The Spirit of the Age

Each year, as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day rolls around, I pull King's book, Stride Toward Freedom off the shelf and reread it. This is his personal telling of the Montgomery bus boycott, launched by the arrest of Mrs. Rosa Parks. It is a powerful and "tear-jerking" tale of something wonderful that happened that began prying open the floodgates of racial justice. King just doesn't chronicle the story--he comments, theologizes and philosophizes about what really happened during those events. Here is  his telling of the arrest of Rosa Parks:

On December 1, 1955, an attractive Nego seamstress, Mrs. Rosa Parks, boarded the Cleveland Avenue Bus in downtown Montgomery. She was returning home after her regular day's work in the Montgomery Fair--a leading department store. Tired from long hours on her feet, Mrs. Parks sat down in the first seat behind the section reserved for whites. Not long after she took her seat, the bus operator ordered her, along with the three other Negro passengers, to move back in order to accommodate boarding white passengers. By this time every seat on the bus was taken. This meant that if Mrs. fParks followed the driver's command she would have to stand while a white male passenger, who had just boarded the bus, would sit. The other three Negro passengers immediately complied with the driver's request, But Mrs. Parks quietly refused. The result was her arrest.

There was to be much speculation about why Mrs. Parks did not obey the driver. Many people in the white community argued that she had been "planted" by the NAACP in order to lay the groundwork for a test case, and at first glance that explanation seemed plausible, since she was a former secretary of the local branch of the NAACP. So persistent and persuasive was this argument that it convinced many reporters from all over the country. Later on, when I was having press conferences three times a week--in order to accommodate the reporters and journalists who came to Montgomery from all over the world--the invariable first question was: "Did the NAACP start the bus boycott?"

But the accusation was totally unwarranted, as the testimony of both Mrs. Parks and the officials of the NAACP revealed. Actually, no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over and the human personality cries out, "I can take it no longer." Mrs. Parks's refusal to move back was her intrepid affirmation that she had had enough. It was an individual expression of a timeless longing for human dignity and freedom. She was not "planted" there by the NAACP, or any other organization; she was planted there by her personal sense of dignity and self-respect. She was anchored to that seat by the accumulated indignities of days gone by and the boundless aspirations of generations yet unborn. She was a victim of both the forces of history and the forces of destiny. She had been tracked down by the zeitgeist--the spirit of the time. [Stride Toward Freedom, Harper and Row Publishers, San Francisco, 1985, pp. 43-44]

Thank God for the zeitgeist, or the "spirit of the age." When she lands in human affairs, things begin to happen and things begin to change! The zeitgeist is an incarnation moment when the divine intersects with humans, and often, "regular folk" become the catalyst for novelty. If there is a giant "justice timeline" on the walls of Heaven, you will see on it the account of Mrs. Rosa Parks.

And what of King? He was the "new kid in town" in the local ministerial association, and thereby was contacted by a clergy colleague officer in that ministerium and asked to intervene on Mrs. Parks' behalf. He did, and the rest--as they say--is history. He, too, was singled out by the zeitgeist for a leading role in the unfolding, shining moment of human justice and freedom.

Of course, the pursuit of racial justice is an unfinished agenda. Ferguson showed us this. A recent study released by the University of Pittsburgh and splashed across the front page of the Post-Gazette shows us this, too. (The study showed that the economic disparity between whites and persons of color is no better now than it was two decades ago, and this disparity is much larger in Allegheny County than is the national norm.) M.L. King once said that the most segregated hour of the week is Sunday morning at around 11:00AM. The church has not shown itself much of an agent of the zeitgeist in this matter.

So, we can wonder when the zeitgeist will strike next? Some--such as author Thomas Piketty--suggest that the huge, huge wealth/income gap between the "haves," the "have nots," and the middle class may trigger a visit of the Spirit of the Time. I think the zeitgeist may already be at work in the national movement for equality of rights for same-sex couples and LGBT persons. How about the growing problem with gun violence? The zeitgeist may be the only stroke of divine/human power that can take on the NRA, whose agenda is getting curiouser and curiouser (a spokesperson for the NRA recently said on a TV talk show that Americans should be permitted to own any weapon their government could use against them, including a cruise missile or a warhead!).

But this we know--for the zeitgeist to appear, a human being has to stand up--or sit down, in the case of Mrs. Parks--and say "enough." Who will be the one to say "enough" to continuing racial injustice? Who will be the one to say "enough" to the disparity of wealth? Who will be the one to say "enough" to the ecological destruction of Planet Earth? (A recent report by the Commonwealth organization said that we have already crossed 4 of 9 key danger thresholds in maintaining the viability of Earth to sustain human life.) Who will be the one to say "enough" in the church to using the Bible to bash gay people and make then "second class" Christians? (Yes, this is a controversial topic among persons of faith, but let's just see where the zeitgeist lands in this one!)

Who knows? Maybe 2015 will be "The Year of the Zeitgeist"! Blessings, Yinz.