Retired Pastor Urges Compassion in Politics to Save Civilization

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Special to United Methodist Insight | May 21, 2025

There’s a story about the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead being asked what she viewed as the earliest signs of human civilization. As the story goes, she came prepared for the question.   She paused and said, “You might think that that those signs would be vast libraries or mighty cities. You might think that it would be gilded palaces or palatial homes. But no.”

And with that she lifted up a human femur that had been broken and healed. She said that bone was the first sign of human civilization. She said, “This bone was evidence that the community stopped and took healing action. This bone, broken and healed thousands of years ago, was evidence of an emerging human compassion and care beyond the immediate needs of the self.”

In other words, civilization began when we started to care for each other. Civilization began to take root when compassion and empathy emerged and entered our collective reality.  

To put it more succinctly, civilization grew when we realized that the welfare of the world was more important than our own selfish, greedy, narrow concerns. Civilization flourished when we learned how to care for one another, when we learned that our own welfare is tied intimately to the welfare of others. 

Please understand. My remarks tonight are no attempt to “play nice.” I want to be clear. We are currently in a struggle for the survival of our civilization. The forces of gluttony, corruption and avarice are on the march. They are large and in charge, and they mean to do us harm.

So, to those who wring their hands and wonder what these folks want, this is it. Make no mistake. They want to hurt us.

Furthermore, when I say “us,” I do not merely refer to folks who agree with me. I mean all of us. Every person in every community in every county and state across the land. Everyone.

Think about it. Stripping Medicare will kill people. It’s that simple. It’s that real, and the people pushing this abomination well know it. And the deaths will not discriminate between left and right.

Selling our precious public lands is going to ruin economies and have environmental impacts that will harm Republicans and Democrats alike. These lands belong to “We the People!” not to bloated oligarchs who only seek to increase their already obscene wealth.

Killing public education and quashing free inquiry and open dialogue will wound us all and leave us in a state of bleeding ignorance. Targeting immigrants and migrants is the same as hanging that target on the back of every one of us. And you know as well as I do that the list of planned devastation is long and thorough.

Remember. They are out to do harm.

So, friends, as we gather this night, let us link arms in an unshakable, assertive hope. Let us move together with unswerving commitment to growing our empathy, expanding our compassion, and extending true human kindness to every person.

If we are to be known, friends, let us be known for just that: Our kindness. Let us echo the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as we seek to build the “beloved community,” as we become the hope and healing we wish to see here in Iron County, Utah, in the State of Utah and in our nation … and indeed throughout the world.

And let this compassion and kindness be turned into action, into healing the broken bones of our sisters and brothers. And let it be turned into votes.

The Rev. Schuyler Rhodes is a retired clergy member of the California-Nevada Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. He retired to Cedar City in Iron County in southwest Utah, where he was re-elected as county chairman for the Democratic Party on May 17, 2025.