Neither Erasing nor Re-Writing History

My perceptions of history and my history education have developed and indeed changed over my seven decade lifetime. As I have traced those memories and observations, they seem to give me what I think is a constructive way to think about the current social and political turmoil in the US over how to understand this country’s history. I acknowledge at the outset that I am recalling distant personal history which is often suspect, and I am over simplifying to explore a parallelism that may or may not be valid.

My impression of how I learned US history in grade school in the 1950s was largely one of celebrating gigantic heroes whose wisdom and courage gave us an amazingly prosperous free country. With the turn of the decade when I was in junior high school I became aware of political and social controversies through the years, with a sense that out of those struggles right ultimately prevailed. Growing up in Northern California, as I became aware of the civil rights movement, I viewed it as the final steps toward justice in the century following the Civil War. In high school during the early 1960s, I realized that some of those controversies were bitter and the right didn’t always emerge easily or automatically. We were not frozen in some ideal completed condition but like those who had gone before us, we would always be in process. Progress was not a goal that could be achieved once and for all, but would be a perpetual struggle, not only with controversy but the path would not always be clear even among people of good intent.

Having studied and taught human development in my Christian education career, I am well aware that our personal growth is not a smooth curve with all areas of life at the same rates. Furthermore, in any group – family, congregation, community, or nation – different people are also at different stages. Sometimes conflicts arise because people at different stages view each other, events, and circumstances in dramatically contrasting ways.

My hypothesis is that a variety of forces are converging in this time that are compelling a serious and unsettling re-examination of the country’s history. Though the recent removal of monuments, both officially and unofficially, does not capture everything about this re-examination of history, it seems to have become a symbol of the tensions that it is evoking. Accusations of  “erasing” and “rewriting” history are hurled at those who might be considered to be iconoclasts. And they respond by asserting that we cannot learn to do better by celebrating the wrongs of the past. I know very well that people on both sides of these issues will object that their perspectives involve much more than such slogans. True enough, but the slogans do seem to identify the divides that this country is wrestling with right now.

At the risk of prompting protests about the validity of my proposed parallelism, I suggest that this time of re-examining the history of the country is somewhat like my transition from junior high school to high school history study. We discover that some of our revered heroes had flaws, some of those flaws deeply serious. We discover that disagreements between historic characters we have respected erupted into irreparable alienation and sometimes vicious attacks on each other. We anguish with disillusionment and grieve the loss of cherished ideals. We are confronted by events, laws, attitudes, and people we find objectionable today. As normal as this is in personal growth in many areas, most of us find it unsettling. For the country go through this growth process is traumatic and divisive.

This is highly challenging at a national level, especially for a country as large and diverse as the United States. Some people with “advanced” views of history feel a compulsion to “set everybody else straight.” Others with more idealized views of history feel their cherished heritage is under attack. While everyone will not arrive at a satisfactory consensus simultaneously, the society as a whole moves in herky jerky, uncomfortable increments toward a new, hopefully more mature self-understanding.

In 1992 I (with my wife Candy and our then 7 year old son Erik) had a sabbatical in Ontario, Canada. During that time, Canadians voted down the proposed Charlottetown Accord that would have dramatically restructured the relationships between the Provinces, the indigenous people, and the federal government. It was popular in Ontario but vigorously opposed in other provinces, especially in the west. This came on the heels of the collapse of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991. The Toronto Globe ran a front page editorial that among other things, advised the United States not to gloat as the common thread between the Canadian and Soviet experiences was a cautionary tale of just how difficult keeping a large, diverse nation together and united is. The current rethinking of US history is certainly a sign of that challenge.

I recognize that some may find the comparison offensive, but as the news in recent weeks has been filled with reporting the removal of monuments, I have often thought of how the ancient Hebrew prophets and the “good” kings of ancient Judah were often iconoclasts, tearing down and removing the revered altars and high places. To be sure, they were seeking to purify Judah of pagan idolatry. However, the high places were often dedicated to the worship of The Lord (In many English translations the use of large and small capital letters is a code that this is a translation of the Hebrew name for God YHWH). They worshipped the right God but with customs adopted from their pagan neighbors.

I find King Hezekiah’s destroying the Nehushtan in 2 Kings 18:4 particularly intriguing. This was the bronze serpent Moses had made at God’s instruction in Numbers 21:8-19 when the Israelites were attacked by poisonous serpents. Jesus even referred to it in John 3:14-15 as a pointer to his redemptive mission. But for whatever reason, in Hezekiah’s time, the people were making offerings to it, so it had become a snare to idolatry for them. In this case, something that was good, a sign of God’s redemptive grace that even Jesus thought of that way, had become something evil enough to justify the approval of Hezekiah’s destruction of it.

While not all monuments in the US or elsewhere have been erected with noble purposes, generally they are intended to celebrate revered people and events in history. As history unfolds and the past is re-examined, the attitudes about not only the monuments but the people and events they represent change. So just as Hezekiah destroyed something that Moses made in the past which Jesus would reference with approval, re-examination of history changed perceptions, justifying its destruction. Since those perceptions do not unfold evenly with shared consensus, how to respond to the monuments and the people and events they recognize is typically contentious.

I am sure some of my friends would like me to conclude with a clear position about monuments in US history and the people and events they celebrate. Then of course, some would cheer and others maybe even curse. I also don’t think you need to be a genius to surmise where my sympathies lie. However, much more to the point, while I have written to sort out some of my own thinking, I hope for those who have read all the way to the end, you will have been stimulated to do some significant re-thinking of your own.