Howard C. Wilkinson - "A Call for Fair Play" (September 26, 1965)

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	(cool music)	0:03
	(background noise)	0:11
-	This is opening Sunday at Duke university.	0:30
	And it is in order that we use this occasion	0:35
	to examine the bearing of the Christian faith	0:39
	upon the process of higher education and vice versa.	0:43
	What I would like to do in this sermon, therefore	0:50
	is to look with you at an area	0:54
	in which the goals of Christian ethics	0:57
	and the goals of higher education are identical.	1:00
	So when you came to chapel this morning	1:06
	whether you were primarily motivated	1:08
	by a desire to become a better Christian	1:10
	or by a burning wish to derive	1:14
	the greatest amount of benefit possible	1:17
	from your college education.	1:19
	What we shall have our attention on for a little while	1:23
	is of very basic concern to you.	1:25
	Let me state the matter with utmost simplicity	1:31
	very often in academic life,	1:35
	as well as in non-academic life, for that matter,	1:37
	we disagree with each other.	1:41
	Sometimes we disagree severely and on very momentous issues.	1:43
	It is right,	1:50
	that we face these differences	1:51
	that we study them, that we debate them even vigorously,	1:53
	but both the goals of religious faith	1:59
	and the aims of higher education	2:02
	require that we disagree	2:05
	in an atmosphere of fair play.	2:09
	There's the sermon.	2:15
	You thought you were going to have to wait	2:17
	25 minutes to get the main point,	2:19
	but low and behold,	2:21
	I have recklessly exposed the central idea	2:22
	in less than two minutes.	2:25
	And now if there is a mass Exodus	2:28
	out of this chapel in the next two minutes	2:30
	I shall certainly regret having done it.	2:32
	But in case grandfather wants you to write and tell him	2:36
	what the chapel preacher's sermon was about.	2:40
	You see, you already know what to write.	2:42
	Just tell him that the Parson issued a call	2:46
	for a fair play in handling disagreements,	2:48
	and that he claimed to be representing	2:51
	both the church and the university in so doing,	2:53
	there it is.	2:56
	Well we've taken care of grandfather's request.	2:59
	So now let's forget him for a while.	3:02
	And right now let's think about you.	3:04
	Because although it is true that the ideal	3:08
	of this sermon can be described in very simple terms.	3:11
	It is not true that what is being called for here today	3:17
	can be accomplished very simply.	3:22
	Indeed you will have a very difficult time doing it	3:26
	so difficult, that when you achieve it	3:29
	you may be called a true and beloved son of the university	3:32
	and a shining member of the christian church.	3:37
	Isn't it true that when we are discussing a disagreement	3:42
	we usually like to win the argument rather than lose it.	3:46
	And isn't it a fact that we often argue	3:51
	as though we were more interested in winning	3:54
	than in learning new truth.	3:58
	And to be absolutely honest,	4:02
	for a moment,	4:07
	don't we have a tendency to import	4:09
	irrelevant matters into the argument at times,	4:12
	if we feel that these irrelevant matters	4:17
	would help us to strike down our opponent.	4:21
	Be honest,	4:25
	for instance a short time ago,	4:28
	one of our brilliant new law professors	4:30
	Mr. William Van Alstine offered a detailed	4:33
	and specific analysis of the legal	4:37
	and constitutional aspects of the so-called	4:40
	Speaker Band Law in North Carolina.	4:44
	A certain politician in this state	4:48
	disagreed with Mr. Van Alstein.	4:50
	But when he undertook to answer his legal	4:53
	and constitutional points,	4:56
	the most he could do was to say	4:58
	that he couldn't understand why a relatively new resident	5:01
	in the state like Mr. Van Alstein	5:04
	should be so interested in this law anyway.	5:07
	Well, what Mr. Van Stein's place	5:12
	or duration of residents had to do	5:15
	with the legal and constitutional dimensions	5:19
	of any given law completely transcends the imagination.	5:21
