

“It is very interesting. and I found it so unusual that I knew very little of the relocation center. I knew about the ‘Jap houses’ that were used around the school, but nothing really about what went on in Rohwer during the war. Of course, I was only three years old at the time and didn’t live in McGehee. Mother would come to McGehee from Florence to shop and visit her brother and sister.

“I remember Mother saying that one time she was in McGehee and they [camp officials] had brought the ‘Japs’ in [to town] on a bus to do some shopping. She had a very negative attitude about them. Of course at that very time my father was fighting the Japanese in the Pacific. I can’t imagine how difficult it was for those people and what negative reactions and comments they had to endure.”

Note: Earlier posts about Marion and her father Grover related to his military service in the South Pacific during WWII were titled “Facts about Marion Williams Peacock” and “The Passing of a Real Man.”

In the mid-1970s while we were living in McGehee for about a two-year period, Mari and I decided to drive out to Rohwer to visit the site of the Japanese-American relocation camp (as it was called then).

As we were leaving the camp site we were met by a Japanese-American couple from Chicago. They had driven down to Southeast Arkansas, a distance of about seven hundred miles, so the woman could visit the grave of her mother who had died during their incarceration there.

As the woman told us a bit about their experiences at the camp she began to weep because she lived so far away from the camp cemetery, and there was no one to care for her mother’s grave.

It was only after we got back to McGehee that I realized that I should have asked that woman’s name, address, and phone number and volunteered to care for her mother’s grave and send her regular updates and photos about it.

By then it was far too late because the couple had gone back to Chicago and had left no personal information.

Now every time I see anything about the camp I remember that incident and am filled with regret and remorse that I did not think to offer my services to that grieving woman. Maybe this blog post and the efforts now being made to preserve the memorabilia and artifacts of the camp will help to make up in some small way for my lack of thoughtfulness and kindness in those days so long ago when little or no attention was being paid to the camp or to the suffering of those who were affected by it. 

Your Memories and Other Sources about the
WWII Japanese American Internment Camps in Arkansas

If you have any special memories or associations with the camps, the “Jap houses,” or the attitudes of the locals toward the Japanese-Americans in the camps, feel free to comment—briefly and respectfully—on them at the end of this post.

If you know of other sources of information on the Japanese-American internment camps in Southeast Arkansas, please provide them for interested readers.

Note: A post (or posts) on the Italian and German prisoner of war camps in Southeast Arkansas will be published later.

The Danger of Mixing Religion and Politics

“I don’t know which makes me more uncomfortable: when preachers mix politics with religion or when politicians mix religion with politics—both are dangerous business!”
—Jimmy Peacock

“The last time we mixed religion with politics people were burned at the stake.”
—Bumper sticker seen recently in Sapulpa, Oklahoma

Over the past thirty-plus years that I have served as a primarily religious copyeditor I have been collecting and composing quotations and excerpts about religion and politics. However, since these topics have become so controversial—especially when linked together—I have refrained from posting any of these accumulated quotations and excerpts on my personal blog.

Now that I have virtually exhausted the other blog posts that I had prepared to be published over these past months, and since my health has deteriorated so that composing new posts has become increasingly difficult, recently I began to consider publishing many of these quotations and excerpts despite their controversial nature.

In the process of reviewing, considering, and praying for guidance in regard to these quotations and excerpts, I came to the point of seeking a sign from God on whether to publish them or not. That was when I saw the above-quoted bumper sticker as I was leaving church here in Sapulpa. The fact is that due to my rapidly failing eyesight, I didn’t see it myself. Instead, Mari saw it on the vehicle in front of us at a red light and read it to me. I still didn’t see it until she directed my eyes to its location above the bumper on the back of the vehicle. It was thus evidence to both of us that it was an answer to my prayers: a sign from God that I should start publishing some of these quotations and excerpts on my blog.

Here then is the first post on the subject of religion and politics, especially the danger of mixing them. Other than the quotations from the Bible, unless otherwise indicated the italics in these quotations indicate my emphasis.

Let’s begin with some biblical quotations on religion and politics followed by my own quotations on the danger of mixing religion and politics and concluding with some quotations and excerpts from others on this same subject.

Biblical Quotations on Religion and Politics 

“My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight . . .”
—Jesus Christ to secular ruler in John 18:36 NIV

“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended.”
—Romans 13:1-3 NIV

“I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior.”
—1Timothy 2:1-3 NIV

“Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.”
—Hebrews 13:17 NIV

^“For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.”
—James 3:16-18 NIV

Self-Quotations on the Mixing of Religion and Politics

“Too often what is presented as theology or history is nothing more than canonized opinion. Much of what is passed off as fact or truth in religion and politics is in reality fantasy, fallacy, or falsehood.” (See my earlier post titled “About Copyeditors: God’s Noble Bereans.”)

“The problem with the United States of America is that in its religion and its politics, as in its manufactures, its salesmanship so far exceeds its craftsmanship.”

“Hardcore preachers and politicians (especially those who mix religion and politics) often think they are heaven-sent when they are really just hell-bent!”

“One religious/political zealot can do more harm to the cause of Christ than a hundred nonbelievers!”

“I have been warning for decades that if America ever falls, it will not be from the activities of enemies without, but from religious, political, and cultural warfare within.” (As the cartoon character Pogo Possum once said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us!”)

Quotations and Excerpts from Others
On the Danger of Mixing Religion and Politics 

“What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists, is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.”

—Robert Kennedy, as quoted in the Sapulpa Daily Herald 

“We have become a nation of extremists . . . . [in which] the United States government has become the enemy.”

—Cult expert on CNN speaking of the OKC bombing

“You can’t preach against something continually without some fringe element deciding to do something about it.”

—Hate-group expert on CNN speaking of the OKC bombing

“No religion condones this [bombing], but what do you want to bet that whoever did it claims that he was doing the will of God.”

—Political expert on CNN speaking of the OKC bombing 

“He [Roger Williams, often given credit for establishing the Baptist denomination] knew that when one mixes religion with politics, one gets politics. So to protect the purity of the church, he demanded—150 years before Jefferson—a ‘wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world.’”

—John M Barry, “A Puritan’s ‘war against religion’,”
Tulsa World, February 12, 2012

“The U.S. Constitution, like [Roger Williams’] Providence’s compact, does not mention God. It does request a blessing, but not from God; it sought ‘the blessings of liberty,’ Williams’s ‘soul liberty.’ . . . . Eight years after the Constitution’s adoption, the Senate confirmed this view in unanimously approving a treaty. It stated, ‘(T)he government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.’”

—John M. Barry, “A Puritan’s ‘war against religion’,”
Tulsa World, February 12, 2012

“A word to the preacher/prophet is perhaps in order too: Make sure you don’t mistake yourself for God and trot out your prejudices and political views as if they were of divine origin.”

—Forward Day by Day, Episcopal daily devotional,
entry for November 28, 2011

“We’re living with a generation that’s been living without God, with no rational need for God. They’re highly spiritual, but they’re not religious. . . . The problem is exacerbated by people who share their faith in negative ways. I’m often embarrassed by it. Particularly when you see people tie their religion to politics.”

