Trinity and Faith During Wartime, Hot and Cold: Remarks from David Hamilton

Good morning everyone, and my deep thanks to the church for this invitation, for reasons that I hope will become clear. My thanks to Brian Williams, who reached out to me, to Bill Bartelt, my friend of more than 50 years, as he said in high school debate coach, and to Doctor Gile for sharing the pulpit this morning; and to all of you for being willing to listen to me. My congratulations on Trinity's bicentennial. I've long known about the Ministry of Word and Music here, and I'm delighted to be able to share that with you. The good news for you all is that I am not going to offer any musical expression myself.

Bill has told you about my family's ties to this church. Evansville and Trinity were for generations the center of gravity for our extended family, so it's a privilege to join you all this morning. When I walked in here this morning, I received such a warm welcome from friends here in Evansville, friends from Bloomington who have come here. I'm offering also a warm thanks and welcome and good wishes from my brother and sister and cousins, Franks, six grandchildren, and I guess now 13 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren who've come along. I'm told that my grandmother, at least congregation's legend has it my grandmother had certain signals that she would use when my grandfather's sermon was going on a little too long. I hope someone will figure out a way to tug on an ear or to let me know. I hope that won't be needed.

So, who was Frank Hamilton? I never knew him. He died at the age of 61, in 1956, a year and a day before I was born. He grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he married Myra Jones. He served in the merchant marine during what was then known as the Great War, and he then graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He then pursued a career in the ministry. He wanted to serve as a missionary overseas but was not permitted to do so, apparently because his eyesight was not good enough for the standards of the time. So, he started his ministry in the 1920s, in what was then a hardship post, Miami, before air conditioning. He and Myra then moved to Daytona Beach, where their sons, Richard and Lee, were born. Later, they moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and in 1943 came here to Trinity. In 1953, he was assigned to Central Avenue Methodist Church in Indianapolis.

When my father died, about four years ago, we found a box of his father’s, Frank’s, sermons and other papers: hundreds of sermons from the 1920s to the 1950s, carefully typed and with many other pages of notes with detailed outlines for sermons and other talks. I felt an obligation to look into these, but it was, as you might imagine, a pretty daunting task, very easy to postpone. So, Brian Williams called to me some months ago was the nudge that I needed. And I'm so grateful to have gotten that nudge. It has given me the opportunity to get acquainted through these writings with the grandfather I did not know.

It's been rewarding for me personally, in many ways, more than I can share with you and more than you would want to hear, I guarantee. But I'd like to focus on some angles that I hope will interest you. There's an old cliche about pastors: that their job is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. Frank Hamilton did both.
He had grown up in the Social Gospel movement of the early 20th century, focused on the teachings of Jesus and their implications for our lives today: to feed the hungry, to clothe and house the poor, to heal the sick, to care for the prisoner, to love our enemies, and to turn the other cheek. If you want a quick summary of the Social Gospel, take a look at the lyrics from the two hymns we've already sung today: God of Grace and God of Glory and God of Every Nation. Those and the Sermon on the Mount are a pretty good summary of the Social Gospel, and I think of the core of Frank Hamilton's faith.

He was opposed to war in general, and he was opposed to inequalities in wealth and income. His Christian faith led him to believe in what he called pacifism of a kind and socialism, and he believed deeply in racial equality and justice. These were beliefs that did not fit comfortably in mid-century America, an America whose capitalist economy was as prosperous as any nation in history and especially during World War Two, and at a time when the American system of Jim Crow, racial apartheid, and segregation were deeply rooted in law and racial prejudice. In that time and in this place, Frank Hamilton lived and preached his version of Christian and Methodist faith with its calls to action. He provided pastoral care to the families of Trinity, comforting the afflicted. And he was a man of deep faith, serious, thoughtful, and well read. I cannot say much, though, about his pastoral care because I simply don't know about that. But for purposes of my talk today, he was an outspoken minister on issues of war, peace, economic justice, and racial equality and justice.

His messages were obviously not always welcome. He was also certainly doing his work of afflicting the comfortable, and sometimes his messages were upsetting to people. Now, as you know, since the time of John Wesley, Methodists have had a tradition of the itinerant ministry. Pastors are not dependent on a particular congregation for their jobs but are assigned by bishops. And we see in Frank Hamilton's sermons the freedom enabled by that tradition.