	This politician, however, apparently believed that	5:28
	an appeal to some people's prejudice	5:32
	against newcomers would help him	5:34
	to strike down his opponent.	5:37
	And no doubt it did.	5:39
	As is often the case.	5:41
	The politician may have been more interested	5:43
	in having his viewpoint prevailed with his constituency	5:45
	than he was in learning about the constitution.	5:49
	He therefore was willing to import	5:52
	extraneous and irrelevant material into the argument	5:55
	in his effort to win.	5:59
	Well as fascinating and as important as law and politics are	6:03
	We have need this morning to apply this idea	6:09
	of fair play to some areas of conflict	6:12
	and disagreement within religion.	6:16
	And I want us to look briefly at three issues,	6:19
	over which Christians quarrel.	6:23
	And to see how important it is	6:27
	that we play fair with each other, when we disagree.	6:29
	We want to examine these three partly	6:35
	because of their own intrinsic importance	6:37
	but also because they can serve as representative types	6:40
	of other Christian disagreements.	6:44
	Now, I wanna make it perfectly clear	6:48
	in beginning that I have taken a personal position	6:50
	on each one of these three disagreements	6:52
	but I shall deliberately re frame	6:56
	from stating what it is in this sermon for obvious reasons.	6:58
	I'm going to be a deliberate fence straddle for once.	7:01
	In fact, if you do not happen to know already	7:06
	what my stand is on any of them	7:09
	I hope you will not even be able to guess	7:11
	what it is by hearing this sermon.	7:13
	And I warn you that if you do guess	7:17
	that it is one thing, well, that's not it.	7:19
	I take the other stand.	7:21
	First, let's consider the dispute	7:25
	which rages over the interpretation of the Bible.	7:28
	On the one hand, there are the so-called fundamentalists.	7:33
	Opposing them are the so-called liberals.	7:39
	The fundamentalists believe that the holy Bible	7:43
	is literally infallible	7:46
	and that it contains no errors of history	7:48
	geography, mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry.	7:51
	They regarded as a reliable textbook of medicine,	7:57
	anthropology, and biology.	8:00
	They think they're required to believe	8:04
	that Jesus of Nazareth was born of a Virgin,	8:06
	and that a flesh and blood man named Jonah	8:10
	spent three days in the stomach of a great fish	8:12
	after which he emerged undigested.	8:15
	Fundamentalists think,	8:19
	that they must believe that Elisha by the power of God	8:20
	made an acts head float on top of the rivers	8:24
	on top of the waters of the Jordan river.	8:27
	On the other hand, the liberals do not regard the holy Bible	8:32
	as being literally infallible.	8:37
	And they do not believe Almighty God intended it	8:40
	to serve as a textbook of history or science.	8:43
	But as an inspired record	8:46
	of the heavenly father's persistent attempt	8:48
	to realize the purposes of his creation in human life.	8:51
	And as a record of man's faltering response	8:57
	to the reconciling love of God.	9:01
	And so these two viewpoints, but more importantly	9:05
	the people who represent them	9:08
	stand over against each other,	9:10
	and survey the apparent Gaza	9:13
	which divides them.	9:16
	From time to time, a great debate boils up between them	9:19
	as in the case of the famous scopes trial	9:22
	in the last generation.	9:25
	And as in the case of last night's furious argument	9:27
	in the dope shop,	9:30
	Most of the time, however	9:33
	the fundamentalists do not charge to the attack	9:35
	choosing instead shake their heads in sad silence	9:38
	and pray for the conversion of the Lord's liberals.	9:42
	The liberals for their part do not mount an attack	9:48
	every day on the fundamentalists.	9:53
	Rather some liberals dispose of the fundamentalists	9:56
	by saying that if they are not extinct already	10:00
	they will join the Dodo bird in only a few more years.	10:03
	Actually within the christian church	10:08
	at the present moment there are multiplied millions	10:12
