Generous Orthodoxy

<v Speaker 1>Pushkin. I grew up in southwestern Ontario, farming country, in
<v Speaker 1>a place called Waterloo County. Waterloo County is home to
<v Speaker 1>one of the largest populations of Mennonites in the world.
<v Speaker 1>I grew up among Mennonites, went to school with them.
<v Speaker 1>They're Anabaptists, which is one of the oldest Protestant denominations.
<v Speaker 1>Mennonites are small in number, industrious, close knit. Came to
<v Speaker 1>North America after they were persecuted in Russia. The joke
<v Speaker 1>is they're basically Jews who farm. So I went home
<v Speaker 1>to see my parents not long ago, and everyone was
<v Speaker 1>talking about something online called an Open Letter to my
<v Speaker 1>beloved church. It's a long letter touching on family and
<v Speaker 1>devotion and faith in scripture. A Mennonite pastor wrote it, actually,
<v Speaker 1>I should say an ex Mennonite pastor, a man named
<v Speaker 1>Chester Wanger. I read the letter and I was so
<v Speaker 1>taken by it that I went to see him, drove
<v Speaker 1>four and a half hours on one cold January day.
<v Speaker 2>Oh my, just every day three four or five people say, oh,
<v Speaker 2>we just like your letter. We like your letter, we
<v Speaker 2>like your letter.
<v Speaker 1>The letter has been read more than two hundred and
<v Speaker 1>thirty thousand times on Mennonite dot org. To put that
<v Speaker 1>in perspective, there were only eight hundred thousand mena nits
<v Speaker 1>in North America. It's been liked and shared all over
<v Speaker 1>Facebook hashtag Chester Wenger is a thing. I asked Wenger
<v Speaker 1>if he anticipated any of his words going viral.
<v Speaker 2>I didn't even know it. Didn't even know what viral meant.
<v Speaker 2>The letter went virals. What does that mean? It's like
<v Speaker 2>a virus. It just read. I was shocked.
<v Speaker 1>My name is Malcolm Gladwell. This is Revisionist History, my
<v Speaker 1>podcast about things misunderstood and overlooked. This week's episode is
<v Speaker 1>about Chester Wenger and about an idea called generous orthodoxy.
<v Speaker 1>That phrase generous orthodoxy comes from a theologian named Hans Fry.
<v Speaker 1>It's an oxymoron.
<v Speaker 3>Of course.
<v Speaker 1>To be orthodox is to be committed to tradition. To
<v Speaker 1>be generous, as Frida fines, it is to be open
<v Speaker 1>to change. But Fri I thought the best way to
<v Speaker 1>live our lives was to find the middle ground. Because
<v Speaker 1>orthodoxy without generosity leads to blindness, and generosity without orthodoxy
<v Speaker 1>is shallow and empty. One of the hardest things in
<v Speaker 1>the world is to find that balance. Not just for
<v Speaker 1>those pursuing a life of faith, but for anyone interested
<v Speaker 1>in making their world better. I think Chester Wenger shows
<v Speaker 1>us the way.
<v Speaker 2>I wanted to study Bible, and I got the first
<v Speaker 2>the best of arts, and then I got a Bachelor
<v Speaker 2>of Theology. I was very interested in getting all the
<v Speaker 2>training I could.
<v Speaker 1>Wenger lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, another man of night Enclave,
<v Speaker 1>in a little house just off the turnpike, where he
<v Speaker 1>and his wife, Sarah Jane brought up their eight children.
<v Speaker 1>Wenger has a barrel chest, straight back, real handshake, big
<v Speaker 1>head of white hair. He looks a little like a
<v Speaker 1>cross between Colonel Sanders and an NFL linebacker. He's ninety
<v Speaker 1>eight years old. This is the part of the evening
<v Speaker 1>that I remember the most. The very end of several
<v Speaker 1>hours in his tiny living room. It nearly brought me
<v Speaker 1>to tears.