It's said that history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. I hope, as I talk about some of the issues he faced in the 1940s and 50s, that you all will find rhymes at least with what we face today.

World War II

So, let's go back to World War II to 80 years ago. The American people were united, as we rarely have been before or since, united against the fascist enemy regimes of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. We were united in response to the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, followed just days later by Hitler's declaration of war against the United States. America's foes were genuinely evil. Certainly, their governments were. The World War that they unleashed was the most devastating war in human history. Nothing since has been comparable. The United States lost more than 416,000 lives in combat. The world lost, the numbers are staggering, estimates are between 70 and 85 million lives around the world through war and consequent disease and famine. And most of those who were killed were civilians.

The war against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in Studs Terkel’s famous title was The Good War. It was a very tough war for pacifists to oppose, and for nearly all Americans, it would have been intolerable not to fight and win that war. Evansville of the 1940s was a microcosm of the United States at war, sending young men to fight all over the world, and the city was transformed to manufacture weapons and war supplies. The P-47 fighters out on the north side by what's now the airport, landing ships for tanks here along the river, billions of rounds of ammunition. Evansville went from 18,000 manufacturing jobs in 1940 to 80,000 manufacturing jobs by 1945, virtually all in war industries. I learned some of these things yesterday at the War Museum at Brian's suggestion, and I urge you all to visit that if you want to see and hear more about that story.

Frank Hamilton understood all of that. He did not try to undermine the war effort. He certainly understood and shared the democratic ideals and goals of the war set forth in the Atlantic Charter. I'm going to take a moment to tell you about the Atlantic Charter because it was mentioned so often in his sermons of that era. It was a statement by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill in August 1941 on goals for the world after the war. Note, though, that was five months before Pearl Harbor that they were planning this. But those goals were very idealistic. No territorial aggrandizement, self-determination of people, restoration of self-government for your trade, global cooperation for better economic and social conditions, freedom from fear and want, abandonment of the use of force, and disarmament of aggressor nations. These were the concepts and goals that became the foundation for the United Nations Charter in 1945.

Frank shared those views and goals, but he was skeptical that powerful forces might divert and corrupt that idealistic war effort, and that's a theme again and again in his sermons. He drew on the teachings of Jesus to caution against militarism, excessive war profiteering, and what future President Eisenhower would call the military-industrial complex. He saw the Cold War coming and tried to warn against it. Perhaps most important, he urged his congregation to remember the humanity of the people who lived in Germany and Japan, including their individual soldiers and sailors, and to appreciate the human tragedies and costs inflicted on all sides of the war.

In January 1945, in a sermon entitled This is a Year for Great Living, he said the year of 1945 can be the greatest year of achievement in human history. Even if victory seemed assured at that point, though, civilization was hanging, tottering on the brink of an abyss. He said that 1945 would decide whether this is, quote, “Just another war.” It would decide whether the allies would fall apart in new quarrels and whether the democratic ideals of the Atlantic Charter would be realized. In words that foreshadow this morning's talk, he asked the congregation then, “What direction is your thinking taking these days? If your letters are read 100 years from now, what will they reveal as to your thoughts? As men are dying and the world is being devastated, what were you thinking about?” It's not 100 years later, just 80, but we know what Frank Hamilton was thinking about. He did not oppose the war effort, but he drew on his Christian faith to complete the picture. He warned against the temptation to hate our enemies and to dehumanize them. He urged everyone to stay humane and kind on the home front. He mourned the sacrifices of war, both on the battlefield and at home. He urged people to resist the long-term militarization of society and the divisions we would later call the Cold War. He warned against war profiteering.

So, some examples from those sermons. In January 1944, in a sermon, he said, “We shall decide sometime in 1944 whether to plant the seeds of World War three”. In a high school commencement address in April 1944. They were graduating in April because of the accelerated program to get young men into the military as quickly as possible. But he praised then-Senator Truman's report on war profiteering and again warned against planting the seeds of World War Three.

On Mother's Day, 1944, he focused on the home front. He said, “There's no use blinding ourselves to what he called the stern realities. The government takes your son. Trains him to kill. His education has stopped, and his career is blighted. Some will not return and others will return broken in health”.