—Craig Van Gelder, Luther Seminary professor,
quoted by Bill Sherman,
“Professor urges sharing faith in positive ways,”
Tulsa World, January 21, 2012

“In today’s world, many feel threatened by secularization on the one hand and by an ascendant, confusing, and violent religious fervor on the other.” (italics in original quotation)

—Editor’s note in entry for March 1, 2010,
Forward Day by Day,
Episcopal daily devotional

“Who can be surprised if the absurdity,  . . . cruelty and ungodly hypocrisy that have characterized ‘religion’ in the last 30 years have driven people away? If all I knew of God was what I had seen in the headlines, I would not be eager to make His acquaintance. I am thankful I know more. Including that God and religion are not synonymous. God is, to the faithful at least, the sovereign creator of all creation. Religion is what men and women put in place, ostensibly to worship and serve Him. Too often, though, religion worships and serves that which has nothing to do with Him, worships money and serves politics, worships charisma and serves ego, worships intolerance and serves self.”

—Leonard Pitts, “Is religion driving people away from God?”
Tulsa World, March 23, 2009

“If people who call themselves Christians want to see any influence in the culture then they ought to start following the commands of Jesus and people will be so amazed that they will be attracted to him. The problem isn’t political. The problem is moral and spiritual. . . . You have the choice between a way that works and brings no credit or money or national attention. Or, a way that doesn’t work that gets you lots of attention and has little influence on the culture.”

—Cal Thomas, former vice president of the Moral Majority,
quoted by Kathleen Parker,
“Is the Christian right finished in politics,”
Tulsa World, April 4, 2009

“I might have become a Christian had I not met one first.”

—Quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi

“Christianity grew because people were willing to die for their beliefs rather than fight for their rights.”

—Dr. Paul Talmadge, Southern Baptist educator

“Those who want to ‘Take Back America’ never had it in the first place. It has always belonged to all of us, even those with whom we do not agree. The ‘Christian America’ of fantasy during the Colonial Era was not very religious at all. Those who want to ‘restore Christian America as it once was’ are probably thinking of their own childhood when they were in a pious and protected environment, unaware of the world around them. When they got smart enough to discover that world, of course it was not what they remembered.”

—Dr. Paul Talmadge, Southern Baptist educator

“What I think really divides us [evangelicals] more than anything right now is the political agenda.”

—Jeffery L. Sheler, quoting Richard J. Mouw,
president of Fuller Theology Seminary,
in Believers: A Journey into Evangelical America

“This may seem obvious, but based on our research on this subject [politics and Christianity], we must realize that our political activism, if expressed in an unChristian manner, prevents a new generation from seeing Christ. . . . Many issues keep young outsiders from committing to Jesus, but one key barrier is their experience with Christians in politics.” [emphasis in original quotation]

—David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, UnChristian:
What a new generation really thinks about Christianity
. . . and why it matters

“Americans are dropping out of religion at an alarming rate of 5-6 times the historic rate (30-40 percent have no religion today versus 5-10 percent a generation ago). . . . But youth’s religious disaffection is largely due to discomfort with religiosity having been tied to conservative politics.”

—Jeffrey Weiss, “Young Adults Doing Religion on Their Own?
Blame it on Politics,”
quoting from a Pew survey in an article on AOL,
dated February 26, 2010

“American adults became increasingly likely to express no religious preference as the 1990s unfolded. Briefly summarized, we find that the increase was not connected to a loss of religious piety, and that it was connected to politics. In the 1990s many people . . . found themselves at odds with the conservative political agenda of the Christian Right and reacted by renouncing their . . . attachment to organized religion.”

—Jeffrey Weiss, “Young Adults Doing Religion on Their Own?
Blame it on Politics,”
quoting Michael Hout and Claude Fischer
in American Sociological Review,
in AOL article, dated February 26, 2010

“In my book Kingdoms in Conflict, I make the case for why Christians should never have a political party; it is a huge mistake to become married to an ideology, because the greatest enemy of the gospel is ideology. Ideology is a man-made format of how the world ought to work, and Christians instead believe in the revealed truth of Scripture.”

—Chuck Colson, quoted by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons
in UnChristian

“I just don’t think pastors should turn their pulpits into public policy platforms. It cheapens the gospel. Our congregation doesn’t need another political opinion. They need spiritual revelation. They don’t need to think about politics on the weekend. They need to be reminded to seek first the kingdom of God.”

—Mark Batterson, quoted by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons
in UnChristian 

“And when we talk about transforming culture, it doesn’t mean we want to shove it down people’s throats or that we’re going to legislate our Christian convictions on non-Christians. We want to communicate our values in ways that appeal to all, whether they are Christians or not. And if we can’t articulate a vision that someone who is not an evangelical can buy, we’re never going to sell it.”

—Jeffery L. Seler, quoting Richard Cizik,
vice president for governmental affairs
of the National Association of Evangelicals,
in Believers: A Journey into Evangelical America

“[As Evangelicals] our moral vision consists of seeing all the things we can ‘shut down’ to stamp out evil with little thought of the victims of evil. Jesus never told us to ‘organize against’ or ‘legislate against’ anything but to extend a hand of care to victims.”

—Dr. Paul Talmadge, Southern Baptist educator

“Because evangelicals pride themselves in their emphasis on direct experience with God through Christ, they tend to think and act as if cultivating the life of the mind, studying Christian doctrine, subordinating our beliefs and traditions to the consensus of history, and learning from the early church fathers are unnecessary at best or a waste of time at worst. . . . [This] anti-intellectual strain would seem to manifest itself most often in politics and religion.”

—J. Daryl Charles,
The Unformed Conscience of Evangelicalism

“Questioning the quality of evangelical scholarship has not come entirely from outside the movement. Perhaps the most stinging indictment, in fact, came from one of Wheaton’s own faculty stars, history professor Mark A. Noll, who wrote famously in 1994 that ‘the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.’”

—Jeffery L. Sheler,
Believers: A Journey into Evangelical America

“It appears to me that Christians are trying to build a kingdom when they should be living in the one that abides in their heart. . . .

“It seems even the apostle Paul, who once lived to incorporate laws to form a ‘people of God,’ had to leave that idea behind when he came to know the Christ. 2 Cor 10:6 ‘And we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete.’ Seems Paul finally got it. It is not about building a kingdom without but within. What a charade that Christians would replace the prayer booth with a voting booth. As if we have fulfilled some spiritual obligation by voting for someone? We have fulfilled nothing until we have learned that the Spirit is not administered by law. What a fallacy! The coming of the Spirit made the law appear dull within His brilliance!

“Overzealous Christians attempting to force their laws on the land are no different than overzealous followers of other religions trying to do the same thing. . . . If laws could reform, refine and change people, jails and prisons would not be full. More laws will only make more criminals. . . .

“An opinion regarding politics does not make [anyone] a good Christian. . . . not even campaigning. Those things are time wasters and have done little to save the plight of the American lost and hurting. It enables, entitles and entraps.”

