[Oe List ...] 1/12/12, Spong: My Second Great Mentor: David Watt Yates (1904-1967)

[Ellie Stock]

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My Second Great Mentor: David Watt Yates (1904-1967)
His name was David Watt Yates.  As an Episcopal priest he fought for the integration of the races in North Carolina in the 1940’s!  He was a conscientious objector during World War II even in the face of such compelling moral issues as theories of the “Master Race” and the reality of the Holocaust.  He was a rare tee-totaling Episcopalian, who did not even honor the Anglican clerical tradition of “a bit of sherry” at cocktail time.  He was unmarried and, as far as I knew, was never significantly attracted to a permanent relationship of any sort.  He possessed an authenticity that was breathtaking, a character that was uncompromising and a devotion to the priesthood that was uncommon.  His bishop in North Carolina, Edwin Anderson Penick, who was under constant pressure from this man’s critics who were always seeking to have him silenced, declared him to be “the conscience of this diocese” and this bishop never wavered in his support of this priest.  When I first met him he was the rector of the Chapel of the Cross, a large Episcopal Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, located between the Morehead Planetarium, the Arboretum and a female dormitory called Alderman near the center of The University of North Carolina campus.  He was a powerful presence and as influential a priest as I have ever known.  During his years as rector of this parish, more young men (women were not then admitted to the priesthood) became Episcopal priests from this university than from any other university in America.  Some of them went on to become theological professors, deans of theological seminaries, bishops and outstanding parish priests.  David Yates was undoubtedly the primary reason for this.  He was certainly a role model and a powerful influence on me.  This week, let me introduce you to David Watt Yates in this column – my second significant mentor.
David was born in Charlotte, N. C., on September 4, 1904.  He grew up in St. Peter’s Church in downtown Charlotte, a church I would join before my 12th birthday.  Its rector was Edwin Anderson Penick, who while still in his mid-thirties, would be elected bishop of North Carolina.  David’s life, Bishop Penick’s life and my life would intertwine again and again.  David graduated from Central High School in Charlotte in 1928.  I would graduate from that same school in 1949.  He did his undergraduate work at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, a flagship college of the Episcopal Church in America, famous in that day for producing more Rhodes Scholars per the size of its student body than any other institution of higher learning in the United States.  He received his degree at the height of the depression in 1931.  A tall, well coordinated, graceful man, David lettered in baseball, playing for the Sewanee Purple Tigers varsity team and was known to wear his purple sweater with the attached letter “S” in white for many years after his playing days were over.
Desiring to become a priest, he went to the Virginia Theological Seminary, receiving his Master’s degree in Theology in 1934.  Of personal interest to me is the fact that his sister Claire Yates Owens, remained in Charlotte, became a school teacher and was my teacher in the fifth grade.  I recall vividly that she started each day with a Bible story and a prayer.  That was quite legal in North Carolina in the 1940’s.  She also required her students to memorize the Ten Commandments in the long form!  David and Claire were made of similar stuff.  David was ordained deacon and priest by his former rector, now Bishop Penick, who would ordain me priest 21 years later.  He was then assigned to be an assistant at Calvary Parish and its surrounding missions in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, where he served for two years.  Twenty-three years later, I would be rector of that parish, so David’s ghostly presence was quite familiar to me.  In 1935, he moved from Tarboro to become the rector of St. Philip’s, the downtown Episcopal Church in Durham, where he remained until the end of World War II in 1945.
There was a popular story that I have never been able to verify, but believe to be true since it is so in character. On VJ Day in August of 1945, the people of America took to the streets to celebrate the end of World War II, pouring into the churches across this land to give thanks. David met the assembled host in his Durham church and, true to his pacifist stand, instead of prayers of thanksgiving he offered prayers of penitence for ever having gotten into the war.  The crowds entered St. Philip’s in a celebratory mood, but left seething with rage.