A few weeks later, for Memorial Day, nine days before D-Day, he looked forward to the dangers of fighting and winning the war in a way that would bring not peace, but still more war, and he talked about the betrayal of the soldiers of World War One and their sacrifices. Quoting the famous poem In Flanders Fields from a doctor who served in World War One, “If you break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep. Though poppies grow in Flanders field”. Frank Hamilton said we had broken faith with the sacrifices of those soldiers of the Great War. They were not sleeping. Their work was not done, and now others were dying. He said, quote, “We marvel at stories coming from battlefields, but it will take courage of a different kind to make a new world to stand against American Imperialism, to stand for equal access to raw materials around the world, to stand against exploitation of other races and groups, and to stand against the forces of reaction”.

Just two days before D-Day, he told in his sermon of an extraordinary act of kindness and courage by an enemy. As he put it, language may sound a little jarring to us, quote, “A Jap airman flew through anti-aircraft fire to drop mail. Mail on Port Moresby. Mail from British internees so that their messages would reach their families”. Frank said this was one tiny act of kindness weighed against the nation's barbaric acts. The nation of Japan, but he did say it was like one candle in the darkness.

On July 2nd, 1944, he looked forward again, saying that the highest freedom today requires relinquishing national sovereignty in favor of world cooperation. On this key theme, let me step a little bit out of chronological order here and jump ahead to the spring of 1945, when leaders of the allies met in San Francisco to write the United Nations Charter. Frank Hamilton saw the conference as critical for the future of mankind. He was hopeful but worried that we would waste the opportunity.

In April 1945, just a few days after President Roosevelt had died and Harry Truman became president, Frank Hamilton preached about the need for an unseen delegate, as he put it to the United Nations meeting: Jesus Christ. Could he get past the doorkeepers at the conference? The critical meeting was the path to peace and a better world. He said, “Unless Jesus is the unseen delegate, there will be lacking what I would speak of as a decent humility before God. This is our greatest chance of failure, the pride of self-righteousness. The nations stand before God in common. Guilt not equally guilty”. He recognized the vast differences in guilt among nations and recognized that our judgment cannot and should not be set aside. But he said, all nations must come in a repentant mood with humility that will make us careful about saying we are, quote, “peace-loving nations. Humility would make us see that the causes of war go much deeper than Pearl Harbor. Peace would mean shoes for Indians, factories in China, electricity and healthy food for everyone around the world, and an equal distribution of resources. Peace would mean the end of empires of power domination over small nations and of Jim Crow, the end of economic royalists, the end of racist nationalism, economic isolationism, and commercial warfare.” “Unless Jesus is there,” he said, “the air of humility will not be present.”

He was very concerned about the proposal for the UN Security Council with the big five, who would be above their own laws, who would have veto power where their own acts of aggression were concerned, and he was worried that the hopes of millions would be dashed against the rocks, and the sacrifices of the war would be useless and in vain.

Two weeks later, as Berlin was falling and the UN conference continued, he said soldiers have done their part at terrible cost. What would the rest of us do? We had an opportunity to lay the foundations of a new civilization based on law and justice rather than brute force and fear. We needed humility, but he saw coming from the conference voting formulas that he feared would promote U.S. imperialism and tempt more war. And he urged all of the congregation to approach the postwar world with humility and generosity aimed at the whole world.

Backing up in time to September of 1944, Allied armies were racing across France in Europe and were taking islands closer and closer to Japan in the Pacific. The text in the morning of September 10th, 1944 was from Romans 8:37, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us”. More than conquerors became a theme for this and other servants. A conqueror is one who can defeat an enemy, but to be more than a conqueror is to change an enemy into an ally. Here, he said, is one of the most timely challenges we can imagine.

The defeat of Germany and Japan was in sight by that fall. The allies were conquerors. The question was whether they could be more than conquerors. Whether recalcitrant nations could be brought back into the family of nations. “This is the all-important question from the standpoint of the next generation,” he said, “the children now being born. Unless we can be more than conquerors, we will set the stage for another war.” He noted that the London economist, not noted for being either sentimental or idealistic, was warning against a harsh peace that would uproot millions, trade millions of acres of land, and that could not be enforced, that would make a mockery of the ideals of the Atlantic Charter and set the stage for another war. “Can we be more than conquerors?” he asked. He said, “I do not know,” but he was hopeful.