—Rev. Danny Lynchard, my longtime friend,
and an ordained Southern Baptist minister

Note: The subjects of religion and politics will be examined in future posts of collected and composed quotations and excerpts. As an “Orthodox, Sacramental, Evangelical Baptiscopalian Methodist” my own spiritual journey and perspective can be examined by visiting my previous blog posts such as
1. “My Religious Conversion”
2. “Life Is Reg’lar/My Mother’s Bible”
3. “A Summary of My Personal Spirituality and Pilgrimage”
4. “Occupation in Exile, Deliverance in Time”
5. “A Baptist Pastor in an Episcopal Christmas Service”
6. “About Copyeditors: God’s Noble Bereans”
7. “Ash Wednesday: Home, Stumbling Blocks, and Psalm 119”

Except for my self-quotes and quotes from other individuals and from the Episcopal Forward Day by Day daily devotional (Copyright 2010-11 Forward Movement. All rights reserved. Used by permission (www.forwardmovement.org), most of the quotes in this post were lifted from the Tulsa World, a moderate, middle-of-the-road newspaper, or from books I purchased from an evangelical/pentecostal bookstore.

If you disagree with any of the opinions or viewpoints expressed in this post, feel free to express your views on your own blog or elsewhere. Please keep in mind that on this blog my purpose is not to provide a forum for discussion or debate and that critics are not my target audience.

My Oklahoma Connections

“Oklahoma’s OK; why, it’s next to heaven!”
—Jimmy Peacock

This post is one of several pieces I wrote back in 1981 in an attempt to persuade the Arkansas newspapers to let me write a column on Arkansiana.

When that effort failed, I revised as many of the Arkansas essays as I could and then wrote a couple of new ones about Oklahoma that I sent to the Oklahoma papers for the same purpose. These I titled “Sooner Living.” Obviously, those articles were rejected just as the ones on Arkansiana had been.

The Oklahoma State Flag (photo by Storer, from a postcard produced by Prairie Production Company, 1637 S. Boston, Tulsa, OK 74119)

One of those tongue-in-cheek pieces about Sooner Living was titled “The Columnist Manifesto: Two Great Peoples Divided by a Common Language.” It was also offered to the newspapers of both states as part of that proposed column that was rejected by both states. I composed it with an Arkansas audience in mind and have already featured it in an earlier post on this blog titled “Some Southern Stuff IV: Do You Speak Southern?”

So now let’s look at the first of the stories of my Oklahoma connection as I wrote it more than thirty years ago, back in 1981–except that I have added subheadings and photos to break up and illustrate the copy.

My Oklahoma Connections

“You don’t know what a country we have got till you start prowling around it. Personally, I like the small places and scarcely populated states.”
—Will Rogers

Although I recently marked the anniversary of my fourth year of residence in Oklahoma, my earliest personal encounter with the Sooner State dates back to 1945 or 46, right after World War II.

My First Visit to Oklahoma

Just as soon as war-rationed cars, tires, and gas became available once again, my family (in a “brand-spankin’ new” Mercury with four new tires) set out from our home in Southeast Arkansas for a vacation trip to El Paso, Texas, Juarez, Mexico, and Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.

Traveling back home from Amarillo, we crossed the length of Oklahoma, of which I can recall nothing except the “gen-u-wine” Indian headdress bought for me (a mere lad at the time) by my folks during a rest stop in Oklahoma City [and which we accidentally went off and left behind, to my great sorrow].

Oklahoma Plains Indian in Warrior Regalia (photo by John Southern, from postcard produced by Prairie Production Company, 1637 S. Boston, Tulsa, OK 74119)

On that first trip to Okieland we stayed overnight in Seminole and even attended a rodeo there that evening. Had a nice time too (or so they told me later).

My Second Visit to Oklahoma

About 1950 or thereabouts my family came back to “Soonerland,” this time to visit my older brother who was stationed out here with the Air Force during the Korean War. [He was actually in clerk-typist school at what was then Oklahoma A&M College in Stillwater, now known as Oklahoma State University].  We spent several delightful days together down around Ada and Sulphur at what was then Platt National Park [now the Chickasaw National Recreational Area].

My Third Visit to Oklahoma

Then in the late fifties as a college kid I once again came west. This time it was with my other brother and one of his enterprising cronies who had hatched the bright idea of hauling a couple of old worn-out rice combines five or six hundred miles from SEARK to the Enid-Alva area where, to hear him tell it, we were going to “make a killin’ in the wheat harvest.”

As far as I know, the closest we came to a “killin’” was on the way back home when one of the Neanderthals he had hired to drive his over-balanced truck rounded a curve on two wheels, very nearly dumping himself and me and several tons of truck and combine down the side of a Ouachita Mountain.

My impression of that first trip out to Northwest Oklahoma was that whoever said “the wind comes sweeping down the plain” sure knew what he was talking about!

Oklahoma Dust Storm during the Dust Bowl (Black Sunday, April 14, 1936, from a postcard produced by Prairie Production Company, 1637 S. Boston, Tulsa, OK 74119; to magnify, click on the photo)

I soon realized and resigned myself to the fact that I couldn’t wear the nifty new straw cowboy hat I had bought for the occasion, because I spent more time chasing it than I did keeping it on my sun-scorched head.

I even learned to stand upwind of the tobacco chewers. But I never could quite get used to the idea of losing a one-and-a-half-ton truck to the wind!

During one of my trips to the grain elevator to unload the harvested wheat, I stopped on the way back to the field for a cold drink. The little town on whose one street I left the then-empty truck consisted of a couple of stores, a gas station or two, and a few houses on either side of the ribbon of highway.

As I stood drinking my Coke, the groceryman asked me if that was my truck “rolling down the street.” To which I replied, “Naw, mine’s parked right outside in front.” But it wasn’t.

This Arkansas farm boy could hardly believe his eyes upon exiting the store to discover that the relentless Oklahoma wind had pushed that heavy truck a full half-block down and across that table-flat street and right into the drugstore lady’s parked Lincoln! Neither could the lady, who delivered quite a heated and informative lecture on the subject of the vagaries of the Oklahoma wind and the precautions to be taken in regard thereunto.

The Plains of Oklahoma (photo by Chuck Doswell from a postcard produced by Prairie Production Company, 1637 S. Boston, Tulsa, OK 74119)

But what took the cake was when I would stand in a near gale—legs spread apart for balance, clothes flapping, hair whirling—and ask one of the locals if the wind always blew like that out there, and be told in all seriousness: “Oh, it ain’t windy today; you oughta be here when it’s really blowin’!”

My Fourth Visit to Oklahoma

But I suppose my most vivid remembrance of my early visits to Oklahoma concerns a couple of stalwart young hitchhikers I picked up (or rather who picked me up) late one sticky July evening back in 1964.

Returning to my Arkansas home from a summer institute for French teachers held in Emporia, Kansas, I stopped for gas somewhere west of Sallisaw at one of those Hep-Ur-Sef stations. It was about one or two o’clock in the morning. As I started to pull away, two teen-aged boys—about fifteen or sixteen at the most—approached my vehicle rather tipsily. One was an Indian, and the other wasn’t.

Giving me some story about a broken-down car, they (actually the Indian never spoke) asked me for a lift into Sallisaw, and I rather reluctantly complied.

