SKANAAAL
Vel. 1, No. 5
December , 1962
"Skandalon", a bi-weekly journal
of news and opinion published by
Campus Christian Council, invites
articles, essays, poems, drawings
on political, academic and theo-
logical questions, Contributions
can be left at the Student Center,
166 Central Avenue, or with Linda
Van Buren or Alan Minarcik,
BEYOND CONTENTICN, WHAT?
Dr. Frances L. Colby
Dictionary definitions of blas-
phemy and pornography are easily come bye
What no such definition will precisely
fix is their applicability to specific
materials, for that clearly rests with
the susceptibilities of the reader.
Hence sincerely vehement charges represent
primarily the "fact" of euthentic response
rather than primarily a "fact" inherent
in the stimulus, To the pure all things
are pure; to the corrupt the most
innocuous data prove titillating; the
blasé (genuine or affected) may profess
indifference to all moral distinctions,
or the rigorously clinical may find them
meaningless.
Most of us, however, feel our position
to be somewhere well within such extreme
boundary points. We are, we say, "normal";
and we appeal, properly enough but less,
humbly than we might, to "norms"
tion by which we avoid recognizing how
broad is the scope of normalcy and how
subjective is our concern to defend our
own imprecise and perhaps variable stand
within that range.
A spokesman feels offended (and also,
I am confident, feels a protective re-
sponsibility for others whom the offense
wounds) and leaps to combat with flat
charges. The unnamed accused, readily
deduced by observers, identify themselves
and attract defenders by the hurt anger
of their equally flat denials, Eecle-
siastical and legal pronouncements are
appealed to in support of increasingly
entrenched positions. Some voices risk
stridency as they attempt to gain a hear-
ing for a "fair" or "balanced" comment,
of defini-
whelly commendable in itself, » But hurt
deepens as words multiply, and human
feelings get bludgeoned with "issues"
which, ironically, owe their initial
relevance to a tender respect for human-
ity, its reverences, its decent reticenses ©
and its free integrity. And nowhere
sounds the word of love or reconciliation,
In this last statement must be the
chief reason why almost the only publi-
eation as yet unimplicated and silent
should choose to speak, Not that what
I have called "the word of level! is easy
to articulate or certain to be understood.
Unlike the word of fairness, which aspire:
to detachment, the word of love accepts
involvement, Hereby Skandalon enters
into the implications of its name--the
scandaleus impropriety of an involved God
who so loved the world, the whole incon-
gruous devoted, profane, fastidious,
ebscene, tender, brutal, frightened,
wounded and wounding mess of it (loved .
it--not got a kick out of it, but cared
about it) that He underwent the full
ordeal of human life and death for it.
That the Infinite and Eternal should be-
have like this was, and is, the incredible
absurdity, the "skandalon,"
The person whe believes all this finds
himself set free and committed in several |
directions. He is freed from worried
protectiveness of sq catholicly involved
a God; freed from fear of the world God
has entered and overcome by love. He is
committed altogether to the God who loves
\with the certain concomitant that he
must suffer when God is degraded, by
whomever in whatever manner--Hollywood
sentimentality, partisan appropriation,
callow flippancy); and finally committed
to loving what God has loved with the
same total involvement, suffering with
the offended and bearing the guilt of
the offender, accepting in God's name
the whole human condition, including its
disposition to exploit itself and to deny
God.
It is easier, of course, to affirm
such a creed than to initiate Utopia by
some spectacular local application of ite
But to enunciate it at this juncture may -
have value, and what some of Skandalon's
(continued on page 2
"AMERICANISM, PROPERLY DEFINED"
by Jan Dyckman
In any discussion of a distinct
American culture, one point must be re-
cognized: the American culture is made
.up.of various and diverse patterns: of
thinking and living. America is plu-
ralistic and has been pluralistic from
its beginning, 3
The main reason that pluralism has
taken such a hold on America is that a
great amount of freedom is allowed, I
mean freedom and not license, for license
is defined and limited by law. Freedom,
as I would like to use it, is the will
to assume responsibility for oneself.
The specifications of our freedom
are most explicitly stated in the Bill
of Rights. The main freedoms are those
of speech, the press, and religion.
These should need no comment, but today
many so-called "democratic Americans"
have perverted them, These people say
that you-may speak freely as long as you
state only their views and say only
"good" things about America. They say
that you may write freely as long as what
gets published and circulated conforms
to their standards both in content and
expression. They say that you may have
freedom of conscience as long as you
belong to an organized Christian reli-
gion. Also, in all of these, Congress,
for such is the wording of the first
amendment, must aid and protect their
ideas and not allow them to be openly
attacked, The grossness of the perver-
sion of freedom these "Americans"
suggest is clearly seen when the effects
of freedom and its offspring, pluralism,
are traced through the formation of
America and its culture.