We know something of the results. Look at the extraordinary efforts to rebuild Western Europe with the Marshall Plan and beyond, but sadly, those efforts came largely after Europe had already been divided by the Iron Curtain, walling off the Soviet bloc, setting the stage for the Cold War. But we also know that Germany and Japan were turned from enemies into allies, and the Allied effort was more than just conquering.

October 1st, 1944. By the way, don't worry, I'm not going to go through every month for the ten years of his ministry. But October 1st, 1944 was worldwide communion Sunday. Now we're all familiar with that annual event, but think about that concept in the middle of World War Two. The sermon spoke of the fellowship of believers everywhere, all around the world, especially soldiers. Frank Hamilton reminded the congregation that that fellowship included soldiers of every nation, including enemy nations. He referred to Doctor Albert Schweitzer, the German theologian, doctor, and missionary, and to Toyohiko Kagawa, a Japanese Christian missionary and pacifist, to remind the congregation to recognize the decency and humanity to be found in Germany and Japan.
In October 1944, speaking of rhymes in history, three weeks before the election, he spoke of the need to look beyond politicians' words, to look at the men behind those words and the need for men of, quote, “unimpeachable integrity.”

In March 1945, he focused on the church and its challenges and asked what unified the church. He said, “We are not primarily Methodists or Protestants or Americans or a class group.” My impression is that any humor he had from the pulpit was pretty dry, but he did offer the aside that he sometimes wondered then if Trinity Church were not a group of people banded together to hate President Roosevelt and United Mine Workers. President John L Lewis, whose miners were often striking during these years. His answer to that question was, of course, that we should be people who are remembering Jesus, who want to see his teachings become supreme, his way of life set forth, his saving power proclaimed. And if you want to double-check that against the lyrics of today's hymns, you'll find the congruence there.

Looking ahead, he focused on the twin challenges of communism and American imperialism. Quoting then Major Guthrie May, a leading member of the church with whom he would later have some major disagreements, he said, “Soviet Russia is the first nation utterly to reject religion and to establish a purely secular civilization in the world. She points the way to a future without God, with implications, quote, so grave that all other problems are insignificant.”

On VE Day, Victory in Europe Day, May 8th, 1945, people gathered here at Trinity on just a few hours notice, and somehow he managed to have a typewritten text. I don't know how. “We have come here this noon with mingled emotions,” he wrote. “Quiet joy that fighting has ceased victoriously. A new sense of safety and hope, but let us not forget that for many the war is not over.” Still fighting in the Pacific was going on. And he wrote, “And many for whom the war would never be over. The families who had lost sons, the boys who would never see again or walk again.” At that occasion, he was looking forward to say that peace depends on our learning to live together, on our willingness, really to accept the brotherhood of man based on the fatherhood of God, upon our determination to focus on spiritual values instead of material things, and upon our willingness to relinquish some national sovereignty in the interests of mankind everywhere, and upon a new allegiance to Jesus Christ, for he is our peace.

A few hours later, that same day, there was another gathering, and he had another set of remarks prepared. He had heard U.S. leaders speak about the victory in Europe. He was pleased to hear no undue exalting but appreciated that they took justifiable pride in what American soldiers, especially the humble GI Joes, as he put it, have done. Expressing relief that once fighting in one theater was over, with weariness and a desire to come home, with heartfelt sorrow over their comrades who would not be able to come home, and with a grim determination to see through the rest of the distasteful task.

In the sermons from this era, there was generally an acceptance of a world in which men played the central roles in the public world, and women stayed home and tended to the house and raised children. The very next Sunday, on Mother's Day 1945, there was a new dimension in his message. Honoring mothers, of course, on Mother's Day, but also this: we need to be careful to avoid the inference that the women's sphere was the home and nowhere else. We should honor Judge Florence Allen, who, by the way, was the second woman appointed to a federal court and served on the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, a sister court of mine. He referred to social activist Dorothy Thompson and Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, a woman who served as long as anyone else in Franklin Roosevelt's cabinet and who deserves most of the credit, in my view, for Social Security and for the Fair Labor Standards Act, as well as fundamental laws protecting unions. He said we should honor women working in these perilous times, helping in the family budget. These remarks were still a long way from equality for women, but it was at least a recognition of where we needed to go and of the changes that World War Two was bringing in our economy and our society.