Once in the car the non-Indian (sans shoes and shirt) began to talk with all the bravado that only a fifteen-year-old-trying-to-sound-thirty can muster.

Obviously full of more than just youthful exuberance, he rambled on for a while, good-naturedly and rather disjointedly, finally ending up by inquiring where I was from.

“South Arkansas,” I replied. To which the youth responded boastfully: “I’ll bet you don’t what to think of these crazy Okies, huh?”

Rather than agree, which I most certainly did, I made some noncommittal remark.

“Well, don’t worry,” he reassured me manfully, flinging his arm back over the seat to point to his Indian friend who sat in the rear, stone-faced and glassy-eyed. “I’m just tryin’ to git this dam’ drunk Ind’in home!”

The “dam’ drunk Ind’in” made no response.

In the course of time we reached Sallisaw where I gratefully deposited my charges, the non-Indian (the one without shoes or shirt) bidding me a hearty “thanks” and “take it way”—the “dam’ drunk Ind’in” holding his peace (if not his equilibrium).

Today, some seventeen years later, I never pass through that area on my way back home to Arkansas without recalling that seemingly inconsequential incident, or without wondering “Who was that gassed man and his grape-full companion?”

So, if by any chance you happen to be a non-Indian male about thirty-one years old who remembers hitching a ride back in 1964 with an inebriated Native-American pal west of Sallisaw from an Arkie in a red Chevy II with a Confederate license plate on the front—give me a call, will you?

I’d really like to know whatever became of that “dam’ drunk Ind’in”!

End of the Trail, Oklahoma (sculpture by James Earle Fraser, National Cowboy Hall of Fame, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; photo from postcard produced by Prairie Production Company, 1637 S. Boston, Tulsa, OK 74119)

Note: Although I left the description of this scene as “west of Sallisaw,” upon further reflection I now believe it was “east of Sallisaw” and “west of Fort Smith.” Even today each time we travel I-40 toward Fort Smith on our way “down home,” I always look for that location and recount the tale to Mari though of course those “Hep-Ur-Sef” gas stations no longer seem to exist, all stations now being self-service.

Also time may have erased the memory (which may never have existed in younger readers) of the line that I paraphrased from the close of each episode of the old radio and TV Lone Ranger Show, which always featured someone asking about the Lone Ranger and Tonto, “Who was that masked man and his faithful Indian companion?” Just another example of the hundreds of relics of our youth that are fast fading into the ravenous past.

Ash Wednesday: Home, Stumbling Blocks, and Psalm 119

  “The longing for home is a foretaste of heaven. My longing for home prompted me to think of the sacrifice Jesus made when he came to earth. How he must have yearned for all he left behind!” (I know the feeling. I only think of home two times: night and day!)
—Wendy Marshall, quoted in the January 28, 2012
entry in the Upper Room daily devotional

Since this is Ash Wednesday, the traditional beginning of the season of Lent observed in many mainline Christian churches, I thought I would share portions of three recent entries from the Forward Day by Day daily devotional on the subjects of home, Christian service, and the psalms, especially Psalm 119.

Except for some deleted paragraphs, all of these entries are reproduced just as they appeared in the original versions and are used by permission of the publisher. I hope these entries speak to you during this Lenten season as much as they did to me.

“Abide” and “Home”

“Home is that place where you belong, where you fit in, where you are at ease, where you are fully yourself.”
—Jimmy Peacock

This first entry is reminiscent of quotes and definitions of home from my previous blog posts such as the one above. Other than the quoted scripture in the following entry, italics were inserted by me for emphasis.

SATURDAY, January 5

John 15:1-16. Abide in me.

The verb “abide” suggests a long-term situation. When we abide somewhere or with someone, we’re not just passing through. We don’t abide in a hotel room, an elevator, or a parking space. The noun form of the word, “abode,” brings to mind images of home, where we belong, where we can relax and be ourselves.

Home is the backdrop of our lives, an atmosphere that we breathe in and out. Home surrounds and defines us. It is a place we don’t have to think about all the time, affording us the security and freedom to think about other things.

Christ invites us to make our home in him, to allow him to surround and define us, to condition all we say or do, hallowing every moment. He will be with us as a familiar place to abide—a backdrop, an atmosphere enfolding and embracing us.

Copyright 2012 Forward Movement (www.forwardmovement.org). All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Note: To read my previous entries “Quotes about Home I and II” from September 19 and 26, 2012, click here and here.

The Lord’s Use of “Stumbling Blocks”

“We must remember that the disciples were intensely human. [With us as with them] God has to hit mighty licks with crooked sticks.”
—Anonymous Southern Baptist preacher

In this second entry from Forward Day by Day, the italics for emphasis (except for mine in the final paragraph) were part of the original quotation.

FRIDAY, January 18

Matthew 16:13-19. I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

Following Peter’s confession that Jesus was the Christ—Peter was the first to say it—Jesus said Peter was the rock on which he would build his church. . .

I . . . doubt he was thinking of Peter’s faith, which wasn’t enough to make Peter a reliable friend later on. I don’t know what Jesus was thinking, but just five verses later, Jesus said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me.” So Peter was both the rock on which Jesus would build his church and a stumbling block to Jesus.

Jesus builds his church on a stumbling block, an obstacle, a problem. That rings true. Everybody I’ve ever known in church—and I’ve known lots of church people—is a stumbling block, an obstacle, a problem, at least now and then. For reasons unimaginable to me, Jesus seems to prefer to achieve his purposes using the wrong people in the wrong jobs at the wrong time in the wrong place. I’m glad he does, because that’s what lets me in.

Copyright 2012 Forward Movement (www.forwardmovement.org). All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Note: This final paragraph applies particularly to me, especially in regard to my thirty-plus years of exile from my native Arkansas home and my labor as a copyeditor for religious publications, a role for which I had no formal education or training in theology, the Bible, journalism, English, Hebrew, Greek, editing, etc., or even typing except with two fingers (as I still do). To read more about this subject, visit my August 24, 2011, post titled “My Mother’s Bible” and my February 1, 2013, post titled “About Copyeditors.”

Reading the Psalms, Especially Psalm 119

“This is the Psalm (Psalm 119) I have often had recourse to, when I could find no spirit of prayer in my own heart, and at length the fire was kindled and I could pray.”
—Rev. H. Venn from Charles Bridges on Psalm 119,
quoted in Wikipedia entry for Psalm 119

Finally, to sum up the subject of Ash Wednesday, Lent, and daily Bible reading (which I still do in the same French Bible I used to translate French and English more than thirty years ago), here is a portion of a recent entry from Forward Day by Day about the psalms, especially Psalm 119, the longest psalm in the Bible. Except for the quoted portion of Psalm 119, the italics for emphasis are mine with my inserted words in brackets.

WEDNESDAY, February 6

Psalm 119:73-96. Your law is my delight . . . I will never forget your commandments, because by them you give me life.