	who represent each of these viewpoints.	10:16
	And I think it is likely that the debate	10:19
	between them will continue for many years to come.	10:22
	The fundamentalists are gaining followers every day.	10:26
	They are more active on the college campus than ever before.	10:29
	And they have far more fundamentalists with PhD degrees	10:33
	from major universities today than at any time in history.	10:38
	We don't have to leave this campus	10:45
	to find PhD faculty members who are fundamentalists.	10:46
	The concern, which I am expressing in this sermon	10:50
	is that when fundamentalists and liberals	10:54
	debate their differences they seldom do so	10:58
	with either charity or humility.	11:00
	More often tending to resort to emotional appeals,	11:03
	to distortion and even to slander.	11:08
	They do not represent the position of their opponents	11:11
	as fairly as they would have their opponents	11:14
	represent their own position.	11:16
	Many liberals are inclined to call the fundamentalist stupid	11:20
	uneducated, brittle minded	11:25
	legalistic, pietistic, moralistic, and so on.	11:27
	Well now let's face it.	11:31
	These are not intelligent descriptions	11:33
	of the best representatives of the fundamentalist viewpoint.	11:36
	Instead, they are nothing more than emotional clubs	11:41
	with which to hit them over the head.	11:44
	This is not fair play.	11:47
	Many fundamentalists for their part	11:51
	refuse to believe that any person	11:53
	could be a Christian who does not agree with them.	11:55
	They call the liberal churchmen atheists	11:59
	wolves in sheep's clothing,	12:02
	betrayers of the faith, destroyers	12:04
	of the Bible and worse.	12:06
	Well, now this kind of name calling is no better.	12:09
	And it all goes to prove that both the fundamentalists	12:12
	and the liberals stand in need of confession	12:15
	of pardon and sustaining grace and especially of charity.	12:18
	Actually, whether you are at this moment	12:25
	prepared to believe it or not.	12:28
	There are fundamentalists who have high IQs	12:31
	and there are liberals who devoutly pray to God every day.	12:35
	There are fundamentalists who open-mindedly ask God	12:42
	to show them any truth.	12:45
	He would have them to believe.	12:47
	And there are liberals who have gone before the firing squad	12:49
	rather than deny that Jesus Christ is Lord.	12:53
	Fundamentalists need to remember that there are Christians	12:58
	who deny Christ Virgin birth,	13:01
	but who constantly proclaim his divinity and his Lordship.	13:04
	Now the point I'm making is not	13:10
	that if fundamental is and liberals	13:13
	would only love each other, they would discover	13:14
	that they agree on everything.	13:17
	My point is that if they will love each other	13:20
	they can discuss their very real differences	13:23
	intelligently and creatively.	13:26
	The primary ingredient in any such discussion	13:30
	though is fairness.	13:32
	There must be a real desire to understand	13:36
	and a determination to be as fair to your opponent	13:39
	as you want him to be to you.	13:42
	So you have an urge to get into an argument	13:45
	about the Virgin birth, go to it,	13:48
	but remember no clipping, no pilling on,	13:51
	no ineligible receivers downfield	13:56
	Well so much for that.	14:01
	Let's move now quickly to another good hot issue.	14:02
	Christians are divided on the question	14:09
	of whether a christian may drink,	14:11
	aren't we?	14:15
	One group says, no christian consume	14:20
	should consume any alcoholic beverage.	14:23
	The other group teaches that it is perfectly	14:27
	all right to drink alcoholic beverages in moderation	14:29
	and that it is not a christian issue.	14:32
	The first group has been referred	14:36
	to as the total abstainers, the T teetotalers, the dries.	14:37
	The second group has been called the wets,	14:44
	the drinkers, the tippler.	14:47
	Do you know of an issue on which there has been more heat	14:52
	and less light applied than this one?	14:55
	Do you know of a disagreement which has brought forth	15:00
