Brian’s Reflection: Monday, December 10, 2007


The good we secure for ourselves is precarious
and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and
incorporated into our common life.

- Jane Addams, social worker, internationalist,
first American woman winner of the Nobel
Peace Prize, on this day in 1931


I would bet that you have never heard of Jane Addams. She was born in 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois, to well-to-do parents. With a friend, she opened a settlement house in Chicago, to provide a center for a higher civic and social life, “to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago”. She was opposed to the entrance of the USA into WWI, and for her beliefs was kicked out of the Daughters of the American Revolution - tsk tsk! If you would like to know more, see http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1931/addams-bio.html

Jesus is recorded to have said, “What you do to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you do to me”. I take this to mean what Addams said. I take Jesus to be saying that He represents ALL people. And that in order to be faithful to respecting Him – and therefore God - you must make sure that whatever “good” is secured is secured for all. Because “all” are “children of God”, for whom God cares equally.

Many Americans who call themselves Christians say that America is a “Christian nation”. If so, why is it that they aren’t supporting the rights of women to make the same money as men for the same jobs? Why is it that they are not supporting the right of American Gayfolk to the same equal legal rights under the legal contract called marriage? Do they fail to see that in not doing so, they are insulting Jesus? And this would certainly be more serious that naming your teddy-bear Jesus, yes?

Christian folk: if in civil life you think you deserve something, then everyone deserves it. Period.

Thank you, Jane Addams.

Brian+