“Seventy-six Trombones” isn’t the tune for Psalm 119. But this psalm is like 176 trumpets—176 verses that “trumpet” the power of God’s life-giving word, sometimes muted as the psalmist endures difficulty. [I identify with the psalmist because like him and like Peter I also have a tendency to falter in faith during difficult times!]  But since this psalm is long, I often choose others. . .

I was saddened when someone said he easily skips the psalms [in his daily Bible readings], yet realized that I sometimes avoid Psalm 119 [because of its length]. Since this psalm is divided into sections, I’ve decided to add a section to my readings every day during Lent and travel through the psalm twice before Easter. My journey starts . . . on Ash Wednesday, and I’d welcome your company.

Copyright 2013 Forward Movement (www.forwardmovement.org). All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Note:  By following the suggested scripture lessons in both the Upper Room (Methodist) daily devotional and in the Forward Day by Day (Episcopal) daily devotional, over time I am able to cover much of the Bible in my daily reading—including the psalms. (For more on this subject see my earlier post titled “My Mother’s Bible.”) In fact, by holding my French Bible sideways, it is easy to identify the book of Psalms in it because that section is darker and more frayed than the rest of the Bible due to constant use and continuous wear. But besides the book of Psalms, like this writer I intend to add a section of Psalm 119 to my daily scripture readings during Lent, and I would suggest that you do likewise.

About Copyeditors: God’s “Noble Bereans”

“Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they . . . examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”
– Acts 17:11 NIV 

“Too often, what is presented as theology or history is nothing more than canonized opinion.”
–Jimmy Peacock

In this post I examine the nature and role of copyeditors, especially those who deal with religious copy, as I did over a period of thirty-plus years for several different Christian book publishers and many different individual ministers and ministries.

During that period I also copyedited a wide variety of materials for several secular publishers, particularly non-fiction manuscripts about American history (including biography and autobiography), the Civil War, Southern culture, Western outlaws and lawmen, cowboys and Indians, etc.

In those years as a professional copyeditor, I developed and applied the same traits of innate curiosity, devotion to detail, pursuit of fact, quest for accuracy, and desire for honesty, sincerity, and integrity that had influenced me from earliest childhood. (See the conclusion to my earlier post titled “My Favorite Childhood Books/The Truth about Santa Claus” in which I referred to my “lifelong search for truth.”)

From these three decades of experience in copyediting I collected the following quotes and excerpts on the subject (with my comments in parentheses), beginning with a definition of the copyeditor and a description of his nature and purpose, followed by my own observations on these subjects (emphasis in italics).

The Copyeditor

“The copyeditor is the guardian of precision, the protector of the facts, a professional perfectionist dedicated to the idea that you can believe what you read . . . Authors and copyeditors get along about as well as children and dentists. A good copyeditor wields his drill with delicacy and skill, but sometimes it hurts . . . If you sometimes feel antagonistic toward your copyeditor, you’re in good company—but like fillings and root canals, the copyeditor’s changes are for your own good.”

—From Manuscript to Book

“No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft [copy].”

—H. G. Wells

“Editing is the same as arguing with writers—same thing exactly.” (I never argued with writers, but some of them argued with me–even “gnashing their teeth and rending their garments” against me–because of the changes I made in their scripts, usually those changes required by editorial guidelines. That was not a part of my job that I relished.)

—Harold Ross

“Frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I’m from Missouri. You have got to show me.”

—Rep. Willard Duncan Vandiver,
speaking in Philadelphia in 1819,
Origin of the Missouri state motto,
“The Show Me State”

“You blew in from the Middle West
And certainly impressed
The population hereabouts.
But, honey, I’ve got news for you,
I’m from Missouri too,
So naturally I’ve got my doubts.”

—“You Came a Long Way from St. Louis,”
Song by Bob Russell and John Benson Brooks, 1948

“All true copyeditors are from Missouri. Their first question is, ‘Says who?’ Their first response is: ‘Show me.’ They are neither quickly convinced nor easily persuaded. They are not prime prospects for snake oil salesmen, purveyors of get-rich-quick schemes, or unscrupulous politicians, preachers, promoters, or other public panderers.

[Today copyeditors' skepticism would include forwarded email messages, especially those of a hardcore religious/political nature, which are notoriously unreliable. Naturally, I always try to verify the accuracy of all forwarded messages before forwarding them to others. As someone has said about such unsubstantiated messages, "We must be very careful lest we become fountains of misinformation," to which I added, "or disinformation!"]

“Don’t look for them on bandwagons or following off after pied pipers or self-appointed gurus. They don’t trust ‘big mouths’ or ‘little voices,’ ‘glad hands’ or ‘glib tongues.’ They are not impressed by fat pocketbooks or inflated egos, hot shots or cool dudes, know-it-alls or self-styled ‘experts.’

“They look for character, not charisma, fruit not gifts. Like God, they search for truth in the inward parts, because they know that it is truth—and not money, power, fame, or success—that sets men free.

“If you are dishonest, stay away from a copyeditor, because he will see through you like a piece of wet toilet paper and will be on your case like ugly on an ape. If you don’t want to hear the truth, then don’t ask a copyeditor because he is going to tell it like it is even if he knows it will bankrupt both you and him.

“But if you are honest, if you have no ulterior motives or hidden agendas, if you really want to know the truth so you can face it and do it, then you have nothing to fear from the copyeditor, because to him integrity is the ultimate virtue—and either you have it or you don’t. It’s just that simple.”

—Jimmy Peacock

“Remember, son, the word is integrity.”

—From a letter written to his son by Gen. William F. Dean,
a POW in the Korean War, just before
his expected execution by his captors

Sample of My Copyeditor’s Zeal for Truth

“So think carefully about what you are [reading].”
–Luke 8:18 ERV

To illustrate the above quotations, here is a sample of my copyeditor’s zeal for truth. It is a copy of a letter to the editor of the Tulsa World that I wrote about an editorial that I found inaccurate and hypocritical. It is just one of several that I wrote over the years to the Oklahoma media to correct false information about or impressions of my beloved native state.

Sunday, May 23, 2004
Editorial Page Editor
Tulsa World
P.O. Box 1770
Tulsa, OK 74102

Dear Sir:

“At least the city [of Tulsa] didn’t have the governor standing in the schoolhouse door to block black children from entering a school. That happened in Little Rock.”
—“The great divide,” editorial page,
Tulsa World, Sunday, May 23, 2004

As a native of Arkansas, and a member of the Arkansas National Guard in September 1957 when elements of it were called out by Gov. Orval Faubus at the time of the integration of Little Rock’s Central High School, I feel that your statement above is both inaccurate and misleading.

If memory serves me correctly, Governor Faubus never actually stood in the schoolhouse door to block black children from entering. Rather, he mobilized the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the enrollment of the now famous “Little Rock Nine.” I have verified this fact by a careful re-examination of Little Rock, 1957: Historic Front Pages from the Arkansas Democrat and Arkansas Gazette Aug. 29, 1957-Oct. 4, 1957, published by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on August 29, 1997, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of that history-making event.

I assume that when you wrote the above quotation either you were speaking metaphorically or you were thinking of Gov. George Wallace who did literally stand in the schoolhouse (actually university) door in a failed attempt to block the integration of the University of Alabama.

