Since hearing the sad news of Julian Bond’s death on August 15, I’ve been trying to remember the first time I ever learned his name. He has been one of my heroes for as long as I can remember.
I’m pretty sure it was in 1976, when, as a 10-year-old, I started my fascination with politics. While many boys were busy collecting baseball cards, I was preoccupied with memorizing political resumes and studying legislators’ policy positions. I can vividly remember sitting at the kitchen table with my mother, writing down and working to commit to memory all the significant political players. I’m pretty sure Julian Bond was on one of those lists.
Bond was a member of the Georgia State Senate at the time, 
but his prominence extended far beyond the Georgia state line. His reputation as a cool, yet fierce, force for equality had already been well established. During the 1960s, he was one of the key organizers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and, in the early 1970s, he co-founded the Southern Poverty Law Center.
He was both protestor and strategist – “Good things don’t come to those who wait. They come to those who agitate!” – and he was convincingly brilliant in front of a television camera, where he could be both quick-witted and sharp-tongued in a single sentence: “Violence is black children going to school for 12 years and receiving six years’ worth of education.” Perhaps this is why he was invited once to host Saturday Night Live in 1977.
Bond’s debonair appearance and warm speaking voice were of movie-star quality, but it was his consistent, unwavering commitment to equality and justice for all people that spoke deeply to me. I can remember setting my VCR on numerous occasions, when he was scheduled to make a Sunday morning interview appearance.
“The humanity of all Americans is diminished when any group is denied rights granted to others,” he would say. Not surprising, then, that Julian Bond strongly advocated for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons. As chair of the National NAACP, he was one of the most vocal supporters of marriage equality whenever and wherever the scapegoating of LGBT relationships became fear-mongering fodder for votes at election time.
“It’s not enough to defend civil rights, you also have to extend civil rights,” Bond said, in opposing anti-gay ballot initiatives in multiple states. “The civil rights movement didn’t begin in Montgomery and it didn’t end in the 1960s. It continues on to this very minute.”
As a United Church of Christ minister, I take great pride in knowing that Julian Bond’s grandfather, the Rev. Dr. James A. Bond, born a slave, was educated at UCC-related Berea and Oberlin colleges and became a professor at UCC-related Fisk University in Nashville. Eventually, in 1917, James Bond became pastor of Rush Memorial Congregational Church in Atlanta, a historic UCC justice congregation that one day would provide grandson Julian a meeting place for his then-fledgling SNCC movement.
The inclusive ethic and justice values of the UCC surely coursed through Julian Bond’s veins. Enough so that, on June 29, just weeks before his death, Julian Bond tweeted out these words, “United Church of Christ calls for Washington Redskins to change name,” moments after the UCC General Synod voted overwhelmingly to do so.
“My rights are not diluted when my neighbor enjoys protection from discrimination,” Bond once said. “He or she becomes my ally in defending the rights we all share.”
Rest in power, and in peace, dear ally.
This post first appeared in the United Church of Christ’s weekly Witness for Justice op-ed column on August 20, 2015.
“It’s not only a political statement; it’s a theological one. It underscores the best of who hope to be as a more just, compassionate, inclusive and equitable people. It’s about widening our gaze so that the joys and concerns of neighbors — or more importantly, strangers — become our own.”
At the first National Woman’s Suffrage Convention held in 1869 in Washington, D.C., there was heated debate over the heart and soul of the emerging women’s movement. Would it be a campaign for women’s suffrage only? Or would it support universal voting rights for both men and women, black and white?
At the end of the Civil War, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony — arguably the founders of the U.S. women’s movement — refused to support black male suffrage exclusively. Instead, they insisted that black women, as well as white, had an inalienable right to the vote, along with their male counterparts. In her newspaper “Revolution,” Stanton wrote an editorial column about the controversy. “When we contrast the condition of the most fortunate women at the north with the living death colored men endure everywhere, there seems to be a selfishness in our present position,” she wrote. “But remember we speak not for ourselves alone, but for all womankind, in poverty, ignorance and hopeless dependence, for the women of this oppressed race too, who in slavery have known a depth of misery and degradation that no man can ever appreciate.”
“Not for ourselves alone.” It did not take long for Stanton’s words to become a mantra for those who insisted on “both/and” rather than “either/or.” Almost 100 years later, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would echo Stanton’s sentiment, saying he dreamed “of a nation where all our gifts and resources are not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity.” Likewise, centuries earlier, the Apostle Paul said it his own way, “How can the head say to the foot, ‘I have no need of you?'”
“Never ourselves alone.” It’s not only a political statement; it’s a theological one. It underscores the best of who hope to be as a more just, compassionate, inclusive and equitable people. It’s about widening our gaze so that the joys and concerns of our neighbors — or more importantly strangers — become our own.
When I was named editor of United Church News back in 2003, I considered a thousand possible titles for my new column. But my mind eventually fixed on Stanton’s editorial catch phrase of generations ago. How right she was: No movement for real progress, for real equality, can ill-afford the defeating luxury of self-interest only.
In starting this new blog 12 years later, I decided the name, the title, still fit me. In my activism and in my ministry, almost everything I do, write, advocate, or preach still fits well under this three-word heading: Never ourselves alone. Such an affirmation includes both pastoral and prophetic dimensions. Compassion and challenge are always the essential ingredients in not only good church, but in the important and necessary journey toward building a more just and loving world.
