Atonement and Accountability
Sermon by Stephen D. Edington, February 1, 1998
With a sermon title like "Atonement and Accountability", which I chose nearly a month ago, one might think that the events of the past couple of weeks, with respect to our President, would make a perfect lead-in for just such a topic. Ah.... Sorry. To try to offer any sober minded response right now would be like trying to give a rational commentary on a riot while it was still in progress. Let's wait until the dust settles on this one a bit. It was actually another piece of news that surfaced through Eileen McNamara's Boston Globe column that got my mind working on today's subject. Her piece was about an upcoming parole hearing for a woman named Katherine Ann Power who, for nearly the past four and one half years, has been serving an 8-12 year sentence in the Massachusetts state penitentiary for women. I spoke of Ms. Power's case back when she was sentenced, in the fall of 1993, in a sermon about the interplay between therapy and spirituality. This, in brief detail, is her story:
In the fall of 1970 Katherine Power was a 20 year old undergraduate at Brandies University. She'd lived a rather sheltered upper middle class life in a Denver suburb before going off to college. At Brandies she became very caught up in the anti-war movement of the time, which by late 1970, following the Kent State shootings of the previous spring, had reached a frenzied height--especially on our nation's campuses. Being on a seminary campus myself at the time, and being something of a peace activist myself then, I recall it all quite well. In Ms. Power's case, however, she let herself be drawn to some of the more violent and fringe elements of that movement to the point that she found herself involved--wittingly or not--in a bank robbery, ostensibly to raise money "for the cause." While Ms. Power sat at the wheel of a getaway car some blocks away her armed compatriots robbed a Boston bank. In the course of making their escape they killed a Boston police officer. Because she drove the escape car for the perpetrators following the killing, Katherine Power, under Massachusetts law, became an accessory to murder.
The two men who actually committed the robbery were soon caught, tried, and imprisoned. The one who did the actual killing died in prison; the other was paroled sometime later. Ms. Power, however, escaped and became a fugitive. Severing all ties with her family, she took on a new name and identity, and came to live as Alice Metzinger in Corvallis, Oregon. She got married and has a son, who is now 17 years old. In the fall of 1993, some 23 years after the murder of Police Officer William Schroeder, Ms. Power--who for over half of her life by then had been "Alice Metzinger"--turned herself in to the Massachusetts authorities. She was given, as noted, an 8-12 year prison sentence as an accessory to murder and will be eligible for parole later this spring.
In her Globe column Eileen McNamara was advocating parole for Katherine Power; an opinion in which I concur. One of those who will be most forcefully advocating for her continuing imprisonment when the hearing soon takes place will be Claire Schroeder, one of William Schroeder's now grown children--he had nine--who has become a police officer herself. I can hardly fault Ms. Schroeder for her feelings. Had I, as a pre-schooler like Claire Schroeder was in 1970, lost my father in such a cruel and violent manner I'd most likely feel the same way. But I do not see how justice is any further served by keeping Ms. Power in prison any longer. I offer no justification or excuse for her actions of nearly 30 years ago, and neither does she, because there are none. At the same time I do remember quite well what it was like to be in the midst of the passion and intensity of those times. I was 25 years old in 1970. I can see how an impressionable 20-year-old could become so consumed by that passion and by that intensity, and so swept up in it, that she could find herself in a situation which, with the hindsight of nearly three decades, may well seem incomprehensible to her now. I hope she is allowed to return to her husband and son and to their life in Oregon; and is able to restore her relationship with her family of origin which was severed so long ago.
Well, you can agree with me or not on this one. Reasonable people can have reasonable differences of opinion about it. My purpose today, however, is not to be Ms. Power's advocate. She has a lawyer for that, whom I'm sure can do a better job than I. The thing that captures and intrigues me the most about this case, and speaks as well to the subject of "Atonement and Accountability," is why this woman chose to step forward, admit her guilt, and go to jail. By most indications she could have avoided it. According to Ms. McNamara's Globe column the FBI basically had no clue as to where she was--or even if she was still alive--in 1993. Even if she'd been caught, arrested, and brought in, the Massachusetts District Attorney for her case has acknowledged that had she pled innocent a conviction would have been very difficult to obtain. After 23 years there was very little hard evidence and no credible witnesses available to actually put her behind the wheel of the car. She could most likely have beaten it--with a good lawyer, of course.
Certainly one reason for her coming forward was that it would allow her to re-establish contact with her family of origin. But that wasn't the whole reason. Power's decision to give herself up came while she was being treated for a very heavy depression. Working with a therapist, she came to the point where she realized that all the medication in the world, and all the counseling sessions in the world, weren't going to heal her, and give her the peace of mind she sought, until she came to terms with the role she had played in Officer Schroeder's murder. While it was a murder which she was peripherally involved, she still had to assume her share of responsibility for it. Her choice to come out from her fugitive life was, in effect, a choice to go to prison, thereby separating herself from her husband and son for a time. She had to have known that when her decision was made. Accepting imprisonment for the length of time she has now served was and is an act of atonement on her part. Is it a sufficient act of atonement? I've given my own opinion on that, but it is a parole board that will be shortly asked make the decision that matters most. We will see how they rule.