In the interest of historic accuracy and journalistic integrity, and on behalf of all Arkansans, particularly the citizens of Little Rock, who had no part in this action by their governor then and who may not be aware of your statement and its implications now, may I respectfully request that a clarification of this important point be made in a subsequent issue of your publication?

Sincerely yours,

Jimmy Peacock

Note: Despite my effort, the editor of the Tulsa World never printed a retraction or even a correction. What I did not mention in my letter was that although a mob of some five hundred people did gather to protest the integration of Central High School, Little Rock did not have one of the worst race riots in American history in which hundreds of blacks were either killed, wounded, or missing or had their homes and businesses demolished in the utter destruction of a thirty-five-square-block area of the black part of the city. That happened in Tulsa, a city that was as racially segregated as any in Arkansas. To read more about the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, click here.

The Hard-Headed, Soft-Hearted Copyeditor 

“I’m nuthin’ if I ain’t honest. As a country boy from Arkansaw, I ain’t got no better sense than to tell it like it is–or at least to call it like I see it! With me, what you see is what you get. I am an Arkie in whom there is no guile.”
–Jimmy Peacock

After reading the reams of material about me on this blog and the quotations and sample of the nature and role of the copyeditor above, you may be wondering how such a self-described “hopeless romantic and helpless neurotic” as I am could have ever become a “guardian of precision, a protector of the facts, a professional perfectionist dedicated to the idea that you can believe what you read.”

The answer was provided in the earlier post titled “My Mother’s Bible” in which I described how I, an unemployed French teacher, was compelled by circumstances beyond my control to come to Tulsa as a French translator and then to take over the job of editorial assistant in order to provide for my family. That position eventually led me–for better or for worse–to become a copyeditor.

So if you are asking, “Who made you the judge of other people’s writings?” I can only respond, “It seems that God did–it certainly wasn’t my idea!”

But besides the actual physical events that forced me to become a copyeditor, there are also the personal and spiritual influences that led me almost inevitably to fulfill that role. After all these years, I can look back now and see that, given my unique combination of a hard head and a soft heart, as well as my “obsessive-compulsive” nature and my inherent desire to seek, find, and share the truth, my becoming a copyeditor was a foregone conclusion, even though throughout all these long years I have continually sought to become a writer.

I used to say, “Rather than being a religious editor in exile, I want to be a Southern writer in residence.” Now given my advancing age and my declining health, as well as the dismal economy and the rapidly changing world of book publishing, it seems doubtful that I will ever be either—at least not back full time as a copyeditor or “back home” as a writer.

And, as sad as it may be, that’s the truth—from one of God’s “noble Bereans.”

Three Southern Gentlemen and a Holy God

“It is virtually impossible to convince me that any man is a Christian if he is not first and foremost a gentleman.”

—Jimmy Peacock

“My devout Southern Baptist mother taught me to be honest and to be a gentleman; she just never taught me how to do both at the same time. (I can trace all of my failures in life—and they are legion—to a failure to be a gentleman.)”

—Jimmy Peacock

In this post, the first after my “retirement” from blogging at the end of December, I was inspired to write about gentlemen—and gentlemanly manners and behavior—by two factors.

First was the recognition and celebration of the January births of three notable Southern Gentlemen: Elvis Presley (January 8), Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15), and Robert E. Lee (January 19).

The second was the January 4 entry in the daily devotional Forward Day by Day on the tendency in our modern Christian worship services to replace dignity, reverence, and awe with casualness, informality, and familiarity.

In the case of Elvis Presley, in an earlier post titled “My First Encounter with Elvis and His Music” I quoted the mother of one of my female high school classmates in McGehee, Arkansas, who in 1955 welcomed a young Elvis into her home. Later after he had left she remarked that “he was one of the nicest young men she had ever met.” That description of Elvis as a true Southern Gentleman was repeated often by those who knew him best, especially during his early career.

Of course, everyone is aware that the Revered Martin Luther King Jr. was known for his insistence on nonviolence and civility in the pursuit of civil rights for African-Americans even in the face of violence from many whites who feared and hated him and opposition from some of his own race who felt that his methods were too soft and ineffective.

Finally, in another earlier post published on January 18, 2011, and titled “Some Southern Stuff I: Self-quotes and Robert E. Lee’s Birthday,” I used tongue-in-cheek humor to call attention to the gentlemanly attitude and demeanor of Confederate general Robert E. Lee who refused to vilify his enemies. In so doing, General Lee became the Southern icon of such gracious manners and behavior when, even in the face of utter defeat, he refused to allow his troops to scatter and carry on a war of terrorism against the Union after their surrender at Appomattox in April 1865.

The January 4 Forward Day by Day entry that also inspired this post brought to my mind the need for a return to the dignity, reverence, and awe—in essence, the gentlemanly (and ladylike) attitude and behavior—that should be the hallmark of Christian worship of a gracious and benevolent, but awesome and fearsome Holy God.

I had previously referred to this theme in the opening self-quote to my Christmas post (“A Baptist Pastor in an Episcopal Christmas Service”) in which I noted that I have always admired the Episcopal Church because “being Anglicans, its parishioners know how to conduct themselves in the Presence of Royalty.” And part of that reverent conduct involves the proper attitude and attire—both physical and spiritual— when entering the Royal Court.

In expression of that theme, here is that entry with which Mari and I wholeheartedly agree and which I quote in full with permission of the publisher. (Note: Except for the opening scripture and the word “theophanies,” italics are mine and are inserted for emphasis.)

FRIDAY, January 4

Exodus 3:1-12. Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.

The story of Moses’ encounter with the Lord at the burning bush is one of the Bible’s classic theophanies, that is, a visible or audible manifestation of God. Theophanies are rare, even in the Bible; people more typically encounter God by other means—in another person, a book or sermon, an act of worship or service. But theophanies do occur to certain people, and those people are never the same afterwards.

Like many theophanies, the burning bush makes Moses feel unworthy, which he acknowledges by removing his shoes—normal attire and behavior are inappropriate in the presence of the Holy One.

This sense of awe has largely disappeared from many churches today, where a laid-back ambiance is prized—“Wear your jeans and sneakers, bring your coffee, be comfortable, don’t trouble yourself.” This is probably a reaction to the stiff formality once found in many churches, but if our deity becomes too comfortable, too chummy, it will no longer be the God of the Bible. The God of Moses and of Jesus loves us, yes, but also challenges and convicts us. As with a raging fire or wind, be careful in this presence.

Copyright 2013 Forward Movement (www.forwardmovement.org). All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Note: In regard to the subject of gentility and proper respect, here is a note about a Civil War figure who was most definitely NOT known as a courtly, chivalrous Southern Gentleman; namely, Union general William Tecumseh Sherman. Later to gain fame and notoriety for his famous (or infamous) devastating March through Georgia, earlier in the war Sherman was responsible for a similar devastating march down the Mississippi River from Memphis to Vicksburg, including East Arkansas, and the crushing defeat of badly outnumbered Confederates at Fort Hindman in Arkansas Post. A commemoration of the 150-year anniversary of the Battle of Arkansas Post will take place on January 19 (Robert E. Lee’s birthday) and 20 at the site, which is located near the place where the Arkansas River empties into the Mississippi River about thirty miles from my hometown of McGehee, Arkansas. To read more about Arkansas Post, the battle that took place there, and its commemoration and other such activities in Arkansas, click here and here.

