What I Remember about Pete Seeger

The famous folk singer Pete Seeger died today at age 94.

I met Pete Seeger about 1988 when my family and I lived in Ossining, New York. Pete, as I recall, lived in Beacon, just up the Hudson River from Ossining. At the time, I was a young faculty member at The King’s College, a Christian college in Briarcliff Manor. I suspect that I might have been the only faculty member at that college who did not worship the Republican Party. I was not an activist for progressive causes at the time, but I did accompany my wife to some meetings of the Beacon Sloop Club (a sloop is a kind of boat), where you could always see Pete and his wife Toshi.

I actually don’t know very much about Pete’s musical career, nor would it be on-topic for a science blog like this one. But I do remember that Pete was always involved in making life better for the people of his local community. One time, about 1989, he was invited to address a public meeting of a municipal agency responsible for recycling and energy efficiency. While other speakers talked about technical issues, Pete sang some of his songs. To him, music was just part of what it meant to live rightly upon the Earth.

At one of the meetings of the Sloop Club, I talked to him about an annual event that the club sponsored: the Weed Wallow. Members and friends would wade into the Hudson River and remove by hand as many invasive plants as they could. I do not remember what the primary invasive species of aquatic plant was, but Pete told me that it had been introduced by a well-meaning clergyman who thought it could be used as food.

My memories may be slightly inaccurate. But it is clear to me that here was a man with a worldwide reputation but who was contented, even excited, to wade out into the mud and pull weeds. He lived rightly on the Earth, by his music and by his good ecological work.

Religion and War, Again

I think we all realize that religion has been used to justify war for a long time, perhaps ever since the human species has existed. I just want to add a couple more examples to your mental list. Both examples come from medieval and early modern Europeans, who despite their protestations of advanced culture were more bloodthirsty than the people they called “savages,” who were plenty bloodthirsty themselves.

The first example is from the Crusades, in which the pope would give indulgences to the soldiers in advance for whatever rape and pillage they might undertake against Muslims. We are talking about more than one pope and more than one Crusade.

The second example comes from Martin Luther. In a 1526 essay, quoted in E. O. Wilson’s The Social Conquest of Earth, Luther wrote that it was God who instituted the holy practice of war.  He said that Romans 13:1 indicated that God invented war; it was not a human invention. “For the hand that wields this sword and kills with it is not man’s hand, but God’s; and it is not man, but God, who hangs, tortures, beheads, kills, and fights. These are all God’s works and judgments.”

Now, if a fundamentalist were to hear this in church today, he or she would simply nod his or her head in agreement with the preacher. But those of us who care about evidence would do as I just did and go read Romans 13:1. It says nothing at all like what Luther claimed. It says to be subject to government authorities, because God has instituted them. That is, from the Apostle Paul’s viewpoint, God created governments. This does NOT mean that God approves of everything that every government does. So if your government tells you to torture somebody, that does NOT mean that God wants you to torture that person. Luther was just making all that stuff up out of his prejudiced, evil, bloodthirsty mind. Protestants revere him, but he sounds like Pol Pot to me, with a little God-puppet added. Luther was so consumed by hatred that he deliberately made stuff up about the Bible. He wanted so badly for whatever government (in what is today Germany) was supporting him to go out and torture Catholics that he used his ecclesiastical position of power to blasphemously stick words in God’s mouth. If there is a hell, Luther is in it, along with the Crusaders. Luther certainly did not believe that God instituted the Muslim governments and that God ordered Muslims to torture Christian captives, unless maybe they were Catholics.

Look, I’ll try to cut Luther a little bit of slack here, but I’m afraid it won’t be very convincing. Luther once said that he did some of his best thinking “over porcelain,” that is, when he was sitting on the toilet. He must have been having a hard time of it, if he had enough time to think up his theology of God-inspired torture. I wonder how many acts of torture were inspired by Luther’s words, which emerged from a recalcitrant turd in Luther’s bowels. Might history have been just a little bit less violent if milk of magnesia had been invented earlier?

Sorry to all you Lutherans out there, but you’d better get yourself a different hero.