	more caricaturing, more lampooning,	15:03
	more tongue lashing than this one.	15:05
	Do you know of a con test in which both sides	15:09
	have exhibited less play, less fair play than this one?	15:12
	I don't.	15:17
	The puzzling thing about it is	15:19
	that the church which is most often	15:20
	hurled by both sides against the other	15:22
	is that they haven't been fair.	15:24
	Looking at it from my point of view,	15:27
	I think they're both telling the truth.	15:29
	I venture the guests that even at this moment	15:32
	you dries are silently sitting there saying	15:38
	to yourselves, man, is he telling off the wets?	15:41
	And you wets are about to burst a blood vessel	15:46
	because you can't shout aloud.	15:48
	At last here's a preacher who will tell the truth	15:50
	about the dries.	15:53
	You see, this is only a token of how unwilling we are	15:56
	to play fair.	16:00
	When we discuss our disagreement about drinking.	16:02
	You know how the emotional ranting goes,	16:05
	many wets begin by either ignoring or denying everything	16:09
	the dry see that's for starters.	16:13
	And then they move on to picture total abstainers	16:16
	as a malicious bunch of killed joys	16:18
	who wanna make life as unpleasant as possible	16:20
	for as many people as possible.	16:23
	And after working themselves up into a ladder	16:25
	by listening to their own propaganda	16:27
	they gather enough courage to brand the dries	16:29
	as hypocrites and witch hunters.	16:31
	A wet will say to a dry	16:35
	I don't like you because you don't drink.	16:37
	And because you make me uncomfortable when I do drink	16:39
	and your sister doesn't like the Beatles	16:43
	and your grandfather fought on the wrong side	16:45
	during the civil war.	16:47
	(laughing)	16:48
	Now, a lot of dries think the settling	16:53
	of the issue can be short and blunt.	16:54
	Everybody who takes a drink	16:57
	is ticketed for hell, period.	17:00
	What's worse is that he will certainly drag	17:06
	an even dozen more with him when he goes,	17:09
	when they pause and listen to what they've just said,	17:14
	it makes them mad and they gather momentum.	17:16
	The attack becomes more vehement.	17:19
	All people who take a drink are callously unconcerned	17:21
	about the welfare of little children and old ladies.	17:24
	(laughing)	17:27
	Very likely somebody in their family	17:29
	must at sometime have played tackle	17:31
	on the Carolina football team.	17:32
	(laughing)	17:34
	And if we could only get at the facts	17:36
	there's probably more premature baldness	17:37
	in their families than there are in ours.	17:39
	Now, if the dries are going to play fair,	17:44
	they must begin by admitting that	17:47
	a lot of christian people take a drink.	17:50
	And that many of them are going to be admitted into heaven.	17:54
	They must concede that the majority	18:00
	of those who drink do not become alcoholics	18:02
	they must acknowledge that Jesus of Nazareth drank wine.	18:06
	They must grant that many people who have blessed mankind	18:10
	by their achievements were not total abstainers.	18:14
	They must admit that the mere refusal to drink	18:18
	is in itself not a positive virtue,	18:21
	unless it be linked with something	18:24
	that is a positive virtue.	18:25
	If the dries are going to play fair,	18:28
	they must concede that many intelligent physicians	18:29
	have prescribed an alcoholic beverage	18:32
	for medicinal purposes.	18:34
	On the other hand,	18:38
	if the drinking Christians are going to play fair.	18:40
	They must begin by admitting that liquor	18:43
	has been at the root of a vast amount	18:45
	of the world's troubles.	18:48
	They must grant that although in Jesus day	18:50
	there were good reasons for his drinking wine.	18:52
	None of those reasons exists in America today.	18:55
	The wets must admit	19:00
	that although alcoholic drinks can be beneficial	19:03
	in certain diseases,	19:05
	the greatest medical authorities in the world,	19:07
	reports that medicines now exist	19:09
	which can perform all of the benefits	19:11
	of alcohol without any harmful side effects.	19:14