Mari: Anniversary Remembrances

 “He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the LORD.”
—Proverbs 18:22 NIV

In an earlier post I described why and how Mari and I began dating in June 1961. In another post I presented a summary of Mari’s life, including her marriage to me and the family and home she created for me. In a third post, exactly a year ago, I told about our engagement, our honeymoon, and our first weeks of married life. (To read these stories, see the earlier posts titled “The Peacock Love Story,” “Facts about Marion Williams Peacock,” and “Our Honeymoon Was No Honeymoon.”)

In this fourth and final post on the subject of Mari and our romance and marriage I conclude the series by offering some short pieces I wrote about some of our wedding anniversaries.

In the first part I present a poem I composed about the nickname “Mari” that I gave her early in our courtship. Later I had the poem framed with a photo of her in her wedding dress and presented it to her as a gift on our twentieth anniversary.

In the second part I relate several amusing and sentimental anecdotes, short oral presentations I made at the local Methodist church at the time of some of our recent wedding anniversaries.

I hope this last tribute to Mari and our marriage will be of interest to you as we celebrate our fiftieth wedding anniversary on December 27, 2012. (To hear Andy Williams sing the “Anniversary Song,” popular almost a half-century ago, click here.)

Mari 

“My most brilliant achievement was my ability to persuade my wife to marry me.”
—Winston Churchill

I had the following poem printed up with a border of hearts, holly leaves, and pink poinsettias (Mari’s signature color and our wedding flowers) with a photo of Mari in her wedding gown set on the opposite side and gave it to her for our twentieth anniversary on December 27, 1982.

A few years ago on our anniversary I gave her a gold pendant with the letters M A R I spelled downward. She wears it often as a reminder to both of us—lest we forget.

Mari

Her real name is Marion, Marion Williams,
Or at least it used to be,
Now it’s Marion Peacock,
A name she got from me.

“Do you mind if I call you Mari?” I asked,
After we’d dated a little while.
“Just as long as you call me,” she purred so sweet,
With an innocent little smile.

So Mari I called her, and called her, and called her,
I did it for quite a while.
And she was always there to answer my call,
With that same little innocent smile.

So now it’s been twenty years, or soon will be,
The twenty-seventh of December.
And I’ve never forgotten to call her yet,
I make it a point to always remember.

For it’s not what we call each other that matters,
Names go out of style.
It’s the fact that we call, and call, and call,
And answer with a smile.

“Do you mind if I call you Mari?” I asked,
Oh, that’s been now quite a while.
And I’ll never stop calling her, and calling, and calling,
‘Cause I love that sweet little smile.

–Jimmy Peacock
December 8, 1982

Recent Anniversary Remembrances

 “When something familiar comes to our ears, or a certain fragrance touches our memory, then we recall a part of us that remains in the past.”
—Joyce Hifler, Tulsa World

In our church during the Sunday morning service the congregation is invited to come forward and report any special joys. These reports are usually accompanied by a token thank offering.

Here is my report delivered on Christmas Eve, Sunday, December 24, 2007:

“My wife [the former Marion Williams] and I were married [in the First Baptist Church of McGehee, Arkansas] at Christmastime [December 27] in 1962.

Mari and me on our wedding day (to magnify, click on the photo)

“When I went to get the marriage license, the county clerk happened to be the father of our best man [the late Cullen Gannaway of Arkansas City], so he was going to let me have the license for nothing. But then he said, ‘No, if I do that, it won’t be any good.’ So he sold it to me for a nickel.

Mari and me and Cullen and Mary getting our marriage licenses from Cullen’s father in 1962 (to magnify, click on the photo)

“On our twentieth wedding anniversary I wrote to thank him and said, ‘I want you to know that was the best bargain I have ever had in my life!’

“So today, in memory of Mr. Edgar Gannaway, who sold me that license; in honor of my wife of forty-five years; and in thanks to God, who gave her to me—for a nickel—here are the two dollars that I should have paid for that license.”

On Sunday, November 23, 2008, I sent the following message to friends and family:

“Every Sunday as part of the service in the local Methodist church people come forward and drop a dollar into the Joy Jar and tell something good that has happened in their life that week.

“Today I went forward, put my dollar in the jar, and said to the congregation: ‘Today is my seventieth birthday. But fortunately, like John McCain, I have a trophy wife who is much younger than I am and a whole lot prettier.’

“After the service several people, mostly older men, commented on my tribute to Mari saying, ‘You’re right, she is a lot prettier than you are.’” (See my view of her below.)

Mari as I still see her (to magnify, click on the photo)

On Sunday, December 28, 2008, I went forward, dropped a dollar in the Joy Jar, and said to the congregation:

“Yesterday Mari and I were married forty-six years—which must be some kind of Christmas miracle because Mari claims that she is only thirty-six years old!”

At Christmas time in 2009, I went forward, put a dollar in the Joy Jar, and said:

“Mari and I are about to celebrate our forty-seventh wedding anniversary. The only smart thing I ever did in my life was marryin’ Marion, and even that I can’t take credit for. Mari and my mother and God got together and worked out that whole thing. All I did was show up at the church and say ‘I do.’

Mari and me saying “I do” (to magnify, click on the photo)

“But I’m awfully glad I had at least enough sense to do that ‘cause not only is she much younger than I am, and much prettier than I am, she’s also much smarter than I am.

“But then y’all already knew that, right? Which means that y’all are smarter than I am too, ‘cause it took me years to figure that out, and by then it was too late – it was a done deal!

“So, you young people, be careful who you say ‘I do’ to, ‘cause you just might end up like me—happy and blessed!”

On Sunday, January 3, 2010, I sent this message to family and friends:

“Although our anniversary was last Sunday, since we didn’t have church services that day due to the weather, this morning at church I went forward, put my dollar in the Joy Jar, and said, ‘Last Sunday, December twenty-seventh, Mari and I celebrated our forty-eighth wedding anniversary. So each year on Christmas I give thanks to God for the gift of His Son and then two days later I give Him thanks for the gift of His daughter.”

On January 4, 2012, I went forward, put my dollar in the Joy Jar, and said: “Last Tuesday, December 27, 2011, Mari and I were married forty-nine years. We have agreed to hold off one more year until our fiftieth anniversary before we decide whether this marriage is going to make it or not. I say that Mari is one in a million, ’cause that’s just about the number of women who would ever marry me!”

On December 23, 2012, I went forward, put a dollar in the Joy Jar and said: “Last year at this time I said that Mari and I had been married forty-nine years and that we were giving the marriage one more year to see if it worked out. Well, it has now lasted fifty years so we have decided we may as well wait to see if it lasts another fifty years.”

