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Public Domain Photo
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt was a man of constant action
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Public Domain Photo
Franklin Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt signs the Gold Bill in 1934, one of many economic reforms he executed.
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Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt was key to the adoption of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (Public Domain Photo)
I made a big mistake this week, and it has left me simultaneously awestruck and disheartened.
Here's my mistake: I discovered that I could watch online ALL the episodes of Ken Burns' new documentary, "The Roosevelts: An Intimate History," before I left for a two-day learning retreat sponsored by the General Board of Discipleship. Being both an avid historian and a big fan of FDR and Eleanor, I leaped at the opportunity.
Between finishing the documentary and packing for the retreat, I find myself awed by the public service of Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and how their commitment shaped the America we know today. I'm also disheartened, almost depressed, for the same reason. I'm now pondering the lack of truly extraordinary leaders in both church and society who can inspire us to work our way out of the threats in which we find ourselves.
I recognize that my discouragement may be fueled by grief. Last week we held a nearly-three-hour memorial service for the Rev. Dr. William K. McElvaney in Dallas, and this past Monday Bishop Martin D. McLee was remembered in a similar extended and jam-packed memorial service in New York City. Both churchmen were spiritual giants committed to gospel redemption encompassing love and justice, and their passing has left an aching void for many of us.
This grief brings a heightened awareness of the urgency of leadership in troubled times. With few exceptions, we seem to lack men and women for whom the welfare of all people is their paramount value, people who are willing to devote themselves sacrificially to others' best interests.
The two New York branches of the Roosevelt family profiled in the Burns documentary ably demonstrated such service. Call it noblesse oblige if we must, but both the Republican Roosevelts of Oyster Bay and the Democratic Roosevelts of Hyde Park shared a common belief that they were meant to use their social position and financial wealth in order to help other people. Both Theodore and Franklin imbibed such virtues from their respective fathers, and between them they had the linchpin of Eleanor, whose accomplishment of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights rivals those of her uncle and her husband. All three faced and overcame difficulties that embued them with strength, empathy and compassion for others, qualities that propelled all three to bring about social improvements extending far beyond their own class. All of them were also quite human, with a full range of human frailties to accompany their virtues.
One can't help but compare the eras of the Roosevelts to the state in which we find American society today. In fact, since 2008 we have been living through much the same kind of economic turmoil that caused Theodore to bust up corporate trusts in the early 1900s, and Franklin to push through economic reforms in the 1930s that ironically brought many of Theodore's ideas to final fruition. Their agendas were political, but the Roosevelts' every innovation glimmered with the threads of their shared faith in the Golden Rule.
My heart cries out for 21st century political, social and church leaders like the Roosevelts. Perhaps my longing swells because I cope these days with so many personal losses in what the late Bishop David Lawson, another friend, once called "the long good-bye." Nonetheless I persist in thinking that it isn't merely melancholy (of which I have plenty) that mourns the absence of leadership, but that my sadness perceives how much we in The United Methodist Church, as elsewhere, have allowed ourselves to devolve into managers rather than leaders. We have been captured by the false notion that only what can be measured has any value in the church, despite the spiritual reality that intangible things – love, courage in adversity, selflessness, camaraderie, friendship – truly matter in life. We have succumbed to the "what's in it for me?" dictum of our media-saturated age.
Fortunately for us all, Bill McElvaney and Martin McLee were men of the Roosevelt sort. Captured by the gospel of Jesus Christ, they could not turn a blind eye to injustice, nor fail to act boldly when bold action was needed. They lifted us out of our hopelessness and apathy with their preaching and their example.
At times like this, I am dogged by the motto carved above a door at Scarritt-Bennett Center in Nashville: "Attempt Great Things for God." We are so in need of great things now; who among us has the character to attempt them?
A journalist with four decades of experience with the past 26 years focused on The United Methodist Church, Cynthia B. Astle serves as coordinator of United Methodist Insight.