<v Speaker 2>As I thought I wanted to read from Romans. It's
<v Speaker 2>very familiar, for I'm not ashamed of the Gospel of
<v Speaker 2>Christ Jesus. It is the power of God for salvation
<v Speaker 2>to everyone who has faith. Notice how broad that is.
<v Speaker 1>Let me start with a few more words about Mennonites,
<v Speaker 1>because what Wanger did makes no sense unless you understand
<v Speaker 1>the world that he inhabits. The theologian Palm Rebcker has
<v Speaker 1>a lovely phrase to describe the Mennonite way. Jesus is
<v Speaker 1>the center of our faith. Community is the center of
<v Speaker 1>our lives. Reconciliation is the center of our work. It's
<v Speaker 1>hard to explain to an outsider how seriously the Mennonites
<v Speaker 1>take these three things Jesus, community, and reconciliation. They don't
<v Speaker 1>use the word community, for example, in the metaphorical way
<v Speaker 1>like most of us. Do you know, I'm a member
<v Speaker 1>of the journalist community. To Mennonite's community is a much
<v Speaker 1>more serious thing. Listen to my friend Jim Laptisin, who's
<v Speaker 1>a Mennonite pastor.
<v Speaker 4>In my dad's church growing up, it was very strict.
<v Speaker 4>He told me at one point that if people didn't
<v Speaker 4>believe you were a given ten percent of your income
<v Speaker 4>to the church, they had the right to audit your books.
<v Speaker 4>And he said that without any recrimination or any condemnation,
<v Speaker 4>and even a bit of humor. He was like, and
<v Speaker 4>so my books got out, and twice by his good
<v Speaker 4>friend and neighbor up their own.
<v Speaker 1>How on earth? But did that conversation happen. The treasurer
<v Speaker 1>came to him and said, we don't think you're giving enough.
<v Speaker 4>Absolutely, And I have a really high view of the church,
<v Speaker 4>and you know you speak on behalf of the church.
<v Speaker 4>And we've all submitted to this, so it's not like
<v Speaker 4>I'm submitting to something that you haven't. So we're all
<v Speaker 4>in us together, yeah, and we're all trying to be
<v Speaker 4>as faithful as we can be.
<v Speaker 1>That business of auditing each other's books, that's from fifty
<v Speaker 1>or sixty years ago, a different era. But I think
<v Speaker 1>it gives you a flavor of what Mennonites mean when
<v Speaker 1>they say we're all in this together. When I was
<v Speaker 1>a kid, just after we moved to Canada from England,
<v Speaker 1>we heard about a barn raising not far from us.
<v Speaker 1>When a Mennonite farmer's barn burns down, the people from
<v Speaker 1>church gather as soon as they can bring food and
<v Speaker 1>building materials and anything else to replace what was lost,
<v Speaker 1>and they build a new barn. Frame it up one day,
<v Speaker 1>put it up the next. My parents were Presbyterians, but
<v Speaker 1>my father found the idea of a barn raising incredibly impressive,
<v Speaker 1>so he crashed it.
<v Speaker 5>You have to.
<v Speaker 1>Understand that these are what were called Old Order Mennonites,
<v Speaker 1>like the Amish. They drove horses and buggies and lived
<v Speaker 1>without electricity. My dad was a college professor in a
<v Speaker 1>rusty Puusia with an impenetrable English accent and a shirt
<v Speaker 1>and a tie. They'd never seen him or anything like
<v Speaker 1>him before. They just put him to work, no questions asked.
<v Speaker 1>We're all in this together. Eventually my parents would join
<v Speaker 1>the Mennonite Church, and my brother would marry a Mennonite pastor.
<v Speaker 1>And I suspect that sense of community is why there's
<v Speaker 1>something beautiful about that kind of belonging. One more Mennonite
<v Speaker 1>story from my friend Jim Leftisen. This might even be
<v Speaker 1>the quintessential Mennonite story. About a guy who buys a
<v Speaker 1>house from another Mennonite whom, of course, he trusted.
