This is the script of this morning’s Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
The first time I went into the Foreign Office in London I was somewhat taken aback by the sight of murals depicting renowned military victories of the British Empire – scenes that now provoke embarrassment or shame even though they belong to their time and to a particular colonial narrative of national identity.
How do we deal honestly with conflicted histories?
Well, this is a question that is dividing America as pressure grows to remove statues of Confederate leaders who 150 years ago fought a civil war over the rights to enslave other human beings. And the problem is this: how are we to remember the past with honesty and courage, not celebrating, but remembering and learning?
This is not a new problem. Walk around some German cities and you find yourself treading on small brass plates set in the pavement, recording the names and dates of Jews who had lived there before being deported and exterminated. More powerful than some huge memorial covered in names, these so-called ‘stumbling blocks’ (Stolpersteine) have a massive impact as you realise that they are everywhere.
In fact, Germany has form here. Look up beneath the roof outside the east end of the Stadtkirche in Martin Luther’s Wittenberg and you see a mediaeval engraving of a Jew being baited in a pig sty. Exposed during restoration after German reunification, rather than put it in a museum or cover it up, they shone a light from a memorial placed beneath it to the fallen Jews of Wittenberg during the Holocaust.
Somehow this faces the horrors of the past in a way that draws a line to the present and educates those whose memory doesn’t stretch that far back.
The German approach is partly informed by its Christian culture which itself is shaped by Jewish notions of memory. To re-member means, literally, to put back together the elements of a story in a way that is healthy and true. The people of Israel, having been liberated from over 400 years of oppression in Egypt and 40 years in a desert (allowing the romanticises of history to die off), prepare to enter the land of promise. And they are warned: as time goes by you will quickly forget that once you were slaves. Then you will start treating other people as your slaves. If you forget this, you will one day lose everything.
So, they shaped the year around rituals and festivals that even today re-tell that story and militate against cultural or religious amnesia.
Maybe this offers a clue not only to Americans wondering what to do with statues of Confederates, but also to the rest of us who have to wrestle with ambiguous or shameful histories. Face it, but with the humility that remembers rightly. Not “forgive and forget”, but “remember and forgive”.
August 21, 2017 at 8:17 am
Reblogged this on hungarywolf.
August 21, 2017 at 8:36 am
Stumbling Stones – a sane and simple solution to virtue-signalling.
August 21, 2017 at 8:59 am
Good stuff Nick.
One problematic aspect is the degree to which we need to compromise to achieve greater purpose. The cost of bringing the North & South together was partly allowing the South a restoration of dignity by honouring their military which was gallant and suffered huge privation in defence of their homeland. Few owned slaves.
We see the same in Northern Ireland; we would be mad to try and paint out the wall murals to a King Billy or The Provisional IRA.
Statues of Assad may be a necessary part of post-conflict Syria.
De-nazification programmes were scaled back in Germany and the Southern states alike. In contrast, our resolute exclusion of secular Baarthists in Iraq seems to have been a mistake.
The best is sometimes the enemy of the good
August 21, 2017 at 9:34 am
Great insight. As a military man we commemorated great victories with parades and dinners. We also educated recruits with the history of our regiments which somehow to me in a Christian context seem a bit OTT.
I have been researching the names on our war memorial and soon realised that they only commemorate military to the exclusion of civilian victims of war and the outnumber the military by some way.
We now commemorate all together by publishing all names on our website and their names are read out at Remembrance service alongside the military.
We believe that they deserve no less _ lest we forget!
August 21, 2017 at 10:27 am
Hello, Nick, the history of Germany interests me a lot, I have yet to visit, but I know it has had, and continues to have, a major influence over European and world history. In profoundly good ways now, particularly at this time leading on matters to do with the climate crisis, and the transition off of fossil fuels. I knew quite a few German students at the woodworking colleges here in England I studied at, and they were, all of them, very well aware of recent Germany history. I remain deeply impressed by how humble they were, willing to share their views about what happened in Germany in the 1930s and 40s, and how keen they were to be good global citizens. May I ask, please, is there a book that you can recommend that gives a good overview of how it was that fascism and Nazism emerged and took control in Germany? I know there was resistance, and have read about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and The White Rose group, but an overview of the forces these world servers were up against would be useful for me to read, thanks.
August 21, 2017 at 3:36 pm
Thank you for this, Nick. I wonder if there is a way to submit your essay to the Roanoke (Virginia) Times . . . or the Washington Post . . . or the New York Times. The USA could profit from your perspective on our past/present.
(Jim says “hi.” Greetings to Linda. Remember, our guest room is available any time you’re in our area.)
August 21, 2017 at 4:12 pm
The scout was founded by the hero of Mafeking and in my youth, it conveyed the grandeur of empire in a way I was not able to fully comprehend, aided by the writings of Kipling
August 21, 2017 at 4:38 pm
Hmm. Is there a difference that – in Germany – there is little real resistance to attempts to “reappropiate” atrocity memorials? Confederalists actively seek to maintain their statues as focal points of re-activation. See: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-20/what-confederate-monument-builders-were-thinking?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=170820&utm_campaign=sharetheview
August 21, 2017 at 5:09 pm
Really interesting — thank you. I was also interested to read the statement just issued by the President of the University of Texas at Austin (where I was a Research Fellow a few years ago), as it seems to me his thinking chimes in with yours: http://president.utexas.edu/messages/confederate-statues-on-campus.
August 21, 2017 at 8:42 pm
Very well put; ‘re-member means to put back together the elements of a story in a way that is healthy and true’ is something everyone can learn. How much we need to hear these words, a flickering light in a very dark world. Bishop Nick thank you so much.
August 22, 2017 at 4:12 pm
Good question, Ian. I will think further about that and its implications.
August 22, 2017 at 4:13 pm
Hi Lynn, just send it to them, if you think they might be interested. It would be lovely to see you again – hopefully when I/we next come to Roanoke.
August 22, 2017 at 4:13 pm
Ian, there are loads of books available, but I’ll have to think about recommending one or two.
August 23, 2017 at 2:30 pm
If you would, thanks, as I have, as I expect you do, as a stack of books lined up like airliners queuing for a runway, and a recommendation helps a lot with managing the queue. Liked the Bruce Cockburn book, btw, but as you said, a bit sort of preachy at times. I like his music and lyrics better than his writing.
August 23, 2017 at 2:46 pm
Very insightful thoughts within so very few minutes. I always listen with interest to your Thought for the Day. Thank you.
May I point out one small quibble: ‘remember’ does not mean ‘re-member’ or ‘put back the elements of’. The derivation is from Latin ‘rememorari’ (via Old French ‘remembrer’ ‘to call to mind’.) and derives ultimately from ‘memor’ i.e. ‘mind’ as does ‘memoria’ ‘memory’. Your confusion is to confuse this with ‘member’ derived from a completely different Latin word ‘membrum’ ‘limb’.
None of which detracts from the very cogent Thought for Today.
Hope that helps.
Stan Underwood
August 23, 2017 at 5:11 pm
Thanks, Stan. Unfortunately, not everything can be spelled out within the word limit allowed. I was being visual rather than etymological; but, I take the charge.
August 23, 2017 at 7:10 pm
I’m disappointed about “re-member” and hope the real derivation won’t become generally known.