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

[RICHARD HOWIE]

THANK YOU Ellie.  I have sent this on to others in the spirit of MLK  
Day.
Today, here in Altamont, we are celebrating a friend's 50th birthday,  
and some of us will serenade her with your wonderful song/hymn IN THE  
FULLNESS OF TIME, and handout song sheets so that all gathered might  
join in on verse 3 and the coda.
Epiphany Blessings to all,
Ellen
On Jan 12, 2012, at 10:55 AM, Ellie Stock wrote:

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>      HOMEPAGE        MY PROFILE        ESSAY ARCHIVE       MESSAGE  
> BOARDS       CALENDAR
>
> 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
>
> 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
>
> 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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