(Not my intention for a posting today, but you work with what you get, and I happened to have a piece of (what I think of as) Jesus’s DEI Sermon sitting on my desktop, waiting for a suitable occasion. Which came this morning in a lead from Henry Mensch on Facebook that took me to a website of Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz’s widow Jean; from Jean Schulz’s Blog “The Circle Continues”, on 2/23/19:
At the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, we often hear questions like, “What research is done here?” or, “What is the research about?”.
Our answer is that the Research Center holds the archival collection (or historical records) surrounding the life and works of Charles M. Schulz, and that the archives are available to researchers by appointment. At the Research Center, our Archivists answer innumerable questions posed by authors, students, and the public.
When a beautiful gem — such as the letter below — comes to our attention, we are amazed all over again at how relevant Sparky’s words are today (I have said that I continually find comic strips that could have been written for today’s audience).
(#1)
We contacted the author, Joel Lipton, whose sister had posted the letter on Facebook. Joel said that he wrote the letter to Mr. Schulz when he was 10 years old in 5th grade. It was 1970, and his memory of the assignment was for the students to write a letter to someone they admired and ask the question, “What do you think makes a good citizen?”.
The letter turned up recently, and the answer must have startled Mr. Lipton by how appropriate the answer would be if written today.
I always saw Sparky as a great believer in the long flow of history — that the people of the world had seen improvements over the centuries, and that, as he says in his letter, “our greatest strength lies always in the protection of our smallest minorities.
The protection of our smallest minorities. I don’t think I’m just free-associating here when I take #1 to be an (intended) echo of the least of these my brethren (from Matthew 25:40-45); Schulz had a considerable spiritual side, with a substantial grounding in (Protestant) Christianity, and taught Sunday School for many years. And the teachings of Jesus are (indirectly) alluded to occasionally in the comic strip.
The passage — what I think of as Jesus’s DEI sermon, forcefully advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion (“Christ on a rant”, I called it, privately, when I studied it in Sunday School 75 years ago; some things stick with you) — in the KJV:
(#2) Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire: a ferocious sentence for failing to exhibit acceptance, caring, and mercy to the least of us
Leave a Reply