During the Christmas holiday, I received a gift from Trip, my college roommate and best friend. The arrival was a newly minted copy of John Feinstein’s book, The Ancient Eight: College Football’s Ivy League and the Game They Play Today. The book is an enjoyable read. Its pages gave me the opportunity to reminisce about some high school recruiting visits I made in the 1960s to some of these historic Ivy League campuses. Dartmouth was a college of keen interest. It was established in 1769---the nineth and last institute of higher learning founded under colonial rule, and interestingly, its motto is “Vox clamantis in deserto,” A Voice Cries Out In the Wilderness. (Feinstein, p.57) The motto reflects Dartmouth’s original purpose, that of training missionaries in the wilderness of New Hampshire, and drew upon the powerful poetry of Isaiah:
3 A voice cries out:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
5 Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
(Isaiah 40: 3-8; NRSV)
Later, these same words would be cited by the gospel authors, Matthew and Luke, in introducing the figure of John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin and herald, suggesting that crying out from the wilderness is both a metaphorical and existential experience.
I admit to being overwhelmed by today’s wilderness. Robert Reich has opined that the Trump administration has been ‘flooding the zone’ with so many outrageous (and often illegal) initiatives that many people (me included) are overwhelmed, demoralized, and just plain freaked out. (2/2/2025) In addition, Steve Bannon, in an interview with Ezra Klein, put a name to the strategy- ‘muzzle velocity’:
'If you want to understand the first few weeks of the second Trump administration, you should listen to what Steve Bannon told PBS’s “Frontline” in 2019:
Steve Bannon: The opposition party is the media. And the media can only, because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time. …
All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity. (Don't Believe Him by Ezra Klein, NYT, 2/2/2025)
Indeed, the strategy of ‘muzzle velocity’ has created today’s wilderness, with its dense forest of frustration, fear and the threat of fires started by this abhorrent administration. Chaos and corruption, campaigns of cruel freezes of foreign and humanitarian aid programs and vengeful purges and let us not forget those punitive and economically unsound tariffs! Today’s wilderness has a deep valley of grief caused by the horrific and deadly collision of a passenger jet liner with an army Blackhawk helicopter over the icy waters near the Ronald Reagan Airport in Washington, D.C., and the nation has no Consoler-in-Chief, so the grief feels personal and paralyzing. The response of the government via Trump, Duffy, Hegseth, and Vance has been predictably bankrupt of compassion and empathy while blatantly political and racially bigoted. They blamed Biden, Obama and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) for the tragedy! Moreover, today’s wilderness is marked by the uneven ground and rough places created by one retributive executive action after another such as illegally freezing funds from those most vulnerable and in need. The nation is off-balance and alarmingly unsure of itself. How did Reich say it? Overwhelmed, demoralized, and just plain freaked out!
A couple of days ago, a headline from the New York Times caught my attention:
Powerless, Democrats Debate Just How Deep in the Wilderness They Are
Upon reading it, I immediately questioned similarly: just how deep in the wilderness are you and I, people of faith and if we are to cry out, what must our message be? My first thought is that ours must be the voices that have the courage to cry out against this wilderness of mean spiritedness, immorality, and malfeasance. Ours must be the voices that demand accountability, and lifts and shows a new way to do things. It is clearly an existential moment, one that requires extraordinary sacrifice and service from people of faith but promises a high reward. I remember a quote by Nicholas Kristof, which was written years ago in an article narrating observations from Africa titled: Where Faith Thrives. (2005) It is still a source of encouragement for this time and place:
So, where faith is easy, it is fading; where it is challenged, it thrives.
"When people are in difficulties, they want to cling to something," said the Rev. Johnson Makoti, a Pentecostal minister in Zimbabwe who drives a car plastered with Jesus bumper stickers. "The only solution people here can believe in is Jesus Christ."
If that is true, and it is, then we are living paradoxically in a time of great adversity and opportunity. On the one hand, all recent studies and polls like a new report from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) claim; The importance of religion in the lives of Americans is on the decline. That statement is backed by sobering data! On the other hand, however, widespread encouragement is offered from multiple sources that not only pose analyses but prescriptions for making things better. So, the question before us is: How are we to go about seizing this opportunity?
In my last blog, I referred to the Reverend Dr. Scott Black Johnston, senior pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. He will be delivering this week a series of lectures/sermons at Yale Divinity School under the title: Fight Like Jesus. Regarding the challenge before us, he writes:
To retain or regain vitality, though, mainline churches will need to move beyond habits of merely criticizing currently dominant expressions of cultural Christianity or Christian nationalism. It’s time to speak up positively about what a more authentic Christian faith and practice should look like.
Back on March 28, 2024, I filed a David Brooks quote from a New York Times article, titled The Great Struggle for Liberalism. The quote reads:
The greatest challenge remains to infuse that journey with moral meaning, to imbue it with the sense of pride and purpose that religion once did — to fill that hole in the heart.
The wilderness from which we cry out confirms that there is a hole in the heart of America, a consequence of the failure of religion in general and Christianity specifically. Johnston is correct in suggesting that it is time, long past due, for us to speak up positively and more authentically and most important of all, more persuasively about the only One we can believe in- Jesus Christ. He is the One who can fill the hole in America’s heart, and we are called to be His disciples who will help Him do it.
One of several favorite bible passages comes from John, Chapter 6. It is an extraordinary passage of scripture, including such beloved stories as the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus walking on water, his long discussion about being the bread of heaven and the giver of eternal life. There is much to take in; so, it should not be surprising that many grumbled and even more turned around and headed back home. Here is how John tells the story:
66 Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. 67 So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”[a] (John 6:66-69, NRSVU)
Confronted by the daunting challenges of today’s wilderness, Jesus might be asking each of us: “Do you also wish to go away? Afraid? Silent? Without hope? Freaked-out? And with Peter, perhaps we might answer plaintively: “Lord, to whom can we go? You are the only One and your words, your teachings and your Way is the only way. Challenged, faith thrives!
“Vox clamantis in deserto” With the same Christian zeal of those missionaries at Dartmouth College, let our voices cry in today’s wilderness, inviting all into our pursuit of creating an America whose heart is filled with Jesus and his Call to a positive, authentic life of faith.