America has taken much from many.
That is, there was no distinct American
culture, as we know it, prior to the
immigration and settlement of our
country. Other cultures contributed
what they had, both things and ideas, to
help form the present American culture,
"Americanism" is a mixture of many "isms"
and so is almost impossible to describe
completely. Therefore, nothing is
"foreign" to Americanism, but only "new"
and classified under "to-be-examined,."
After examination, the good is incor-
porated, and the bad, we hope, is
rejected, But to give an "ism" a just
hearing, we must have unperverted free-
dom, one form of which is academic
freedom or the freedom to examine all
sides, both pro and con, 6f any issue. .
Only then may we choose, democratically, ..
what to accept and what not to accepte
America and Americanism, then, cannot
overlook their pluralism, and in accep-
ting it, must remain open’ in-all facets
of life, To close ourselves now to-new
"isms" would be to reject our heritage
and to lose the benefits of new ideas.
Without freedom for all, America has
surrendered her "Americanism,"
IJRPHE RHEE ERR HHE EEE ECE E HEB CREE RHEE
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
Wed,, Bec, 5, 12 noon: Advent Chapel
Service, the Unitarian Church.
Wed., Dec. 12, 12 noon: Advent Chapel
Service according to usage of Episcopal
Church for Morning Prayer,
FEHB HEHE HIRE BRERERATHHHEEGHGHAHE:
BEYOND CONTENTION, WHAT? (continued)
readers may hope to do can surely have far
more, Without fanfare, but pervasively,
with humility, honesty, and the patient
sensitivity called love, they may begin
to create a community of acceptance where
cliques dissolve and chips fall from
shoulders, where the uncertain may relax
from the compulsion to prove something,
those who wince through confusing devotion
with convention may find a healing courage,
and the creative innovator may receive not
coterie applause for his every experiment
but full acceptance of himself. Such a
community comes to know and cherish its
own, but not by striving for group identity
It is open, invisible, therefore certain to
be ignored by many, denied or dismissed
by some, misunderstood, even attacked, by
others, But like yeast, its own identity
lost in the mass that contains it, it does
what only it can do.
TEBE HG HSIEH EBERT THHHHHHB RHR BEE
Readers will be happy to know
that the French people have fol-
lowed Ross Dunn's advice (see
Skandalon, Nove 19) and have ini-
ated a five-year period of
political stability through their
recent elections, Hence the
fears of political instability
that Ross expressed appear to be
negated by the new-found politi-
cal sense of the French people.
Vive la France}
TRIBUTE TO A POET
by Guy McBride
One of America's most popular poets, _
E. E. Cummings, died last September, There
have been a wide variety of discussions
and dissertations as to his style and
philosophy. Critics have referred to him
as an anachronism, an anti-culturist, and,
more kindly, a romanticist. His verse,
more fickle than a woman's moods, has been
alternately labelled iconoclastic and
traditionalist in nature. Cummings denied
the significance of the intelligible, and
he glorified a11 that he could not under-' -
stand. Perhaps for this reason love was
his diety. He invariably protested through
not-so-gentle satire against what he con-
sidered the over-encroachment of society
upon the rights of the individual. Yet,
despite his incorrigible sentimentality
and the unpopularity of his philosophy
among the "intellectuals" of our day,
Cummings was loved by the people, both fot
the beauty of his poetry and for the
uniqueness of his sincerety in our rather
superficial world of phonies, imitators,
and status-seekers. Perhaps there is more
to be gained from Cummings! poetry than
the sheer pleasure of reading his verse,
‘and perhaps the world has experienced a
far greater loss than it suspects.
The following poem, printed here in
his memory, is sufficient justification
for the accolades Cummings has received,
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
b eathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
(Copyright, 1950, by E. E. Cummings,
Reprinted from POEMS 1923-195) by E. E.
Cummings by permission of Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.)
HRA HHH KHH HRA EHH
RECONCILIATION AND REALITY
by Kathy Glass
(This is the second part of the article
which appeared in the November 5 issue
of Skandalon. )
Although our planned activities included
Bible-study three times a week, we found
.ourselves forming a "theology on the
streets", Terms we've heard all our
lives began to take on new meaning as we
applied them to things we saw happening
around us. We saw the Bible as a record
of man's alienaticn from God and from
man, and we saw the life and death of
Jesus Christ as the revelation that
reconciliation has been acheived and tht
men are called to express that reconcilia-
tion in their dealings with other men.
