2016/05/29

D. Elton Trueblood | Quaker Books

D. Elton Trueblood | Quaker Books

QuakerBooks is a project of Friends General Conference
Posted by at

While It Is Day : An Autobiography — by Elton Trueblood

While It Is Day : An Autobiography — by Elton Trueblood

While It Is Day
An Autobiography 




© 1974  Elton Trueblood
Harper & Row: New York, New York
[Image]
1. Trueblood, David Elton, 1900-1994.
BX7795.T75A37 || Dewey: 289.6'092'4 || LC:  7318680 || OCLC: 799585 || 170 p.


While It Is Day by Elton Trueblood is presently held by 487 libraries including the University of Southern California and Harvard University.
Table of Contents 


Preface       ix
1. Child       1
2. Student       19
3. Teacher       38
4. Author       61
5. Minister       84
6. Yokefellow       104
7. Father       125
8. Rambler       144
Index       164
PREFACE
   Every man's life, thought Dr. Samuel Johnson, may be best written by himself.  However difficult it may be to achieve objectivity, each person possesses information hidden from any outside observer. Though the difficulties of autobiographical writing are both immense and obvious, the advantages are correspondingly great because the ultimate evidence is that of witness.
   During nearly all of my adult life I have been consciously grateful to many who have provided firsthand testimony concerning their own lives. Starting with student days I have valued works of this type, believing with Leslie Stephen that autobiography is "the most fascinating type of literature." Ever since the time when I shared in a famous Harvard course in seventeenth-century religious prose, the classics in this field have been my prized possessions. Among these are the memoirs of Richard Baxter, George Fox, and many others of their century, but I have not limited my reading of such works to this flowering period. I have also been drawn to the autobiographical writings of Benjamin Franklin, John Woolman, John Stuart Mill, and many more.
   Any person who understands his own imperfection is naturally
Page x
hesitant to write about his own life, but serious thought will make him realize that this is no absolute deterrent, since each one has something worth sharing. Here Dr. Johnson's wisdom applies: "I have often thought," wrote Johnson, "there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful." If the Rambler was right, no elaborate justification is required. Every life is short, and the best of human knowledge is slight, but there is great merit in trying to tell what has actually transpired. The most artful tale, once it is known to be false, cannot compete in interest with the faithful report of an actual life, no matter how modest it may be.
   Of autobiographies produced in our own century, the one that has appealed to me most is Pilgrim's Way by Lord Tweedsmuir. This book has provided me something of a model, demonstrating the possibility of an autobiography that is primarily topical. I soon saw that my own life could best be understood with reference to the different vocations which I have pursued simultaneously. Consequently, in the book which I have written, there is no attempt at a strict chronological order.
   To tell what he has tried to do, and how he has tried to think, may be the most important service which one person can render to another. As we all walk essentially the same path, we stumble the less if our predecessors have left a few markers. It is the duty of each person who has profited from some guidance to leave a few markers of his own. That is why this book has been written. It is an effort to pay my toll on a road which others have constructed.
   In his famous opening, dated 1580, Montaigne wrote, "I am myself the matter of my book." Much as I admire Montaigne, I cannot say the same about my own book. It has of course been impossible to avoid the use of the first person singular, but, as I have written, I have been thinking chiefly of those who have helped me. Therefore, this is not really a book about one person,
Page xi
but about many persons. There have been numerous forks in the road, but at each of these there has been someone to point the way. Thus this book is fundamentally a record of my indebtedness. Though most of those to whom I am indebted are now beyond my power to repay, I can at least acknowledge what it is that I owe and try to make payment in the only coin that is available.
E.T.      
   "Life is lived best," says Elton Trueblood, elder statesman and dean of American religious writing, "when it is lived in chapters." The chapters in Dr. Trueblood's life comprise a warm and nostalgic, sincere and moving story of one man's spiritual and intellectual pilgrimage. Dr. Trueblood's memoirs are reminiscent of both Dr. Samuel Johnson and C.S. Lewis. He attempts that "judicious and faithful narrative" so prized by the Rambler, and Lewis' gift of drawing deeply from the bubbly springs of practical wisdom echoes throughout these pages.
   While It Is Day is unembarrassed, unglossed personal history. Author of thirty books on a host of subjects including the humor of Christ, the commitment of the Christian, and the spiritual character of Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Trueblood also composed a playful limerick for his wife Virginia:
My wife's a fabulous beauty, 
And even in age she's a cutey; 
She sits in the sun, 
And thinks it is fun, 
To be far, far away from her duty.