I'll come back to Ms. Power's case before I'm finished today, but for now let's look at the idea of atonement itself. The dictionary definition of "atone" is "to make amends, as for a sin or fault"; and "atonement" is the "amends made for an injury or wrong.." These are purely secular definitions. But the term usually has some religious overtones, and we most often hear it used in some kind of a religious setting or context. This is hardly unusual given that "the Atonement" is the central doctrine of the dominant religion of our culture; that is to say, Christianity. While not quite as central and pronounced in the Jewish faith, atonement is a significant motif there as well.
Without entirely meaning to do so, I seem to have started a sermon series of sorts over the past several weeks by taking a theme or topic from the Christian faith, looking at how our Unitarian and Universalist forerunners reshaped that topic in a way that reflected their liberalized version of Christianity, and then given my own contemporary, humanistic angle on it. (Which means you can probably see where I'm going with this thing already). Having gone this route with damnation and salvation last month, now I am moving on to atonement.
When I retrace my own religious journey, it was my trying to make some sense of this doctrine of atonement that eventually caused me to move away from the Christian faith in its more orthodox forms. Whether or not Jesus actually said and did all the things that are attributed to him in the New Testament gospels, and who actually wrote those gospels, and when, and under what circumstances--all of that I could deal with and still remain attuned to the Christian faith. Its the basic message more so than who the messenger was that really counts, I'd tell myself; which was fine. But it was this idea that the messenger had to be killed, and in a rather ghastly fashion at that, in order to "redeem" my fallen life, along with all the rest of humanity, so we would be acceptable to God--I couldn't even make that one work on a symbolic or metaphorical level, and so I gave up trying.
The idea of an atoning sacrifice to a Deity is hardly original to Christianity. Throughout the Old Testament there are accounts of the Hebrew, or Jewish, people making sacrifices of lambs or fatted calves to either seek the forgiveness of Yahweh for their transgressions, or to seek His blessing for some enterprise there were about to undertake. The Hebrews probably got their atonement rituals from observing the rites the Canaanites performed for their deities as they came into contact with them, and the Canaanites got it from who-knows-where, and so on back it goes. But it was Christianity that took this age old principle and practice of making an atoning sacrifice to square things up with a God or gods, and made it an act of redemption for all of humanity.
Its a very powerful idea or doctrine, actually. To be told that all of your shortcomings, failures, fears, guilts and shame have been taken care of and canceled out by one person's death. and that God has now reconciled Him/Herself to you--that is powerful stuff. It is especially powerful if you happen to be feeling fallen or failing or fearful or guilty about something--or a lot of things, as we each and all have at one time or another in our lives. The problem I run into--and this is setting aside what I do and do not believe concerning God--is that this doctrine assumes that we human beings are in a hopelessly fallen state that requires an external act of redemption and atonement, i.e. the "sacrifice" of Jesus himself.
This is the same problem our Universalist ancestors ran into when they tried to deal with the atonement. In fact, what has come to be regarded as the "Declaration of Independence" of American Universalism is a lengthily document by a New Hampshire native named Hosea Ballou called "A Treatise on Atonement." He wrote it in 1803. Ballou's argument was that Jesus did not die to atone or save us from God's wrath or anger over our fallen state; he lived to show us God's love. It is not God who needs to be reconciled to humanity by the death of Jesus; it is humanity who needs to be reconciled to God by living out the kind of life that Jesus exemplified. Acts of atonement are ones we make, in this life, in order to be better reconciled with our fellow human beings and, in turn, better reconciled to God. This was Ballou's argument, and it was one of the principles--along with universal salvation--that shaped and defined American Universalism. It is also this understanding of atonement that continues to be affirmed by Unitarian Universalist Christians today; and it is one worthy of respect by all UUs of whatever stripe or definition.
Those of us who are of a humanist stripe--and that's one of the stripes I wear--would do well to appreciate this aspect of our liberal religious story, of Hosea Ballou's redefinition of atonement. We would also do well to appreciate the power of the workings of atonement in human lives whatever a person's religious orientation may be. I don't know if Katherine Power believes in God or not; or what kind of God she believes in if she does. But in order for her to be reconciled with, and at peace with, herself; and, if not with God, then certainly with the life she was living she needed to make an act of atonement. In an ironic kind of way, by putting herself in the almost entirely powerless position of a prison inmate, she gained, I feel, a certain kind of power over her life that she did not have before.
Whether there is a religious context or not, seeking atonement seems to be a basic human need. It comes about whenever we sense we are out of sync--either because of something we've done or by an attitude we're carrying--with out better selves, or with the self we aspire to be. Seeking out genuine atonement is not about debasing yourself; its about taking responsibility for yourself, and its about making yourself accountable to yourself and--to the extent that its possible to do so--to the persons you've wronged or become estranged from.