	To play fair the wets must admit	19:18
	that there exists the case for total abstinence	19:20
	which is completely respectable academically.	19:22
	Finally, they must admit that according to present knowledge	19:26
	every person who takes a drink,	19:30
	runs the risk of becoming an alcoholic	19:33
	and that there is no way to decide	19:35
	who will become one until he already is an alcoholic.	19:38
	Now, the position of the christian who totally abstains	19:44
	and the christian who drinks is not the same position.	19:48
	There are very real issues between them.	19:53
	Issues which relate to the most important values in life.	19:56
	The facts which bear upon those issues	20:01
	should be brought to light,	20:04
	should be discussed, debated and evaluated.	20:05
	Indeed the entire subject needs much research and reasoning.	20:10
	But in the process, the ends of religion	20:15
	and of human welfare will be very much better served	20:20
	by light than by heat.	20:24
	Well, can you endure one more quick one?	20:29
	If you can we will escalate to a third area	20:34
	of christian disagreement.	20:38
	In Vietnam, there is a hot shooting war going on	20:42
	involving fire bombs, machine guns	20:46
	intentional death and destruction on a very vast scale.	20:48
	Some Christians, including several of Duke's	20:55
	most distinguished professors	20:57
	say we should not be involved in that.	21:00
	Other Christians, including many of Duke's	21:03
	most distinguished professors,	21:06
	say that as Christians we should be involved.	21:08
	Now, when we try to label these two groups of Christians	21:13
	we immediately find ourselves scorched	21:16
	by the very heat of the controversy.	21:19
	Not all of the labels,	21:22
	which one group applies to the other group,	21:23
	is acceptable to the other group.	21:28
	And often the label is more an instrument	21:30
	of distortion than of description.	21:32
	The Christians who contend that war is always	21:37
	the wrong way to stop evil and to establish good	21:39
	have been called pacifists.	21:42
	The Christians who while hating war	21:45
	like the pacifists nevertheless see it	21:48
	as the lesser evil in some situations	21:51
	have been called non-Pacific Christians	21:54
	or christian interventionists.	21:56
	I do not have to tell you this morning	21:59
	that the issues between the two groups of Christians	22:02
	have been as great as they have been ancient.	22:04
	For 1900 years they've been debated	22:08
	and never more than in the 20th century.	22:11
	Even if the debate between them were carried on	22:15
	in an atmosphere of fair play,	22:18
	the questions of fact,	22:21
	and of interpretation would tax the intelligence	22:24
	and the courage of the church's	22:27
	greatest scholars and prophets.	22:29
	But when be clouded by prejudice and distortion	22:32
	the issues become well not unsolvable.	22:35
	Sometimes when the pacifist notices	22:40
	that his christian brother rises from the communion table	22:43
	and goes away to drop bombs into fire machine guns,	22:46
	he sadly accuses him of hypocrisy	22:50
	of militarism and war mongering.	22:52
	Yet to do this,	22:56
	is completely unfair	22:59
	to the agony of a soul that is tortured	23:01
	by a horrible conflict between his love of peace	23:04
	on the one hand, and a fear that monstrous evil	23:07
	may take over on the other hand.	23:11
	The pacifist needs to know, and to remember	23:14
	that some of history's greatest soldiers	23:17
	have been Christian men who loathed war	23:19
	and at every opportunity showed compassion on the enemy.	23:21
	Now matching the unfairness	23:28
	of some pacifists is the distortion perpetrated	23:30
	by some non-Pacific against conscientious objectors.	23:33
	They often label them traits, cowards,	23:37
	stupid men, collaborators with the enemy and so on.	23:41
	Is George Buttrick stupid?	23:48
	Is Ralph Soman, a collaborator with the enemy?	23:51
	Was Mahatma Gandhia coward?	23:55
	We often follow in the,	24:01
	if we would become mature men and women,	24:09