<v Speaker 4>He bought the house and find out that in fact
<v Speaker 4>he'd been light to so. On either side of this
<v Speaker 4>man two men from a Mennonite church. One of them
<v Speaker 4>said to him, did he tell you that the septic
<v Speaker 4>system was in good shape? And he said yes he did,
<v Speaker 4>and he said you have to fix it. He said, yeah,
<v Speaker 4>I have to replace it completely. Was twelve thousand dollars
<v Speaker 4>or something.
<v Speaker 1>The septic system, one of the most expensive things in
<v Speaker 1>a house.
<v Speaker 4>He said, well, here's four thousand dollars for that. What
<v Speaker 4>he did wasn't right, and he goes to our church
<v Speaker 4>and the guy on the other side said, dumb, I'll
<v Speaker 4>pay whatever he didn't pay, so they together covered it.
<v Speaker 4>He said, he goes to our church, and that isn't right.
<v Speaker 1>This is the world Chester Wenger in habits. He's squarely
<v Speaker 1>in the middle of it. Wenger's father was one of
<v Speaker 1>the founders of a big Mennonite seminary in Virginia. His daughter, Sarah,
<v Speaker 1>is the president of the Big Mennonite Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana.
<v Speaker 1>Wenger lived seventeen years in Ethiopia, where he helped to
<v Speaker 1>found and build what is now the largest Mennonite church
<v Speaker 1>in the world. To Deep Ties, Deep Ties, you guys
<v Speaker 1>are Mennonite royalty. Basically in Hans Frey's terms. Wenger is
<v Speaker 1>an Orthodox Manolone, a member of the Blossom Hill Congregation
<v Speaker 1>in Lancaster. But there's another side to him. Mennonites come
<v Speaker 1>in all kinds of shapes and sizes. My parents' church
<v Speaker 1>in Ontario was pretty liberal, full of college professors and
<v Speaker 1>software engineers and teachers. My mom and her best friend
<v Speaker 1>Lorraine were doing feminist retreats back in the seventies. But
<v Speaker 1>Lancaster County, where Wenger is from, is much more conservative.
<v Speaker 1>The Mennonites there didn't accept women as our dained ministers
<v Speaker 1>until a couple of years ago, and that was something
<v Speaker 1>that Wenger struggled with because he's not just orthodox, he's generous.
<v Speaker 1>He's open to the world. He spent ten years as
<v Speaker 1>pastor of Blossom Hill in the nineteen eighties, so when
<v Speaker 1>it came to the prohibition against female pastors, Wenger would
<v Speaker 1>do what kind of workaround. The rules said women could
<v Speaker 1>not be ordained as ministers, meaning they couldn't be formally
<v Speaker 1>recognized as church leaders, but they could still talk on
<v Speaker 1>Sunday morning.
<v Speaker 2>Right, I used women in the pulpit that weren't ordained.
<v Speaker 2>I preach, and then next Sunday I'd have this woman preach,
<v Speaker 2>and then I'd have my wife preach. I didn't want
<v Speaker 2>to do all the preaching.
<v Speaker 1>Would if no one questions your loyalty, you can get
<v Speaker 1>away with that kind of subversion. Chester Wenger walked that
<v Speaker 1>fine line orthodox but also generous. Until one day, Chester
<v Speaker 1>Sun Philip comes to him, and the line becomes almost
<v Speaker 1>impossible to walk.
<v Speaker 2>It all.
<v Speaker 6>Growing up, I had no awareness of homosexuality anywhere. I
<v Speaker 6>remember somewhere along the line, maybe when I was early
<v Speaker 6>adolescence it I talked about a cousin of mine, but
<v Speaker 6>I didn't know what they were.
<v Speaker 1>Talking about, the question of whether someone might be gay
<v Speaker 1>simply never occurred to him. And it goes without saying
<v Speaker 1>that a community that did not permit the ordination of
<v Speaker 1>women until quite recently did not have progressive views on homosexuality.
<v Speaker 1>But one day Phil pulled his father aside. What did
<v Speaker 1>he tell you?