I was 10 years old when our family friend, Bill McClure, ran for Circuit Court Clerk in Henderson, Ky., and I was tapped to be the campaign’s youth chair for the Highlander Acres precinct. Obviously, it was a highly coveted political appointment, and I took my position quite seriously, knocking on more than 200 doors, explaining why my piano teacher’s husband, Mr. McClure, would be far better at issuing state drivers licenses than the incumbent.
Mr. McClure didn’t win that election — my first foray into politics — and I can vividly remember sobbing at the kitchen table, listening to the election returns, when the reality of that painful loss sunk in. (For the record, he carried my precinct by a sizeable margin.)
I went on to work on many campaigns as a young person, including Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential bid, headed statewide by another close family friend. President Carter — one of my heroes — visited Henderson during that campaign, and returned again while in office, and I got to meet him.
Both before and after I was old enough to vote, I volunteered for gubernatorial and congressional candidates, and even led the Young Democrats at the University of Kentucky during Walter Mondale’s not-so-stellar run for the presidency. That November was a double whammy for me, because I already had been selected to work the following summer in the Capitol Hill office of U.S. Senator Walter D. Huddleston, but that opportunity never materialized, because that’s the same year that Huddleston lost his seat to current-Senator Mitch McConnell. (I had to settle for an internship with a smarmy Representative, one who eventually went to prison during the House Banking Scandal of the early 1990s. But that’s another story.)
Suffice it to say, I learned early on that elections have consequences. But far more important than any candidate’s win or loss, or my personal investment in it, is the impact that elections have on the policies and programs that public officials oversee, initiate, strengthen or dismantle. Will opportunity extend to more people? Will the poor get poorer? Will all children have access to quality education? People’s lives are impacted, literally, by the voting booth, where we make important, shared decisions — not only about who serves, but the direction they will take us.
In my office hangs one of my favorite possessions — a framed poster-portrait taken in 1890 in Omaha Nebraska of about 30 leaders of the U.S. women’s suffrage movement. Included in the group photo are legendary activists Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and even the Rev. Antoinette Brown, the first woman ordained into Christian ministry.
I often find myself staring into their wise eyes, pondering the perseverance of their 70-year fight to secure women the right to vote, a campaign most of them never lived long enough to see realized personally. I similarly marvel at the determination of African-American civil rights leaders who fought for these same rights and against all efforts to disenfranchise their full participation.
Their labors for equality are a sacred story for me. They make me far better than a “proud American.” They, instead, ground me as a committed, engaged Christian working for a better world. Prayerfully, I always vote, because it is a faithful, loving response to God and for my neighbor in need.
“The work of justice is to feel the immensity of the world’s pain in its varied, yet often hidden, forms. To imitate God’s deep and urgent love for those tender places. To understand the vulnerability of the undocumented immigrant, jobless parent, or bullied child. To empathize with the sick and uninsured and to cast our votes with them in mind.”
Remembering 9/11 on the tenth anniversary.
It was fall 2004, around the third anniversary of September 11, 2001, that I became obsessed with The New York Times’ online “portraits of grief” that capsulated the lives of each of the persons who died that terrible day.
Most people nationwide were captivated by the poignant profiles soon after 9/11, but it took me years to muster the fortitude to tackle them by the thousands. The emotional scabs of 9/11 did not heal easily. Looking back, I now view my delayed yet careful reading of each victim’s story as a sign of my own grief process at work.
It was there I met people like Eddie Calderon, 43, a security guard at the trade center for 22 years. His niece remembered him as an entertainer, how much he loved to dance. He was last seen running toward the north tower after guiding dozens of workers to safety.
I learned about Douglas Gurian, 38, who found pleasure in simple things. Each summer when he took his family to Fire Island, he would take his shoes off before they reached the shore and not put them on again for days. On the morning of the attacks, he was at Windows on the World, attending a technology conference.
I read about Lisa and Samantha Egan, two sisters aged 31 and 24, who worked steps away from one another at Cantor Fitzgerald. Their father took some comfort knowing they had one another during those frightening moments. “My girls,” he said, “were outgoing, bright, articulate, giving, loving, caring. Not just my flesh and blood.”
After 9/11, we all found ourselves imagining the horrors of that day through the victims’ lived experiences, the panic and trauma they endured and the heavy weight of each family’s loss. Augmented by the violence and death resulting from the 9/11tinged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the collective well of grief seems incomprehensible.
I’m not a big believer in “atonement theology,” a perspective that emphasizes Jesus’ substitutionary role, that he somehow “took my place” through the crucifixion. Yet I do believe in a God that loves the world with a particular concern for those who suffer, a God who literally feels our pain and, in turn, mediates grace and healing.
The work of justice is to do the same — to feel the immensity of the world’s pain in its varied, yet often hidden, forms. To imitate God’s deep and urgent love for those tender places. To understand the vulnerability of the undocumented immigrant, jobless parent, or bullied child. To empathize with the sick and uninsured and to cast our votes with them in mind. To respond financially to the desperate needs of famine-stricken Somalis — people we will never meet — even as we make donations to address concerns much closer to home.
The enormity of the tragedy we call 9/11 rattled and changed us, as well it should. But other enormous events — public and personal, social and systemic, local and global — also beg for our attention. The lingering and persistent challenge of 9/11 is whether we have the capacity to love that fully, that completely.
J. Bennett Guess 