I do not know that this end-of-the war experience led to his departure, but the record shows that later in 1945, he moved twelve miles away from Durham to Chapel Hill, known by those who live there as “the southern part of heaven.”  UNC’s school color is sky blue, which has caused its graduates to assert that God is surely a Tar Heel fan since God has painted the sky Carolina blue.  He stayed in that Chapel Hill post until 1959, long enough to assist students to become conscientious objectors in the Korean War, helping them to adjust to a desegregating world and in both instances creating anger.  I was a student during those years, entering in 1949 and receiving my degree in philosophy in 1952.  David Yates was all over my UNC experience.
David offered rooms in the parish house to poor boys at the university who were Episcopalians.  I qualified on both counts and lived for all of my years at UNC in that building.  Six of us shared two rooms.  In exchange for our rooms, we did the Sunday bulletin on an ancient linotype machine, answered the phone after office hours and provided security at night.  Of my seven roommates over my years there five became Episcopal priests, one became an art historian and one went into public relations.  Both of these non-clergy roommates, however, became active lay persons serving the church in major leadership roles.
As students we spent a lot of time making fun of David.  His sermons were long and always had three points, which he regularly illustrated with three fingers.  The second point usually made him look like he was giving the finger to his congregation!
When the University Episcopal students would meet with David at what we called the “Canterbury Club,” we would begin with a hymn sing.  Someone always insisted on singing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” to taunt David’s pacifism.  We also made fun of his stark, almost puritan churchmanship and would buy him presents like a biretta he would never wear and a thurifer for incense that he would never swing.  The university was racially segregated in those “separate but equal” days with black students going to North Carolina College in Durham, which was certainly separate, but it was radically unequal.  Even our basketball team had twelve white players and was such low status on campus that people barely followed it.  We know today of the UNC star named Michael Jordan, but no one remembers Nemo Nearman, who was our star center in the late forties.  David spoke out against this prevailing racism, but it was too deeply entrenched for many to notice.  He was dismissed as a dreamer or visionary. David, however, lived what he believed with enormous skill and with visible integrity.  We laughed about him in public, but admired him in private and we were shaped by him more than we could admit.
David presided over my marriage to a Carolina co-ed named Joan Lydia Ketner (who died in 1988).  He followed me through seminary, was a presenter when I was ordained a deacon and priest and, early in my priesthood, invited me to return to Chapel Hill to speak to the Men’s Club at his church. My assigned topic was “The Message of the Prophet Habakkuk”!  Even as a seminary graduate I barely knew where to find Habakkuk in the Old Testament and I could not imagine that the men of the Chapel of the Cross would have any more interest in that subject than I had.  What fascinated me about this evening, however, was that in this audience of Episcopal men was Professor Louis Kattsoff, the head of the Philosophy Department and my faculty advisor as an undergraduate.  Dr. Katsoff was Jewish by ethnicity, but an atheist by persuasion.  When he learned of my plans to major in philosophy as preparation for a career in the priesthood, he was quite disdainful, dismissing Christianity as an “outdated medieval superstition that needed to be removed from the modern world!”  Needless to say, I did not find him supportive in the pursuit of my goals.  Now, however, four to five years after I had graduated from this university, I discovered Dr. Katsoff in the audience I was addressing at the Episcopal Church.  I was amazed and asked him how he happened to be present. “I have been baptized, confirmed and am now active in this church,” he said.  “Louis,” I responded, “When this is over may I come by your home and hear your story?”  “Of course,” he said.  Shortly after I had forgotten everything I had said about Habakkuk, I was in his home listening to his story.  “It was David Yates who got to me,” he said.  I found that almost unbelievable.  “Louis,” I said, “I know both of you well and David Yates is not in your intellectual league.  You can think rings around him.”  To this Louis Katsoff replied, “David did not outthink me, he outlived me.”
That was his power.  He outlived us all, not in length of days, but in character, in devotion, in honor and in commitment.  David left Chapel Hill in 1959 to become rector of the parish church at Sewanee, Tennessee, where he remained until 1966 and then went to St. Timothy’s in Columbia, South Carolina where his ministry was interrupted by the sickness that was to claim his life within a year.  If this man had objected on moral grounds to World War II and Korea, we can only imagine his response to Vietnam, Granada, Iraq and Afghanistan.  He died in Charlotte in 1967 at the relatively young age of 63, leaving a trail of people deeply in his debt. I am one of them. I am glad I knew him.  I am a better person because I did.
~John Shelby Spong, UNC – Class of 1952
Read the essay online here.