   The minister who was called to celebrate the funeral of President Hoover and to serve as an adviser in the United States Information Agency under President Eisenhower knows too "that there is really nothing wrong with sitting on the terrace just being quietly thankful." And, after a successful tenure at Stanford University, Dr. Trueblood found himself equally at home, perhaps more so, at tiny Earlham College in Indiana and wrote a widely circulated article for Reader's Digest to prove it.
   But Dr. Trueblood's self-portrait paints a larger picture on a broader canvas. His story is at the same time the story of religion in America for the past three quarters of a century. An eighth-generation Quaker with English roots, Dr. Trueblood's life has ecumenical dimensions and the religious pluralism so characteristic of America has had its effect upon him. He describes himself as an "evangelical Christian" and yet has been influenced by Harvard's Willard L. Sperry, Reinhold Niebuhr, Edith Hamilton, and Arthur O. Lovejoy, among others. Ministry has meant preaching in the churches of all the denominations and directing study conferences for ministers of many faiths. And as founder and President of Yokefellows International, he has translated his dream of "the small fellowship" into Christian reality and provided a creative, postdenominational, uniquely American possibility for spiritual growth and development.
   While It Is Day is an autobiography of accomplishment from someone with a special magic and charisma. In it Elton Trueblood pays his toll on a road which others may have constructed but on which he has left his own, indelible "finger-posts," in the words of John Baillie.
All rights reserved worldwide.  No portion of this online edition of While It Is Day may be reproduced in any form or by any means, except for brief and properly attributed citations in the course of review, comment, or scholarship, without written permission from the author.
"We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day . . . " — John 9:4
While It Is Day by Elton Trueblood is hosted by ccel.us 
Posted by at
Labels:

While It Is Day : An Autobiography — by Elton Trueblood

While It Is Day : An Autobiography — by Elton Trueblood

While It Is Day
An Autobiography 

© 1974  Elton Trueblood
Posted by at

D. Elton Trueblood - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

D. Elton Trueblood - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



D. Elton Trueblood

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Elton Trueblood (December 12, 1900 – December 20, 1994), who was usually known as "Elton Trueblood" or "D. Elton Trueblood", was a noted 20th-centuryAmerican Quaker author and theologian, former chaplain both to Harvard and Stanforduniversities.

Early life and education

Elton Trueblood was born December 12, 1900 in Iowa, the fourth of five children, and graduated from William Penn College in Iowa in 1922. He did graduate study at Brown University, Hartford Seminary, and Harvard University before finishing his Ph.D. atJohns Hopkins University in Philosophy.[1]

Career

During his career, Trueblood held faculty and chaplain positions at Haverford College,Guilford College, Harvard University, Stanford University, and Earlham College.
Trueblood abandoned this prestige to settle in the Quaker hub community ofRichmond, Indiana to help spur the growth of Earlham College from a tiny regional, religious school, and build it into a top flight institution of higher learning. He was a founder of the Earlham School of Religion, a Quaker seminary in Richmond, and part of a renaissance of American Quaker thought and action spurred on partly by the common experiences of Quaker intellectuals as conscientious objectors during World War II, although Trueblood himself was not a pacifist. He actively sought to mentor younger Quakers into his nineties. Trueblood also founded the Yokefellow movement and supported Stephen Ministries.
He always maintained an internationalist perspective, serving for many years as the permanent representative from the Global Quaker community to the World Council of Churches, an organization he helped bring into being. In the 1950s, Trueblood served as a senior advisor to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who created a post for him as Director of Religious Information at the U.S. Information Agency (formerly the Voice of America). Time magazine profiled him in this role on March 15, 1954. Later, he served as an adviser to President Richard Nixon. He was a political conservative who supported Nixon's foreign policy, including the Vietnam War, and gave the invocationat the 1972 Republican National Convention.

