Guest Blogger: +Fitz Allison

One of the most beloved men in the church today, Bishop FitzSimons Allison was born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina. He attended the University of the South and, after having his studies briefly interrupted by service in the United States Army during World War II, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949. He then studied at Virginia Theological Seminary, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1952. He was ordained a deacon in June 1952 and a priest in May 1953. Allison later studied at Oxford University and received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1956. He then taught church history at the School of Theology at the University of the South and at Virginia Theological Seminary.

+Fitz served as rector of Grace Episcopal Church in New York City before being elected as the twelfth Episcopal Bishop of South Carolina. +Fitz retired in 1990 but has continued preaching speaking, and writing since his retirement.  He sent me the below a few weeks ago in response to my request for a guest blog (information on “Carolina Day” may be found here).

“CAROLINA DAY: JUNE 28, 2010″

The dedication of the new gravestone for Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (1746-1825) is a crucially important opportunity for us today as we face serious internal as well as external threats to our society, culture, nation, and Western civilization itself.

Pinckney was one of South Carolina’s representatives at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, a prominent leader during and after the Revolution, a trusted friend of George Washington in war and in the early years of this country, and an outstanding military figure who participated in the successful defeat of the British in 1776 at Sullivan’s Island. He fought with Washington at Brandywine and Germantown, saw action in Florida and Savannah and was taken prisoner when Charleston surrendered in 1780. After the war he served his country as minister to France where he refused the request for a bribe with his famous reply: “Millions for defense. Not one cent for tribute.”

Courage and candor were characteristic of him from boyhood through his adult life.  Courage was clearly demonstrated when he opposed the decision to surrender Charleston to the British in spite of the prospects of defeat and death.  Also, it was demonstrated when, in spite of great provocation and offers of reward, he refused while in prison to go over to the side of the British. Too few historians have bothered to delve into the cause of his courage, character and selflessness. What produced such qualities in this man?

We need look no further than the influence of his father, a deeply committed Christian. Charles Pinckney (d 1758) wrote in his will that his son “be virtuously, religiously, and liberally brought up so that he will employ all his future abilities in the service of God and his country.” One illustration of his piety is his establishing an endowment at St. Philip’s Church for two special sermons a year, with special attention to Psalm 145: “I will extol thee my God and King.” Pinckney took his sons to England and carefully chose tutors and then schools for them. They were trained at Westminster School, Christ Church, Oxford, and at Middle Temple.

Following the War Charles Cotesworth Pinckney founded the Charleston Bible Society in 1810 and served as its president for fifteen years. This still functioning ecumenical society made bibles available to serve as a foundation for faith and morals.

Pinckney’s character and selfless leadership is markedly absent in our own times. Rarely in our history has this country been so bereft of such leadership.  We are living at a time when the old jokes about the end of Western civilization are no longer amusing, a time when our universities are in danger of losing their confidence in truth itself, when solvency of the strongest economy in the world is in jeopardy through human greed, when churches are in danger of becoming irrelevant in their accommodation to this increasingly decadent culture, when neither of our political parties seems able to show fiscal integrity, legislative wisdom, or moral leadership, when the very institution of marriage and family, without which no culture can long prevail, are in danger of disintegrating; it is at just such times that we need to recover what Charles Cotesworth Pinckney had and we are losing: a sense of responsibility and its corollary, capacity for guilt. The fact that the very mention of the word, “guilt,” sounds such a discordant note in our ears is evidence that we, too, have had our Christian faith obscured by the secular loss of transcendent forgiveness. The religion of these times is secularism.  It is neither self-evident nor scientific.  Our culture is choosing to replace Christian faith with trust in human nature and human history. Secularism is a faith and trust that there is no life beyond the grave. Reinhold Niebuhr defined it as: “This world is all there is ism.”

The pathology that results from this secular trust is the loss of transcendent and ultimate accountability and forgiveness. Only mutual  human acceptance is left as a mask for real forgiveness.  With the loss of forgiveness guilt becomes unbearable, its meaning reduced to something merely neurotic that must be denied. All guilt is reduced to neurotic guilt and false guilt. But there is also true and objective guilt that is indispensible for individuals and for society. Our times lack any appreciation of its positive function. The capacity for guilt is both an essence of personal identity and integrity, and an indispensible pillar and foundation of civilization.

