CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
I received a nice note from the columnist, thanking me for my letter to the editor, correcting his mistake. He had written that it was Reinhold Niebuhr who composed what has become known as “The Serenity Prayer.” God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
That wasn’t the mistake. I thanked him for giving Niebuhr credit, for often folks act like that prayer just appeared out of nowhere. But he had gone on to say that Niebuhr had been a Nazi U-boat captain who had later become a theologian. Nothing could have been further from the truth. In his thank-you note to me, W. Lee Truman acknowledged that he must have gotten Niebuhr confused with someone else.
That was one of my several “correcting” letters over fifty years or so of “letters to the editor.” I even once corrected the Hebrew of a Bible professor! [And the editor noted under my letter that I was right.]
I know all this because I’ve been going through my file of clippings, and copies of those letters, that I wrote to a lot of different editors. It’s a thick file, but as I count them up, I see that I was not as prolific a letter writer as I remembered. Only two or three letters a year. Of course, I had a lot of other outlets for my ideas, as a preacher and speaker and writer, so Letters to the Editor was not a primary way for me to go.
Sometimes, though, it was the best way. A letter to the editor gets your idea to more people than a sermon does. And to different people.
I’m only slightly surprised that I never wrote about specific politicians. My concerns were not people but issues—apartheid, race relations, Viet Nam, the treatment of veterans, guns, booze, dope, capital punishment, abortion, Nicaragua, funding for education and children…
And approaches, especially hypocritical and illogical approaches and arguments. I never ranted in my letters. I learned that a bare statement of the facts was often the most powerful witness against injustice.
I did, however, occasionally use sarcasm, you know, taking the other side to its logical extreme so that it is shown to be hypocritical and illogical. Considering how often I think and say things to my friends sarcastically, I’m surprised it was so infrequent. My guess is that the letters that got printed were my second [or fifth] drafts.
I often wrote to commend the writer of an article, or to support a public figure who was under fire—a school principal or another clergy person. I sometimes wrote to disagree with a theological or social stance, stating complete reasons for my disagreement. Editors sometimes “edited letters for brevity” when they printed them, and I sometimes thought they changed the meaning—one time they changed a word and made it the exact opposite of what I was saying—and that required another letter.
Sometimes I wrote to the editor to question the journalistic ethics or even grammar of the publication and was surprised and pleased when editors would print those. Occasionally, though, they would say, “We stand by our story.” That’s a “weasel word.” I learned that “stand by our story” did not mean that they still believed their story was accurate; it just meant they didn’t intend to admit they were wrong.
Most of the letters went to the editors of religion or clergy periodicals or local newspapers. Some appeared in regional or national newspapers or magazines.
One letter to the editor of Sports Illustrated started a spirited—and printed—debate with Hall of Fame writer, Frank Deford, about whether girls should play five on five basketball instead of the traditional six on six, three on offense and three on defense, and never shall they cross the center line. You may be surprised that I was on the traditionalist side. It had nothing to do with thinking girls could not play the boys’ game well, or that their bodies couldn’t stand up to it. I felt that the 6 on 6 was a more wide-open, and thus more interesting, game, and also something girls could claim as their own, rather than just being “Johnnie come latelys” to the male version of something. Needless to say, Deford’s side won, just as Bob Hammel’s will—spoiler alert-- when the Designated Hitter becomes standard in The National League, too.
I’m glad I wrote to those editors. As I read those letters now, I doubt that they made much difference, but I am reminded that at least I tried to witness to what was right.
It’s like when Uncle Jesse, a hundred years ago, scored the winning goal for the wrong team in a basketball game. I asked him if it didn’t bother him when people teased him about it. “I always knew which side I was on,” he said.
That’s what Dr. Robert Eckley, President of IL Wesleyan U, said about me as he introduced me at a conference: “You never have any trouble knowing what side this man is on.” I liked that. I think he must have read my letters to the editor.
John Robert McFarland
“Language is the only
homeland.” Czeslaw Milosz
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