Later that summer, in 1945, in a sermon called Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread, he reminded the congregation that 5000 years ago in Egypt and even today, hunger means war or chaos worse than war. The one most immediate job today, he said, was to feed the hungry or everything that had been accomplished in San Francisco with the founding of the UN Nation will topple like a house of cards. Bread had to be shared. When men try to corner God given natural resources, he said, as men have shamefully done in this nation, when huge stores of food, clothing, and money pile up, it may work for a time, but in the end brings desolation and even more war. He said worst times are ahead unless we have learned our lesson. He pointed out the dramatic growth in corporate profits from $4.2 billion in 1939 to $9.9 billion in 1944. I'm not going to try to do the math to bring those numbers up to today's numbers, but if you visit the Evansville War Museum, ask why it cost $78,000 in 1943 dollars to build a P-47 and about $50 a month to pay a soldier.

On August 5th, 1945, he preached about different kinds of power, looking in the world for the power of God and Jesus, but he said the surface signs were against it. Instead, what he saw were the power of hundreds of B-29 Superfortress bombers pounding Japan, and he referred to the atom-breaking experiment. This was weeks after the Trinity test, but that was still top secret. And he gave that sermon the day before the first use of an atomic bomb in war in Hiroshima.

Two weeks later, after the victory in Japan. He was back to the theme: Are we more than conquerors? He recognized the U.S. as a conqueror with spectacular, miraculous achievements in engineering for military and naval success and the invention of the atomic bomb, which he said had, quote, “taken over the prerogatives of God or Satan.” We are not more than conquerors if we take over the ideals of our defeated enemies. And he warned against racial arrogance and the gang rule by the greedy. He said, “We are more than conquerors if in the flush of victory we can keep clearly before us the ultimate aims for mankind that took us into the war.” He said, take time to read the Atlantic Charter again, promising freedom from fear and want, ending imperialism and colonialism, but he shared the sickening feeling that the American people did not yet see the deeper causes of the war and the price of lasting peace. The people were celebrating, focusing more on the end of rationing of gasoline and food. He worried that the message from the war might be we died that America's gas tanks might be full. Was that really what the war was all about? And was that why many had sacrificed so much? If that rings any bells from recent fighting in the Middle East and concerns about American goals over the last generation or so, it's not an accident.

The Cold War

In 1945, he was worried about the danger of atomic destruction by 1965. He wrote and said, “We are more than conquerors if we can make allies and friends and workers together in the building of a better world out of our conquered enemies, by friendly service we will turn hate into love and convert enemies into friends. In short, we can be more than conquerors.” As I noted, we did manage to shift some of our enemies into friends, but our most powerful ally quickly became one of our most important threats, the Soviet Union. So, I'll shift a little bit now into the Cold War years.
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In November 1945 on Armistice Day, Frank Hamilton waited in line to board an LST, landing ship tanks that were built here in Evansville for a public tour of them. He heard a naval officer directing the traffic and quote, “The words he kept using sent a cold shudder through me. He was trying to protect the boys and the girls, the boys and girls in the crowd saying, take care of the children. They are the soldiers of the next war.” This appalled Frank. If that's true, he asked, why bother to take care of them now? Is that really the only purpose of a child?

In 1946, in a sermon called God Takes New Courage, he quoted a letter from a fighting man, The Forgotten Man of 1946: “Is the soldier naive enough to believe he was risking his life in battles far from home for something better than the selfish interests of the world's major powers?” Again, even more quickly than last time, Frank Hamilton said, “We are seeing that men, that is men in high places, went into this war to turn the blood of their countrymen into currency in their own pockets.” And I would urge you to go back and take a look at one of Arthur Miller's first successful plays, All My Sons, which is about the price of war profiteering, came out a few months after that sermon came out.

In November 1946, in a sermon called Is It War with Russia? At that time, some Americans were proposing a preventive atomic attack on Russia before it became a bigger threat to the United States. He asked, was Russia a courageous, noble, righteous people on August 1st, 1945, only to become on September 1st, 1945, one month later, after the war was over, a heinous, demonic potential enemy? Or did our statesmen make the most colossal error in history by defeating Hitler, only to raise up a worse enemy? The way forward, he said, “Was to combat atheistic communism by good works in Christ in our own lives, in our own local churches and in our own communities.” Frank Hamilton recognized the apocalyptic threat posed by the atomic bomb.