The English jurist, Lord Moulton, taught us that: “The measure of a civilization is the degree of obedience to the unenforceable.”  What behavior can be counted on when no one is looking? If there is no life after death, no final accountability, no ultimate justice or mercy, the only meaningful law left is “Don’t get caught.”  There are never enough police to go around.  If there were, who would police the police? To the extent that a people obey what is largely unenforceable, to that extent one can trust banks, lawyers, clergy, police, physicians, government, and civil servants who keep our society running. When such trust is largely justified one is a most fortunate citizen of a great civilization. But this is what we are losing. It is to this very situation that the example of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney speaks to us today.

What is it that enables us to obey the unenforceable?  It is human responsibility and its corollary, the capacity for guilt. General Pinckney decided not to change sides when pressed by his captors with tempting promises where a seeker of his own happiness and his own interest might easily have succumbed. Pinckney adhered to his principles to which he held himself responsible and would have considered himself guilty had he disobeyed those principles. Every adherence to principle naturally carries with it the possibility of falling short, of disobedience and resulting guilt.  And without divine forgiveness guilt becomes unbearable.

Sigmund Freud was partly right. At the end of his book Civilization and its Discontents he writes that guilt is indispensible to a high civilization but guilt makes people so unhappy that a backlash will naturally occur to liberate its members from the rigor of obedience and duty of a high civilization to an easier permissiveness and remission that alleviates the burden of guilt. But this very permissiveness, characteristic of our times, lowers all standards. Without the capacity for true guilt civilization will crumble.  There will be no responsibility for social justice, no accountability for fairness, no protection from crime, no rigor in education law or medicine, no trust in institutions.  In short, without accountability and consequent guilt, quality civilization is impossible. Also, for individuals without accountability and consequent guilt there will be no growth, no humility, no realization of one’s potential and no fullness of humanity.

Where Freud was wrong is that he chose to discard his Judaic forgiving Deity as a mere illusion. He was left with his guilt but without any forgiveness and mercy. Guilt without forgiveness is unendurable.  Demands of a high civilization produce more guilt and unhappiness than we can bear. So, bereft of a gracious God, we lower the demands in order to lower the guilt, with disastrous results for civilization.

Aldous Huxley is a good example of this dilemma. He tried to persuade us all to resolve the dis – ease within us by taking the drug, mescaline. Why would one of the most famous and respected scholars of his generation urge us to take drugs?  It was accurately said of him that he had a Protestant conscience without a Protestant God. That is a terribly painful dilemma. But instead of returning to his Protestant God he turned to drugs to ease the restlessness. St. Augustine has taught us that “our hearts are restless and will always be until they find their rest in thee.” When there is no “thee,” no forgiving God, our hearts will naturally turn to drugs or the like.

Huxley is an icon of our secular age that turns to drugs rather than God. Freud had a Judaic conscience but no Judaic God. Freud in his genius knew that guilt in the populace was indispensable to a high civilization but could only see it as an unhappy condition. Having chosen not to trust his Judaic God  he was bereft of the hope for forgiveness. Thus guilt, although indispensable, becomes unendurable and must be forfeited even if it means eroding civilization.

To summarize, losing the capacity for guilt is eroding our civilization.  Guilt is the personal discrepancy between what we are and what we are to be. Without guilt we lose the promise of our purpose and identity as expressed in the text: “Eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor the heart of man conceived of the glory that God has prepared for those who love him.” (I Cor. 2:9)

Guilt is also a very pillar of civilization.  The measure of a civilization is its degree of obedience to the unenforceable. If responsibilities are unenforceable, a conscience capable of guilt is the only hope for a high civilization and this guilt is only endurable with the knowledge that God is not only just but forgiving. A culture that relinquishes its belief in God is impotent to save its civilization.

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney is a good and timely example and much needed inspiration for us. Unlike Aldous Huxley, who had a Protestant conscience and no Protestant God, and Sigmund Freud, who had a Judaic conscience and no Judaic God, Pinckney had a Christian conscience and a Christian God. This gave him the courage, in the face of risk, to live responsibly, acting on the highest principles he had been taught. He knew that he faced an ultimate accountability and, even if wrong, or if he failed, he knew that he had a gracious God of divine forgiveness and mercy.  The faith of his father, Charles, molded and sustained him. It can do so for us.

Let us pray for this faith, which was demonstrated in the life of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney,  and which is essential not only to our country and our civilization but to each of us.