robert mcafee brown and the bible speaks to you

When the definitive book on 20th Century American theology is written, the name of Robert McAfee Brown will feature prominently in it. Born and bred in the heartland of this country, Bob (as he insisted on being called) spent almost his entire academic and activist career on the two coasts, with stints at Amherst College (his alma mater), Union Theological Seminary (NYC--twice), Stanford University and Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. I happened to become closely acquainted with him and his irrepressible wife Sydney during a stint at my parents' home late in 1981 and early in 1982 while my father was dying from leukemia. Instead of attending my "home" church, the church that had nurtured me in faith, my wife (at the time) and I attended First Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto, where Bob and Sydney were active and visibie participants. They immediately welcomed us with genuine affection, inviting us over to lunch at their modest place on the Stanford campus and taking an interest in our fledgling careers. As I reflect on it today, the connection with Bob and Sydney was an unexpectedly rich gift to us during the most significant time of personal loss I had ever experienced. That relationship bears witness to a truth that took me years to learn--that in the midst of darkest days gifts of incredible beauty and lasting meaning come our way. My wife, who was pregnant at the time with our daughter, and I decided to name our first child Sydney, in honor of Sydney Brown...

First Acquaintance

My first exposure to Bob Brown, however, was to a man known to me only as "Robert McAfee Brown." In fact, he was the first theologian whose book I ever read (1964-65). One of the things that made Bob Brown so remarkable is that his first significant book was a primer for American Sunday School Students. Called The Bible Speaks to You (1955), it skillfully and lucidly ranged over the entire landscape of the history of Christianity and Christian ethics in its nearly 300 pages. As I was thinking about Bob's life and his and Sydney's impact on me, I took down from my shelf a worn copy of The Bible Speaks to You (I must have "borrowed" it from some unsuspecting Church library, since there is a borrower's card in it, and it is numbered "220" on the card and its jacket. The narrow but elegant script on the borrower's card reminded me of the handwriting of countless elderly ladies who have devoted millions of hours to every aspect of church life over the years), and pored over it. Without prompting, I recalled the titles of the last two chapters of the book ("The Bible and Ballots" and "The Bible and Bullets")--chapters that I reluctantly "studied" as a 12 or 13 year-old at Union Memorial Church (Congregational) in Glenbrook, CT in the mid-1960s. Though I loathed every minute of Sunday School during those days, the one book I never loathed was The Bible Speaks to You.

Looking at The Bible Speaks to You forty years later not only re-kindled memories of Bob and Sydney but amazed me both with the depth of thought probed by a theological "primer" in those days and the disarmingly engaging style of Brown. In the wake of the "revolutions" of the 1960s and 1970s everything in education, including Sunday School education, has been "dumbed down." But not in The Bible Speaks to You. Fearlessly, Brown probed issues of: (1) loss (on evil in the world) by expositing significant themes in the Book of Job; (2) sexuality, by examining Jesus' teachings and Paul's "single" life; (3) Christian involvement in politics; and (4) the case for Christian pacifism as well as just war. Undergirding his analysis, however, was a deep commitment to the Scriptures as the fountainhead of theological thought and personal conviction. And, to top it off, Brown had a winsome and clear method of presentation. To take one example, Brown, in dealing with the subject of evil ("Meeting Ugly Facts Head On"), began his treatment of the New Testament with four principles or observations and then exposited them briefly and skillfully. The four NT principles regarding evil which he mentioned were: (1) God is involved in evil with us; (2) God conquers evil; (3) God conquers death; (4) God gives us the power to conquer. Despite the tone of triumphalism that might pervade these words, Brown laid out his points with engaging clarity and balance.

Conclusion

By the time I first met Bob Brown in Boston in the late 1970s, I knew him as the author of several other books, most prominently in that day Theology in a New Key--a primer on Latin American liberation theology for North American audiences. His signature lucid style was now combined with an activist tinge not present in The Bible Speaks to You. At first I thought that it was the Viet Nam war, which Bob and Sydney opposed with vehemence, that "politicized" him, but then I decided to reread long passages of that educational primer, The Bible Speaks to You and I decided that his activism was already present there. How so? In his view of God. God is the one who intervenes in history, who has given us a dynamically powerful Book, who continues to watch over and be concerned about each decision we make in the civic arena. Such an engaged God is not far removed from the God of the Exodus, the God of liberation theology, and the God who leads us into new and unexpected paths in our journey of faith.

When Bob turned 60 in 1980, he took up the cello. I happened to hear him play many times in 1981 and 1982. I confess, Bob was rather a miserable player at that time! I recall he played an anthem during worship with a string quartet. It was Beethoven, as I recall. I commended him afterwards for his effort, but he just looked at me and mumbled that he had a long way to go. But that was Bob. Never afraid of trying something new, in ideas or in practice. His spirit endures, and the memory of our friendship perfumes a time that otherwise would have been so bleak.

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