Shifting gears just a bit now, its a little hard to talk about the subjects of atonement and accountability without also bringing up the closely related subject of guilt. By Ms. Power's own accounts it was the guilt she'd carried for 23 years that brought on the depression which in turn led to her taking responsibility for, and making herself accountable for, her actions of 1970. I think we religious liberals could stand to be a little more discerning on the subject of guilt than we oftentimes are. Our reflexive reaction to practically any mention of guilt, is to do a variation on Franklin Roosevelt and proclaim: "The only thing we have to feel guilty about is guilt itself!" We need to be a little more discerning than that.
For the purpose of such discernment, lets consider three kinds of guilt: Manipulative guilt, neurotic guilt, and reality-based guilt. One of the things that really soured me on the whole doctrine of atonement itself--before I discovered Hosea Ballou's much healthier take on it--was how I saw it used as a way of manipulating guilt, i.e.: Look, this man had to suffer and die because of your sins, so you had better believe in Him and turn your life over to Him. The fact that I'd neither asked nor expected anybody to die for my sins was somehow irrelevant; it was a done deal. In any case, manipulative guilt--whether it arises within a religious setting or not--comes from someone or something outside of yourself trying to convince you that you "ought" to feel guilty about something when such feelings on your part are generally unwarranted.
Then there is neurotic guilt, which does not come from an external source, but is the guilt we put on ourselves for no rational reason. Some of you have already heard me tell the story of when I bought my first really good stereo sound system. Here's the quick version: A couple of years into my career and for the first time in my life I actually have some disposable income. So I go buy myself a very good sound system--by the standards of the time anyway. Didn't even use a credit card; just plunked down the cash. Driving back to my apartment with all these boxes I start feeling guilty about the money I had just spent strictly for my own pleasure and enjoyment. It wasn't an irresponsible expenditure; it was money I'd honestly come by. But I was playing an old tape from my growing up in a family of quite limited means: "You don't waste money on unnecessary things!" And boy, that was what I had just done. There was also the matter of how much I was valuing, or devaluing, myself, "Do I really deserve something like this given all the sacrifices my parents made just to help get me to where I am?" Well, I caught myself at it soon enough, and went on to enjoy my new toy--but not without at least a brush with neurotic, self-inflicted guilt.
Any atoning you set out to do for manipulative or neurotic guilt is wasted energy. But atonement, accountability, and reconciliation all come into play when you're dealing with reality based guilt. Neurotic guilt was my feeling I done something wrong by spending money on something I could actually well afford. If I'd broken into the store and stolen the goods, that would be a cause for reality based guilt. Reality based guilt is the awareness of broken faith, truly broken faith; the awareness of when we have broken faith with what we know to be our own best selves, or broken a trust with someone who trusts in us, caused harm or hurt of a physical, emotional, or spiritual nature. Coming to an awareness of reality-based guilt can be most disturbing when we realize that an act of breaking faith occurred when we thought and believed we were pursuing good and worthy and noble ends. It is reality based guilt that the psychiatrist Willard Gaylin is describing when he writes in his book Feelings: "Guilt is not only not [emphasis Gaylin]a useless emotion. It is the emotion that shapes so much of our goodness and generosity. It signals us when we have transgressed from codes of behavior which we personally want to sustain...(it) informs us that we have failed our own [emphasis added] ideals... Guilt is the guardian of our goodness."
The goal of atonement, then, is reconciliation. For our Universalist ancestors it was reconciliation with a loving God. In a more humanistic vein it is reconciliation with the self we want to be and know we are capable of being; it is the recovery of the self-respect we each and all need in order to both be at peace with ourselves, and to be a responsible and caring member of the human community. I don't know that any of us in this room have ever had to face an atoning situation like that of Katherine Power's, but I do feel safe in saying that we each and all know what it is to take an action or engage in an activity that constitutes some form of self-betrayal or some breach of faith with the wider human fellowship. I daresay we have all felt the need for atonement at certain points in our lives.
I have stayed away, this morning from suggesting particular acts of atonement for particular deeds. Maybe I should try something like, "Say the UU Purposes and Principles ten times and light three candles of concern". You each know your lives; you are each capable of discerning what course you may need to take on occasion in order to be reconciled to your better and more wholistic self. That wiseguy wisecrack of mine notwithstanding, while I don't operate from a confessional I'm always glad to be available for any conversations on how one may move along the path of reconciliation whenever that personal breach of faith is experienced.
Among my many hopes and aspirations for all of us is my desire that we be a reconciling community for all who seek us out and who participate in our common life. We are in the business here of growing and maintaining and nurturing whole lives, complete lives--to the highest extent that such can be obtained. If you separate out the word "atonement", you get "at-one-ment". That really is the goal of any atoning act, to become "at one" again. As is said here each Sunday, "May the common life we share make us One: One with ourselves, one with each other, one with the wider human community, and one with the Larger Life that enfolds and blesses us all.
Copyright © 1998 by the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Nashua NH. All rights reserved.
