Trekking On Bedrock

My preacher grandfather, Bernard Uphaus, lived with us during the first 11 of my 90 years. He had been an itinerant minister of the Evangelical Association, a splinter of Methodism, and served a German constituency. I often heard of his long horseback rides from parish to parish ministering to the people, many of whom lived a poor, precarious existence. He told of snow drifting through the roofs onto his bed. "They gave me the best they had," Grandfather explained.

Had Grandfather been an acquisitive capitalist instead of a dedicated minister of the gospel, I might today be a third generation parasite, for at one time he owned 80 acres that now lie inside Chicago. He traded 40 for a horse and saddle and sold the second 40 for a pittance.

During 17 years of the Great Depression, as I traveled from city to city for the National Religion and Labor Foundation, I sat up all night in coaches or rode in an upper of an old-fashioned Pullman car. I was proud to follow in Grandfather's train as an itinerant, as I organized ministers, laypeople, and trade union leaders into fellowships in support of workers' rights. It was simply the business of biblical justice applied to the lives of the hungry and unemployed. With $100 a month as salary and usually only enough in pocket to buy a ticket to the next town, my eyes were opened to the relationship between social misery and the structures of a broken-down economy.

Grandfather's God was both awe-full and tender. At meals Grandfather's grace brought together a beneficent Creator and the food on the table. His singing reverberated throughout the house.

Our rural neighborhood in Indiana at the turn of the century was limited in size and scope. Our home literally gave meaning to the neighbor in neighborhood. The Kentucky miners with black lung were not yet neighbors, nor were the textile workers with brown lung. Blacks came nearer to being neighbors, for a black worker living four miles away shod father's horses. Yet the elders in my family taught that all people, irrespective of color or nationality, belonged to the family of God.

Once a drilling company leased our farm to explore for gas. Three wells were put down. Two were "dry holes." The third was a success. It was located just a few rods from the fence that divided our farm from Grandpa Zimmerman's. All the elderly were grandpas and grandmas to me.

The drillers explained to me that the gas flowing into the bottom of that 900-foot-deep hole was drawn from great distances. It was obvious then that some of Grandpa Zimmerman's gas found its way under the fence and up the Uphaus well. That idea troubled me more than you suspect. Do people who just happen to live over the earth's wealth--gas, coal, oil--own that wealth, or does it belong to all the people?

Happily, shortly after Grandfather's death, his son, my father, having the same questions, set up a community organization to let the neighbors in on the gas. In those days, as now, gas provided both warmth and light. The unity of the Creator, nature, and the people was brought home. An elementary first lesson in socialism had been taught.

During the many years that I have worked for labor, human rights, and peace, I have associated and acted with communists. How can I help but confess that it has largely been the historic failure of Christianity to fulfill its mission for social justice that has enabled Marxist revolutions to profoundly influence a third of humanity? The Bible's primordial theme of total liberation and redemption and its teaching that the Lord's earth is to be shared by his people have both been lost.

Through years of friendly dialogue and association, my Marxist co-workers and I have come to understand one another better. Though disbelieving, philosophic materialists they respect my belief that a rapport with the metaphysical ground of the universe and the communal relationship go together.

As Grandfather had taught me, the whole human relationship is related to the nature of the universe. Not long ago I ran across a biographical sketch a fellow minister had drawn of him. Speaking of his conversion, Grandfather testified, "Ich habe den Grund gefunden, der mich ewig halt." ("I have found the bedrock, and it holds me eternally.") Ewig, that is, eternally, forever. That is the anchor that holds through the vicissitudes of time and circumstance. It sustains me, despite the so-called "higher" criticism of the divinity schools, the questing of the scientists, and the growing complexity of a consumer-ridden society willing to face the possibility of nuclear extinction.

Willard Uphaus, 90 when this article appeared, helped run Amity House World Fellowship Center in Florida. His commitment to work toward reconciliation among people of all races, nations, classes, and political and religious convictions ran him afoul of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1953. At the age of 70 he went to jail rather than divulge the names of World Fellowship members. In April, 1980, he was given the Sacco-Vanzetti Memorial Award for contributions to social justice.