Mari and me after fifty years of marriage (Mari is the pretty one on the left who looks like Liz Taylor’s younger blonde sister; I’m the handsome one on the right who looks like Alan Alda of the old M*A*S*H TV show — note that we both wear glasses! To magnify, click on the photo)

For a final remembrance of our romance and marriage, listen to a song titled “Turn Back the Hands of Time” sung by Eddie Fisher which expresses my sentiments on the occasion of our fiftieth wedding anniversary.

PS Recently Mari and I attended one of our grandson Ben’s elementary school basketball games. As we were leaving, since I have both eyesight and balance problems, Mari was holding my arm to guide me and steady me. Just then I heard one of the referees ask me, “Sir, are you sure you are authorized to have a ‘cutie’ on your arm?” I sure hope so, ‘cause she has been there for fifty years, and I plan for her to be there for another fifty years—God willing!

Mari and me leaving the church after our wedding on December 27, 1962, with Mari holding my arm — fifty years ago! (to magnify, click on photo)

Mari as a “cutie”!

A Baptist Pastor in an Episcopal Christmas Service

Introduction

“One thing I have always admired about the Episcopal Church is that it not only keeps Christ in Christmas, it also keeps the Mass in Christmas. I also admire the fact that being Anglicans, its parishioners know how to conduct themselves in the Presence of Royalty.”
—Jimmy Peacock

In an earlier post titled “A Summary of My Personal Spirituality and Pilgrimage” I described in detail how after more than forty years I was led with Mari from the Southern Baptist denomination of our childhood and young adulthood to the Episcopal Church in our middle age.

Selma (Arkansas) Baptist Church which I attended as a child and whose pastor was my grandfather Rev. Willis Barrett (to magnify, click on the photo)

McGehee (Arkansas) First Baptist Church which Mari and I attended as youths and where we were married in 1962 (to magnify, click on the photo from McGehee Centennial 1906-2006)

In fact, after attending Southern Baptist churches for decades, graduating from Ouachita Baptist College, teaching in Baptist junior colleges, and doing volunteer work as houseparents in the Arkansas Baptist Home for Children, in January 1986 we were confirmed in downtown Trinity Episcopal Church in Tulsa.

Exterior of Trinity Episcopal Church in Tulsa as it looked in 1986 when Mari and I were confirmed there (to magnify, click on the photo from Behold the Glory: The Iconography of Grace)

Interior of Trinity Episcopal Church in Tulsa as it looked in 1986 when Mari and I were confirmed there (to magnify, click on the photo from Behold the Glory: The Iconography of Grace)

The reasons we made this change are many and complicated and in a way almost impossible to explain. Oversimplified, over a period of time we simply felt led to seek a more traditional, sacramental, and liturgical church and style of worship—but without giving up our lifelong evangelical heritage and foundation.

During the months that we spent studying, investigating, analyzing, and exploring this call we talked with several representatives of the Episcopal Church, including a Tulsa retired bishop, a Trinity priest, and others to whom we were directed for information and direction. One of those guides was a laywoman, a member of a charismatic Episcopal church in Tulsa

As Christmas approached, it was this Episcopal laywoman who noticed an article written by a Baptist minister in California who had published it in his church worship bulletin. She sent the article to us, and it spoke to us so clearly that it helped to confirm our growing conviction that we were indeed following what we believed to be the leadership of the Holy Spirit in our lives at that time.

Here is the text of that Christmas message by Walter Fishbaugh, then pastor of Cambridge Drive Baptist Church in Goleta, California. It was reprinted from his bulletin titled Blest. Regardless of your Christian background, affiliation, association, beliefs, or practices,we sincerely hope it speaks to you as it did to us Southern Baptists at that time more than twenty-five years ago.

Note: I have retyped the article just as it appeared in the photocopied version sent to us. The italics for emphasis were added by me.

 A Baptist Pastor Finds Refreshment
in an Episcopal Christmas Service

“Once a year I need this hour of dignity, spiritual energy and calm authenticity.”

 By Walter Fishbaugh

Christmas day finds me exhausted, totally drained, on “empty.” This happens to me every year, more or less. During the four weeks of Advent I use what resources I have to offer, trying too hard to package Christmas to make it important and believable and spiritually real to those souls in my care.

Now I not only know what is wrong with me, but also what to do about it. What I need comes from God. It takes an hour. I call it my “Episcopal fix”—the powerfully wonderful and marvelously healing televised service of Christmas worship from Washington Cathedral [our national cathedral]. This Baptist who has been trying so hard to package and present Christmas desperately needs this less-fevered perspective from a cooler and more confident tradition.

Exterior of Washington National (Episcopal) Cathedral (see http://www.nationalcathedral.org/)

Interior of the National Cathedral during the funeral of Ronald Reagan (see http://www.nationalcathedral.org/)

I need to see ivory candles thrust high in bold assertion by strong young men in white robes processing the great aisle. I need to hear those lay readers speak the ancient texts with such understanding and dignity that the words become indeed Word. I need the shrill voices of the choirboys whose choral praise entwines with the rich tonalities of a great organ into the lofty stone archways to resonate off the vaulted cornices and mortices, creating echoes of endlessness if not eternity.

I need to watch and hear the quietly sure clergy speaking from an ancient liturgy that carries the conviction of the ages in its calm authenticity—words and cadences so refined by the centuries that they are able to speak not to my surface, but to my very center. I need the deep scarlet and purple windows, the bold red velvet of the poinsettias like points of fire in the dark pine greenness. I need to hear a preacher who doesn’t try nearly as hard as I do, one who can be so thoughtfully reflective from the pulpit—and in so much less time.

And, surprisingly, I need to hear a chanted prayer whose tonal regularities evoke that special wonder of the unutterably excellent Thou toward Whom our praises and petitions ascend. I need the surging return of spiritual energy that comes through high worship. Not from it, but through it. It comes from God, the hem of whose garments we sometimes touch upon occasions of such need.

I follow Jesus in a Baptist style. I shall probably continue to do so. Most of the year it’s a good place for me to be. But on Christmas day, energy depleted, the last full measure of exertion having been spent, I turn with great gratitude to God through those who follow Jesus in the Episcopal style.

And annually I am renewed, healed, reassured, corrected. Suddenly I know Christmas does not need me. I and my displaced muscularity are not essential to it—indeed, may be offensive and hindering to it. Christmas can do very well, thank you, on its own. Within itself it carries all the God-given power and confirmation it needs.

Note: Mari and I are Baptists who discovered we needed all of this not once a year but once a week! For almost twenty years we found it in the traditional Episcopal worship services.

Now we find it in the traditional worship services of the Methodist Church of my Peacock ancestors which we joined after leaving Trinity Episcopal Church in Tulsa in order to be with our son Keiron and his family here in Sapulpa just before he was to be deployed to Afghanistan.

First United Methodist Church of Sapulpa, Oklahoma (to magnify, click on the photo)

As noted in my earlier post, “A Summary of My Personal Spirituality and Pilgrimage,” we will always love the Southern Baptist denomination of our childhood and youth, the Episcopal denomination of our middle years, and the Methodist denomination of our golden years. That’s why we always refer to ourselves as “Baptistcopalian Methodists.”

But wherever your personal spirituality and pilgrimage have taken you thus far in life, we sincerely wish you and your loved ones a joyous Merry Christmas!