In a sermon called How to Live with the Atom, he worked from Mark 13, where Jesus foretells the end of times, saying the magnificent temple in Jerusalem would soon be destroyed with not one stone left on top of another. At the time of his sermon, the United States was proposing to send hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Noncommunist Greece and Turkey to oppose Communist expansion into Southeastern Europe. Frank Hamilton said in the sermon that he opposed that aid. He argued that the way to fight communism, a goal he clearly supported, was not with arms to Greece, but by making democracy more attractive.

In 1948, there was a four-way race for president. Democrat incumbent Harry Truman, Republican Thomas Dewey, Segregationist Strom Thurmond, and former Vice President Henry Wallace running as a Socialist candidate. Hamilton supported Wallace. He was also a member of a group called the Methodist Forum for Social Action. It was small but national and dedicated to social action for peace, economic justice, and racial justice and equality, along the lines of the lyrics of our hymns this morning. The Methodist Forum was attacked in the Evansville newspapers by Scripps Howard columnists and writers as a Communist front or at least as Communist sympathizing. Frank Hamilton came to its defense, both from the pulpit and in the pages of the newspaper. He made clear that he loathed communism. His sermons repeatedly condemned the dictatorships taking over in Eastern Europe and spreading in that part of the world, and he was appalled by the atheism of the communist governments.

Amid the rising Red scare in July of 1949, he talked about threats to freedom for the July 4th sermon. “Communism is a grave threat,” he said, “but we are thoroughly alert to that danger.” About 50% of newspaper editorials at the time contained warnings on the subject. Radio broadcasts were helping out. All sorts of searches and investigations were in order. He said, “We look for communists behind every telephone post we suspect,” and listen to these words, “We suspect every person who takes seriously the Sermon on the Mount, and anyone who really believed in the Declaration of Independence would today be labeled a fellow traveler at least.” Sobering thoughts for American life at that time. Frank Hamilton did not see how atheist governments, though, could ultimately hold the allegiance of their people. His defense of the Methodist Forum for Social Action was based not on communism but on the sermon on the Mount, and then again and again he returned to that text as a shorthand for the teachings of Jesus that address how we live together: the choices we make about war and peace, about equality or oppression, about love and respect for one another, or about hate, fear and segregation.

In February 1950, he linked racial justice to the fight against communism. We often forget this today, but after World War Two, America's race problem was a huge stain on the nation's efforts to establish anti-communist alliances around the world, particularly with nations in Asia and Africa. In a sermon entitled With Malice Toward None, With Charity for All, echoing Lincoln's second inaugural address, he asked, “Can we do anything about race relations?” He talked about responses in the congregation. What's the use? We run into blind prejudice and an emotional block, but he offered hope. He said, “We know about the brotherhood of man. We know who is our neighbor.” Recall the story of the Good Samaritan. “We know there are no inferior races. We know that race relations are a blight on American moral achievement.” We know that the then what we call the Negro citizen was treated as a second class citizen. And he worried that the race issue may tip the scales in the world, that is, in the contest between democratic capitalism and communist. And he said, “Both the segregated and those doing the segregating suffer from this system. Our prejudice saps our moral strength and is more burdensome than our taxes.” He said “Bystanders cannot, are not, innocent in these relationships, and there is a need to act.” His sermons refer to frequent meetings among local black and white leaders to promote understanding. This in the years long before leading up to the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown against Board of Education, there were so many people in towns like Evansville, in places like Trinity, helping build the foundation that has become the civil rights movement that transformed the United States.

In a key Cold War sermon in August 1950, he wrote, “There is one issue, not two.” He said this was, quote, “A sermon I must preach if I'm going to live with myself.” The one issue was the fate of civilization. Man's duel with the hydrogen bomb. Given our responsibility for the world and our concern for our children, he said it was hard to see a more important issue than that. Not the issues of Taiwan, Quemoy, and Matsu after the communist takeover in China. Now, destruction of humanity was a distinct possibility. He said, “The gigantic struggle is not the U.S. versus Russia, not capitalism versus communism, not free against slave, not God fearing versus godless, but man against the bomb. Shall we put an end to the human race, or shall we renounce war?” “Christians,” he said, “must be witnesses for hope in God, in whose hands lie the destinies of nations.”