Publications

Elton Trueblood wrote 33 books, including: The Predicament of Modern Man,Alternative to Futility, Foundations for Reconstruction, Signs of Hope, The Logic of Belief, Philosophy of Religion, Robert Barclay, Abraham Lincoln: Theologian of American Anguish, The Idea of a College, The People Called Quakers, The Incendiary Fellowship, The Trustworthiness of Religious Experience (1939 Swarthmore Lecture), A Place to Stand, Your Other Vocation and The Humor of Christ.
Trueblood's short book, The Predicament of Modern Man, received much attention near the end of World War II. People were searching for spiritual meaning and morality in the face of much suffering during World War II. Elton used the analogy that searching for morality without a foundation in religion was a futile effort, akin to trying to make cut flowers in a vase live forever. Elton wrote a shorter version of this basic thesis for Reader's Digest, which generated volumes of mail—he reportedly responded to every letter.[2]
Trueblood's books, The Logic of Belief and Philosophy of Religion were considered some of Elton's most rigorous intellectual contributions to the field of philosophy of religion.
Trueblood's book on Abraham Lincoln caught the attention of Nancy Reagan, who talked about it in an interview with Good Housekeeping in September 1981. It was reissued in 2012 by Phoenix Press with the title Abraham Lincoln: A Spiritual Biography .[3]
Trueblood sought to provide the general audience with a great many readable works to promote a depth of religious thought in all people. One of his final books was anautobiography titled While it is Day, which traced his personal journey from his boyhood in Iowa and placed it in the context of the history of his family's long connection with Quakerism.

Friend of Presidents

Trueblood became a lifetime friend of President Herbert Hoover, who was also a Quaker. They first met when Elton was the chaplain and a faculty member at Stanford University and Hoover had retired to Palo Alto, California. They lived near each other and eventually struck up a friendship that lasted for decades.[4] When Hoover died in 1964 while Trueblood was traveling in southeast Asia, the State Department flew Trueblood back to the United States to perform the funeral service at the request of Hoover's family.[5]
Trueblood was also friends with Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson,Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.[6]

Family and retirement

He had four children (Martin, Arnold, Sam and Elizabeth) with his first wife, Pauline, who died in 1955. Trueblood was remarried in 1956 to Virginia Zuttermeister in ceremonies held at the Washington National Cathedral.
Trueblood retired from Earlham College in 1966, but lived in Richmond, Indiana, for nearly the rest of his life. He continued to write books and give public speeches in retirement. Trueblood died on December 20, 1994. His obituary was featured in theNew York Times.[7]

References

  1. "Dr. D. Elton Trueblood, Quaker Scholar, Author". New York Times. 25 December 1994. Retrieved 14 January 2014.
  2. Newby, p. 68
  3. Newby, p. 152
  4. Newby, p. 53
  5. Newby, p. 126-29; Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum
  6. Newby pp. 102, 108, 148, 153
  7. Saxon, Wolfgang (23 December 1994). "Elton Trueblood, 94, Scholar Who Wrote Theological Works". New York Times. Retrieved 14 January 2014.

Further reading

  • Elton Trueblood. While It Is Day: An Autobiography. Richmond, IN: Yokefellow Press, 1974.
  • Newby, James R. Elton Trueblood: Believer, Teacher and Friend. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990.
  • Newby, Elizabeth, ed. A Philosopher's Way: Essays and Addresses of D. Elton Trueblood. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1978.
  • Newby, James R., ed. Basic Christianity: Addresses of D. Elton Trueblood.Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1978.
  • The Best of Elton Trueblood, An Anthology. Nashville: Impact Books, 1978.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=D._Elton_Trueblood&oldid=707308807"
Posted by at

Ron Mock - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ron Mock - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Ron Mock

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ron Mock is Professor of Politics and Peace Studies at George Fox University. He is also a Quaker author in the area of peace studies and conflict resolution.[1] Mock was previously a practicing attorney, an instructor at University of Detroit Law School and a founding director of the Christian Conciliation Service of Southeastern Michigan.

Vocational history

Mock received his undergraduate education at George Fox, where he would return in 1985 as a professor. His degree was a BA in History and Political Science. He then went on to an MPA from Drake University, and earned his JD from the University of Michigan. After three years of practicing law, he joined George Fox University as assistant director of its Center for Peace and Justice (then called the Center for Peace Learning).[2] Since that time, he has remained in various positions at the University, including Associate Professor, Capstone Director, and University Scholars Program Director.[3] His teaching includes peacemaking courses such as Conflict Resolution, law courses such as Constitutional Law and National Power, and other courses in politics. He also helped create George Fox University's Senior Capstone general education course.