	We would realize that it is possible to disagree	24:12
	with someone without calling him an ugly name	24:15
	whatever the issue.	24:18
	If we would develop a genuine love of truth	24:21
	we would discuss and debate controversial issues	24:24
	without feeling that we have to win every argument.	24:28
	Once in a while, we would see a new truth	24:33
	and admit a new idea into our minds.	24:36
	From our discussion with our brother,	24:39
	we would learn to discuss issues on their merits	24:43
	and not by importing irrelevant material	24:46
	into the debate.	24:48
	The goals of higher education	24:51
	and of ethical religion parallel each other at this point.	24:53
	That is, to develop in every person,	24:58
	the ability and the determination to resolve	25:01
	disagreements and to settle issues by examining	25:05
	the relevant data.	25:08
	Not by slurs and slander or by bigoted emotional appeals	25:11
	to extraneous considerations.	25:18
	The proper instrument for an educated man	25:21
	to use is the lamp, rather than the lampoon.	25:24
	Thy word, a lamp unto my feet wrote Psalmist,	25:28
	you know science would be unable to progress at all.	25:34
	If scientific discussions proceeded	25:38
	along the lines that we follow in debating issues	25:40
	such as I have mentioned this morning,	25:43
	suppose for example,	25:45
	that professor Robby, the distinguished professor	25:48
	of physics at Columbia	25:50
	and Dr. Gordy, the James B. Duke professor of physics	25:52
	at Duke.	25:55
	Were discussing at some scientific meeting	25:57
	the apparent inconsistencies	26:00
	Of the quantum theory and the field theory.	26:03
	And if a disagreement should develop	26:08
	between them would never occur to either of them	26:09
	to import into that discussion,	26:13
	any reference to personal stupidity	26:15
	to cowardice, to place of residence	26:18
	or anything like that.	26:21
	They would discuss the issue on its merits.	26:23
	Now why cannot we be as wise in our disagreements	26:27
	over ethical and theological issues,	26:30
	and obtained the same benefits.	26:33
	The scripture lesson, which Dr. Knight read this morning	26:36
	recounted the approach which Philip made to Nathaniel.	26:39
	Phillip said, Jesus was the Messiah.	26:44
	And he backed Nathaniel to come to him.	26:47
	When Nathaniel heard that Jesus was merely from Nazareth.	26:52
	He had serious doubts about Jesus.	26:57
	But Philip challenged him to give Jesus	27:02
	an open-minded hearing	27:04
	and to decide on the basis of who he was,	27:07
	not the town from which he came.	27:10
	It was a call for a fair hearing, a call for fair play.	27:13
	And that call comes down through every century	27:18
	and it comes to us at Duke today.	27:21
	Almighty God our heavenly Father	27:31
	give us the spirit of fairness	27:34
	and of charity and humility.	27:37
	That we may open-mindedly learn new truth.	27:41
	And that we may in charity give our fellows the benefit	27:46
	which we call for ourselves.	27:52
	Now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.	27:55
	(cool music)	27:59

Item Info

Title:

Howard C. Wilkinson - "A Call for Fair Play" (September 26, 1965)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4st7jz5q

Date:

September 26, 1965

Speaker:

Wilkinson, Howard C.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0306
ref5817_ios
uachapelsermaud
duke:628680
dcrau002304
ark:/87924/r4st7jz5q
3f1a3169-2e3b-4db2-9d3a-abf07a248d9b

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Related Resources:

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

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Howard C. Wilkinson - "A Call for Fair Play" (September 26, 1965)

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1. Howard C. Wilkinson - "A Call for Fair Play" (September 26, 1965)

Duke University Archives

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Howard C. Wilkinson - "A Call for Fair Play" (September 26, 1965)

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Duke University Archives

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