 

 


Westar Institute
 
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March 21–24, 2012
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All in the Family
A Conversation about Marriage, Family, and Sexuality

Featuring


John Shelby Spong, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark emeritus

Workshop- Thursday, March 22
Shifting the Christian Paradigm from Salvation and Atonement to Life and Wholeness

Interview - Friday evening, March 23
A Conversation with Jack Spong about Marriage, Family, Sexuality

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Westar Fellows on the Legacy of John Shelby Spong











Question & Answer
John of Seattle, Washington, asks:
Question:
Are you sure that animals are not self-conscious?  Can an animal that shows “compassion” to another creature (such as a dolphin assisting a drowning human) not have a sense of self?
Answer:
Dear John,
You are among the many animal lovers who have challenged me on this point.  I have, since I wrote Eternal Life: A New Vision, gone back to my sources in the field of Zoology and my studies in consciousness to make sure that my conclusions are valid – I am convinced that they are.
I do not minimize the human-like emotions that animals exhibit.  There are a number of species of birds who become monogamous and who appear to grieve the loss of their mate even unto death.  I have observed male sea lions in the Galapagos Islands that having lost the battle to remain supreme in a section of the shore to a younger and perhaps stronger sea lion, retreat to a state that looks very much like grieving.  Intimate family pets who lose a master or mistress to death give off much evidence that they have experienced a loss.  I know of one family of three dogs who are so clearly a closely knit unit that when one of them goes to the vet for a period of days, the other two reveal behavior that we interpret to be “missing” their companion.  So, please understand that I do not question or deny what seems to me to be an observable fact that, at least in the higher mammals there are emotions that are expressed. None of that is what I am talking about when I state that when Homo sapiens crossed the boundary from consciousness to self-consciousness, they crossed a significant and great divide. I continue, nonetheless, to be still convinced that “self-consciousness” remains a uniquely human characteristic.
Self-consciousness enables human beings to say “I” or “me” in a way in which no animal can do.
Self-consciousness causes human beings to see themselves not as part of nature, but as separate from and even over against the world of nature to the place where they seek both to organize nature and to conquer it to serve their purposes.
Self-consciousness enables human beings to live in the transitory arena we call time.  It is something we engage.  It is not just something that flows through us as a kind of “eternal present.”
Self-consciousness enables us to know we are alive, that we are mortal and finite and thus to anticipate and prepare for our deaths.  That is not some instinctual response to the closing down of our bodily functions, but a calculated mental response to a reality that no merely conscious creature can create.
Self-consciousness means that we are not bound by our instincts, but can challenge our own survival behavior in the name of a higher principle.
I am convinced that Darwin is correct that we human beings are “higher animals with complex and developed brains.”  That does not deny that the boundary between being conscious and self-conscious is still a huge boundary and it is that which makes human beings unique upon the face of the earth.
~John Shelby Spong


 

 


Westar Institute
 
Spring Meeting
March 21–24, 2012
Salem, Oregon
Register for the Religious Literacy Seminar
 
All in the Family
A Conversation about Marriage, Family, and Sexuality

Featuring


John Shelby Spong, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark emeritus

Workshop- Thursday, March 22
Shifting the Christian Paradigm from Salvation and Atonement to Life and Wholeness

Interview - Friday evening, March 23
A Conversation with Jack Spong about Marriage, Family, Sexuality

Panel - Saturday morning, March 24
Westar Fellows on the Legacy of John Shelby Spong











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