Peacemaking work

The majority of Mock’s scholarship has been in the area of peacemaking, in particular Christian peacemaking. Besides his work at George Fox’s Center for Peace and Justice, and his work in direct community mediation,[2] his most notable work in this area was the 2004 Loving Without Giving In, which attempts to provide a thoroughgoing Christian response to the horrors of 9/11. Specifically, the work seeks to explain first why terrorism, tyranny, and corruption are such political evils, and second why traditional military methods are not ideal for combating such problems.[4] In his foreword to the book, Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield wrote that Mock "draws on sources typically ignored by policymakers to suggest new responses that offer genuine hope for a long-term winning strategy against terror and tyranny." His other notable academic work on peacemaking includes authoring "The Biblical Basis of Peacemaking" published in Quaker Theology, and co-authoring When the Rain Returns: Toward Justice and Reconciliation in Palestine and Israel, published by the American Friends Service committee.[3]
Mock has also conducted numerous trips abroad in pursuit of peacemaking research, including to Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Netherlands, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, andSouth Korea, and has completed (but not yet published) a work on the moral complexities of pacifism entitled Pacifist Under Pressure.[2]

Notes

  1. Cascadia Publishing House: LOVING WITHOUT GIVING IN Advance Comment
  2. Mock | Political Science | George Fox University
  3. http://www.georgefox.edu/academics/undergrad/departments/polisci/Vitae/Mock_Resume%206.08.pdf
  4. Mock, Ron. Loving Without Giving In: Christian Responses to Terrorism & Tyranny. Cascadia Publishing House. 2004. 248-250

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Mock&oldid=719700390"
Posted by at
Labels:

Howard Brinton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Howard Brinton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Posted by at

Parker Palmer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Parker Palmer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Parker Palmer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Parker J. Palmer
Parker J. Palmer (born 1939 in Chicago, Illinois) is an author, educator, and activist who focuses on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality and social change. He is the founder and Senior Partner of the Center for Courage & Renewal.[1]

Education

Palmer attended Carleton College as an undergraduate and received a Ph.D. insociology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970.

Career

Palmer is the founder and Senior Partner of the Center for Courage & Renewal,[2]which oversees the “Courage to Teach” program for K-12 educators across the country and parallel programs for people in other professions, including medicine, law, ministry and philanthropy.
He has published a dozen poems, more than one hundred essays and eight books. Palmer’s work has been recognized with thirteen honorary doctorates, two Distinguished Achievement Awards from the National Educational Press Association, an Award of Excellence from the Associated Church Press, and grants from the Danforth Foundation, the Lilly Endowment and the Fetzer Institute.
An overview and critical review of Palmer's written work on education can be found at infed.org, an open, independent, not-for-profit site established in 1995 to explore educational theory and practice[3]

Speeches

In March 1992 he gave a talk at a United Methodist Church on “Faith or Frenzy.” He opened with a comparison between a historical perspective on the contemplative life vs. an active life. In earlier centuries contemplation was the preferred life, one followed by academic or religious scholars. An active life was one of tedious toil where one did not have the time to reflect on a higher plane. Over time that changed. An active life became more prominent as technology progressed and the power associated with it. Man was playing God. A pendulum effect between the two has swung back again as limits to technology have not provided a solution and the lure of a contemplative life and its seclusion has taken hold.
Sir Parker Palmer
Palmer suggests that a hybrid between the two is the mix where spirituality finds a balance, because “before you can have a spiritual life, you must first have a life,” - a life immersed in the active world. It is a world where one is alone and also part of a community. A spiritual life is not one which flees the world of action. He contends that when one becomes disillusioned by an experience or false value system, that person experiences reality. He believes disillusionment is the journey life takes us on, away from fiction and fantasy toward reality and truth. These experiences can be very painful. Five examples of illusion he covered during the talk are: the world as a battleground, scarcity, I am what I do, only cultivating rewarded talent, and finally that everything must be measurable.
Palmer launched into a discussion of faith as a misunderstood word. Faith is not a set of beliefs we are supposed to sign up for he says. It is instead the courage to face our illusions and allow ourselves to be disillusioned by them. It is the courage to walk through our illusions and dispel them. He states the opposite of faith is not doubt, it is fear - fear of abandoning illusions because of our comfort level with them. For example, not everything is measurable and yet so much of what we do has that yardstick applied to it. Another illusion is “I am what I do .... my worth comes from my functioning. If there is to be any love for us, we must succeed at something.” He says in this example that it is more important to be a “human being” rather than a “human doing.” We are not what we do. We are who we are. The rigors of trying to be faithful involves being faithful to one's gifts, faithful to other's reality, faithful to the larger need in which we are all embedded, faithful to the possibilities inherent in our common life.