This made possible a kind of acceptance
which had never been possible before and
freed us tremendously from some of our
earlier notions as to how a Christian
should live. We began to develop what
we called a "theology of presence"--we
felt that our very being in the situation
we were in was expressing reconciliation,
without our being forced to talk to people
about it all the time.
Since our emphasis had been on communi-
cation, and this communication had become
more meaningful in light of our theology
of presence, we centered our evaluation
around what we felt we had communicated
to peoole and what they had communicated
to us, Certainly, some of the things we
had communicated to people were made
pretty clear to us. We had opened a
(continued on page h)
RECONCILIATION AND REALITY (cont. )
place for teenagers, as well as spending
a great deal of time just walking around
meeting people. The teenagers with whom
we spent our time were mainly kids who |
didn't participate in the activities of
“the social agencies--since they're usually
kicked out.
time, we communicated naiveté to the owner
of the liquor store next to "The Hole in
the Wall" (the name of our place, coined
by one of our earliest acquaintances as we
stood looking around the two barren rooms,
wondering what to call it). He tried, but
didn't succeed in, convincing us that the
kids we were dealing with were a bunch of
animals who should be kept on a leash. We
communicated an unrealistic attitude toward
sex to our young friends, whom we told that
the girls slept on the third floor and the
boys slept on the second floor of the
former community center which served as
our residence (one boy's comment was
typical = "Yeah, but you got stairs, don't
you?")
to the teenagers in The Hole in the Wall
when we continued to open night after
night, in spite of stolen pop, records,
wallets, and record players, harassment
by the police, and a table smashed by one
of ‘our kids' who had come under the
influence of cheap wine. We communicated
recklessness to our "respectable" neigh-
bors because we had no rules barring boys. '
with liquor on their breath, and even per-
mitted a young "wino" to be in the place.
We communicated a lack of responsibility
to another grouo of college students in
thé area who didn't understand our theo-
logy of presence and constantly accused
us of being ashamed to be associated with
the churches ecause we did not choose to
work through conventicnal church programs.
Perhaps we began to communicate some-
thing more. Some of our most exciting -
moments came when we had the feeling that
the kids understood that we weren't social
workers, cops, or disinterested observers.
It wasn't until the dnd of the summer that
Some of them finally began to come to us,
sit down, and ask what we WERE doing, and
the fact that we had been with them all
summer made us able totalk as honestly as
we could with them about acceptance, and
communication, and just wanting to live
without some of the traditional barriers.
And yes, we even talked with them about
love. We communicated something about
our race--one young girl expressed
By giving them, and any others
who wished to do so, a place to spend their
We communicated downright stupidity
surprise to the Negro girl in our grown,’
that we could be doing what we were, sings.
most of us were WHITE. We think that we
communicated something about acceptance
to the boys we visited in jail when we |
told them we hadn't come to find out if
they had fired that shotgun into the crowd
ata party, but to find out if they were
being treated properly, if we could help
with a lawyer, or with their families.
We think that we communicated acceptance
, to the little kids who lived in the
neighborhood when we spent time playing
and talking with them. We think that we
communicated acceptance to older people
sitting on park benches when we greeted
them with a smile, a "hello", and a
comment about the joys of soaking up sun
on a park bench, the drum corps practicing
nearby, or the Pirates! chance of winning
the pennant.
We had many things communicated to us
in turn, acceptance being the greatest of
them. We were amazed at the warmth of
our reception in the neighborhood, and in
the churches we attended, In both
instances, the fact that we lived in the
neighborhood was an important factor.
One woman introduced us to a white care-
taker at a housing project with the com-
ment, "They're diiferent from you. They
live here."
What were the results? The change in
the people in the group became more
apparent to each of us. as time passed,
We were excited by the experiences as
they happened, We continue to be excited
as we realize that we exist with a new
kind of freedom. We have been able to
show that reconciliation is possible.
ee
CHOIR BEING FORMED
Jan Dyckman is organizing a choir to
sing at the Christmas Vesper Service to be
held on Tuesday, December 18, and volun-
teers are needed. The choir will rehearse
on Monday, December 3 and 10, at 9:00 p.m.
in Bru and on Saturday, December 15 from
1:00 to 3:00 p.em, at First Lutheran Church,
If interested, contact Jan (HO 5-5105)
or show up at the next rehearsal, Plans
for the vesper:service are proceeding
apace and, in addition, a string ensemble
will play Corelli's "Christmas Concerto".