Now, with help from Bill Bartelt on this, who found news reports where I will have to work from notes short of the full text. It's clear that the sermon focused on the decision to go to war in Korea a couple of months earlier. “I believe with all my heart there must be a better way.” He described the prospect of World War Three with 100 million dead, half our cities destroyed, leaving survivors in a struggle so that humanity would become one vast Murder, Inc. Would that struggle for freedom be worthwhile at such a cost? And even if we won, would we preside over what he called “a vast valley of dry bones?” Despite his long disdain for war profiteering, he warned there won't be any profits for anyone from the next war.

In February 1952, Frank Hamilton brought a lot of these themes together in a sermon called Be Tolerant but Not Too Tolerant. And the end is in sight, I can assure you. “So how do we balance what we tolerate and we care about enough to want to oppose and change?” he asked. He quoted Oliver Cromwell, who spoke to some Scottish church leaders, famously quote, “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.” Frank Hamilton continued, “I happen to be one who thinks we have lost our minds in the lust for power and military might that is dominating our policy. I hope, however, that I have the grace to realize that I could be wrong and that in a world like this, armaments may be necessary economically as well as militarily. Hence, let me not question the motives of all who favor such a policy. All I ask is that others be tolerant also. They might be wrong, for intolerance of difference is the mark of dictatorship.”

In that same sermon, Frank Hamilton reminded the congregation of the bombing two months earlier of the home of the leader of the Florida chapter of the NAACP, killing both that leader and his wife. The bombing came after the leader, Mr. Moore, had called for the prosecution of a local sheriff for the killing of one prisoner and the wounding of another while they were being transported for trial. This was just one highly publicized incident, among what he called a rising tide of intolerance of racial and anti-Semitic violence at the time in the early 1950s. Hamilton spoke of Jesus’ tolerance for human failings, especially among the outcast and downtrodden, and his intolerance of hypocrisy and self-righteousness among the powerful of his day. Think of those who accused and wanted to stone the woman caught in adultery, or think about the money changers in the temple.

Hamilton again referred to the Methodist Federation for Social Action. He was a member, and the group had been attacked, as I said, as communist sympathizers. He called the group almost infinitesimal but explained that the very reason for such groups in the various denominations is that most of us are not intolerant enough. He said, “We tolerate racial prejudice. We tolerate the exploitation of the weak. We tolerate inflation. We tolerate economic involvement with the war to the extent we are more afraid of peace than war, and we tolerate a Korean war.” “For God's sake,” he said, “and I say that reverently. If we are going on with easy, good-natured, indifferent tolerance of injustice and social evils, then let us at least have the grace to have respect for those who, however mistaken their methods or even their ideas, care enough for human personality to be fiercely intolerant in certain areas. Any person who cares deeply is going to be intolerant concerning that for which he truly cares.”​

Hamilton's Last Trinity Sermon

In June 1953, he gave his last sermon at Trinity. He said, “I shall always hold in grateful remembrance the preaching ministry in this church.” He said, “I have given the preaching ministry at Trinity, the best of which I am capable. With sincerity, I have tried to declare the gospel as I have understood it, not altogether shrinking from some aspects of the gospel that are not easy to declare in these times through which we have been living.” “Especially then,” he said, “shall I hold in grateful remembrance the freedom of Trinity's pulpit. Though you have differed sharply at times, you have, with very, very few exceptions, never let it make a difference in your loyalty to and support of the church or in your friendliness to me personally. In a day when that freedom of the pulpit is, to put it mildly, tottering,” he said, “Trinity has a free pulpit.”

As you might imagine, working from a supply of hundreds of sermons, I could go on. But there are limits to my energy and to your patience. I hope you will understand that I have not tried to capture the full richness of Frank Hamilton in his faith and ministry. I chose to focus on the prophetic aspects of his preaching, focused on the most pressing issues of his day when the United States and the world were making choices that shape our lives today, and I hope that his links between Christian faith and modern life will resonate with some of you today, as they do with me in our political and social and economic lives. The gospel of Jesus is not silent about those issues, and its messages are not exclusively or even primarily those associated with the far right of modern American politics.

Thank you all again very much for your hospitality and welcome today. It has been a real pleasure, and I look forward to being able to talk with some of you afterwards.