Personal life

Palmer is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). He lives with his wife Sharon Palmer in Madison, Wisconsin.

Honors and awards

  • In 1993, Palmer won the national award of the Council of Independent Collegesfor Outstanding Contributions to Higher Education.[4]
  • In 1998, The Leadership Project, a national survey of 10,000 administrators and faculty, named Palmer as one of the thirty “most influential senior leaders” in higher education and one of the ten key “agenda-setters” of the past decade: “He has inspired a generation of teachers and reformers with evocative visions of community, knowing, and spiritual wholeness.”[5]
  • In 2001, the Carleton College Alumni Association gave Palmer a Distinguished Achievement Award.[6]
  • In 2002, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education created the “Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Award”, given annually to the directors of ten medical residency programs that exemplify patient-centered professionalism in medical education.[7]
  • In 2003, the American College Personnel Association named Palmer a “Diamond Honoree” for outstanding contributions to the field of student affairs.[8]
  • In 2010, the Religious Education Association (An Association of Professors, Practitioners, and Researchers in Religious Education) presented Palmer with the William Rainey Harper Award, “given to outstanding leaders whose work in other fields has had profound impact upon religious education.” Named after the first president of the University of Chicago, founder of the REA, the award has been given only ten times since its establishment in 1970. Previous recipients include Marshall McLuhan, Elie Wiesel, Margaret Mead and Paulo Freire.[9]
  • In 2011, Palmer was named an Utne Reader Visionary, one of "25 people who are changing your world."[10]

Published works

  • Palmer, Parker J. (2011-09-06). Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.ISBN 978-0-470-59080-5.
  • ———; Zajonc, Arthur; Scribner, Megan (2010-07-20). The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN 978-0-470-48790-7.
  • ——— (2004-09-22). A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN 978-0-7879-7100-7.
  • ——— (2000-09-10). Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN 978-0-7879-4735-4.
  • ——— (1999-07-21) [1990]. The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity and Caring. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN 978-0-7879-4934-1.
  • ——— (1983-08-25). The Company of Strangers: Christians and the Renewal of America's Public Life. New York: Crossroad. ISBN 978-0-8245-0601-8.
  • ——— (2007-08-17) [1997-11-21]. The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN 978-0-7879-9686-4.
  • ——— (2008-04-18) [1980]. The Promise of Paradox: A Celebration of Contradictions in the Christian Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN 978-0-7879-9696-3.
  • ——— (1993-05-28) [1980]. To Know As We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey. San Francisco: HarperOne. ISBN 978-0-06-066451-0.

Secondary sources

  • Intrator, Sam M, ed. (2005-04-06). Living the Questions: Essays Inspired by the Work and Life of Parker J. Palmer. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN 978-0-7879-6554-9.

References

  1. http://www.CourageRenewal.org
  2. "Staff". About the Center. Center for Courage and Renewal. Retrieved 2008-03-12.
  3. "Palmer", Thinkers, Infed.
  4. Orr, Douglas M. (1999). "The Courage to Teach: Reflections on Parker Palmer’s Work"(PDF). The Independent. Council of Independent Colleges. Retrieved 2008-03-12. In 1993, [Palmer] was the recipient of the CIC Outstanding Service Award and was a speaker at the annual Presidents Institute.
  5. "Who's Who: Higher Education's Senior Leadership", Change 30 (1), Jan–Feb 1998, pp. 14–18.
  6. "2001 Award Recipients". Carleton College. Archived from the original on January 6, 2009. Retrieved 2008-03-12.
  7. "Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Award". Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Retrieved 2008-03-12.
  8. "Diamond Honorees: Classes of 1999 to 2005" (PDF). American College Personnel Association. Retrieved 2008-03-12.
  9. "Religious Education Association". Retrieved 2010-10-30.
  10. "Parker J. Palmer: Wise Guy". Utne Reader. November–December 2011. Retrieved19 October 2011.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to:Parker Palmer
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parker_Palmer&oldid=722369417"
Posted by at
Labels: ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)