By Father Ted
Last Thursday, I picked up my phone a saw a notification from one of my news apps that Bill Moyers had died at age 91. I’m not sure how much Bill and I have in common, most of his work preceded my awareness of national affairs (and my birth), but there is one thing that we share: we received our degrees from SMU at the same time. On May 17, 2007, I received my Bachelor of Music and Bill received a Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa.
Among those who received honorary degrees that day, Bill was chosen to deliver the commencement address, so when I learned that he had died, I wanted to see if I could find the text to his speech somewhere online. It wasn’t too difficult given that everything we say or do now is captured online forever and for all time. I want to share some of it with you today, on Independence Day.
Bill began with the usual gratitude and pleasantries, followed by pithy one-liners about how to make the most of our education. But then the address took a serious turn because of a tragedy that occurred as he was writing the speech. On April 16, 2007, only a month earlier, a student at Virginia Tech, armed with semi-automatic weapons, killed 32 people and injured 17 others. Bill recalled how he had delivered the commencement address at Virginia Tech only a few years earlier, and as hard as he tried to write an uplifting message for the SMU community, he couldn’t help but envision a grieving Virginia Tech community instead. From the anger, frustration, and longing he felt in the wake of the mass-shooting in Blacksburg, Virginia, he decided to write about America and the problems that beset our fragile society. “America is a promise,” he said, “but it’s a broken promise.”
Bill lamented the sad state of the Iraq War: how it began under false pretenses and how the men and women of the armed forces bore the full weight of its sacrifices while the average American went about their life as if the war wasn’t happening at all. He decried the erosion of basic constitutional principles and institutions of our democracy: “the rule of law, an independent press, independent courts, the separation of church and state, and the social contract itself.” He called out our sin of selfishness and our idolatrous love of individualism which bely our need for cooperation and our responsibilities to help and support one another. And he pointed out the widening gap between the haves and the have nots. “Think it over: On one side of this city of Dallas people pay $69 for a margarita and on the other side of town the homeless scrounge for scraps in garbage cans. What would be the civilized response to such a disparity?”
“America is a broken promise.” he said. “America needs fixing. So I look out on your graduating class and pray some one or more of you will take it on.” That day in Moody Colosseum, Bill Moyers called for a prophet. He called for someone like the prophets of old, like Amos or Jeremiah, who could call out our societal sins and point us toward a better future. He hoped that one of those fresh-faced graduates would have the grace and courage to put our country on the right track.
As I was coming here to Dallas today to ask what you are going to do to make the most of your life, I thought: Please God, let me be looking in the face of some young man or woman who is going to transcend the normal arc of life, who is going one day to break through, inspire us, challenge us, and call forth from us the greatness of spirit that in our best moments have fired the world’s imagination. You know the spirit of which I speak. Memorable ideas sprang from it: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”…“created equal”… “Government of, by, and for the people”…“the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”…“I have a dream.” Those were transformational epochs in American politics, brought forth by the founding patriots who won our independence, by Lincoln and his Lieutenants who saved the Union, by Franklin Roosevelt who saved capitalism and democracy, and by Martin Luther King, martyred in the struggle for equal rights. These moments would have been lost if left to transactional politics – the traditional politics of “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” But moral leadership transcended the realities at hand and changed the course of our history. Never have we been more in need of transformational leadership.
Bill Moyers’ speech to those SMU graduates was 18 years ago, back when George W. Bush was president, Nancy Pelosi was the Speaker of the House, and Scalia and Ginsberg were on the Supreme Court. In some ways it seems like a lifetime ago, but while the problems he outlined are still with us, so are the hopes. And while it would be nice to have a prophet to steer our country out of its malaise and into “a more perfect union,” we cannot wait until one arrives to do the right thing.
I’m sad to report that the prophet Bill was seeking was not among the graduating class of 2007, but there were other kinds of people; artists, engineers, theologians, historians, etc.; all of whom have the capacity for the moral leadership our country so desperately needs. In the absence of a Lincoln, Roosevelt, or King, we’re all going to have to step into the breach, perhaps not as prophets of old, but people of good will.
A blessed Independence Day to you,
Fr. Ted+
Click here to view Bill Moyers’ full address. The paragraph toward the end where he name-drops MLK, John Wesley, and our friend Michael Waters is particularly good.