<v Speaker 2>I don't know the words he used, but I understood
<v Speaker 2>that he had attraction for males instead of females.
<v Speaker 7>And I said, maybe you can outgrow this, and so
<v Speaker 7>that's where that's where we left it. And about a
<v Speaker 7>year later he came back and said, Dad, I haven't
<v Speaker 7>outgrown it. And so we had this.
<v Speaker 2>Awareness that he's that's who he is.
<v Speaker 1>So Phil goes off to college, he comes home, he
<v Speaker 1>brings up the subject again.
<v Speaker 8>And I came to him and I explained to him
<v Speaker 8>ten minutes before I was going to drive back to
<v Speaker 8>college in Virginia.
<v Speaker 1>That's Phil. He's in the room with me and Chester
<v Speaker 1>sitting across from his father.
<v Speaker 8>That dad, this is for real. I'm going to identify
<v Speaker 8>as being gay. I'm going to tell other people I'm gay.
<v Speaker 8>I'm going to date other guys. And you know, you're
<v Speaker 8>going to have to get used to this.
<v Speaker 1>As word got out in Lancaster, the consequences were immediate.
<v Speaker 1>Phil had a job with the church. He lost it.
<v Speaker 1>He was instructed to come in and confess his sins.
<v Speaker 1>He refused. Chester Wanger had a position in the Midda
<v Speaker 1>Night administration in Lancaster at the time, and attended a
<v Speaker 1>local Meddonite church One Sunday morning. The pastor got up
<v Speaker 1>and made an announcement.
<v Speaker 2>He just read off in church one day that Phil
<v Speaker 2>Winger is no longer a member of our congregation. And
<v Speaker 2>we didn't know it. He didn't approach you first know
<v Speaker 2>that he was doing that, and Phil hadn't had contact
<v Speaker 2>with him either or him with Phil, and I couldn't
<v Speaker 2>believe it.
<v Speaker 8>It was illilateral and I wasn't part of the conversation,
<v Speaker 8>and the deed was already done, and at that point
<v Speaker 8>my faith had pretty much diminished. To next to nothing,
<v Speaker 8>and I was going to proceed with a life outside
<v Speaker 8>the traditional church community.
<v Speaker 1>Think about this through Chester Wenger's eyes. He can accept
<v Speaker 1>his son's sexuality, but his own church, the church to
<v Speaker 1>which he has been loyal all his life, that church
<v Speaker 1>has now cast his son out. His orthodoxy is in
<v Speaker 1>conflict with his generosity, and his son is caught in
<v Speaker 1>the middle. Can you imagine not just the pain, but
<v Speaker 1>the guilt. He gave his life to a church that
<v Speaker 1>said we're all in this together, and now that church
<v Speaker 1>has split his family in two.
<v Speaker 2>I always told Phil that your faith is most important
<v Speaker 2>to me. Don't give up the faith in Jesus.
<v Speaker 1>Phil went on to start a successful restaurant business. At
<v Speaker 1>one point, some years ago, he goes back to his
<v Speaker 1>high school reunion and there some of his old classmates
<v Speaker 1>confront him and tell him they would never eat at
<v Speaker 1>one of his restaurants. Phil tells his mother.
<v Speaker 2>And you told her all this, and she said to you,
<v Speaker 2>don't give up on Jesus.
<v Speaker 1>He's sitting in his chair straight back ninety eight years old,
<v Speaker 1>Colonel Sanders meets a linebacker, a man of God, and
<v Speaker 1>as Chester Wenger talks about that moment years ago, when
<v Speaker 1>he worried that his son's soul was in jeopardy. He
<v Speaker 1>starts to.
<v Speaker 9>Weep, and I guess there was no expression at that
<v Speaker 9>point particularly, But as he went to go out the door,
<v Speaker 9>he gave.
<v Speaker 3>A broad swap.
<v Speaker 2>Test to testified, don't give up what Jesus, and he
<v Speaker 2>seemed to accept it with a smile. And that test
<v Speaker 2>tests very deeply.
<v Speaker 1>At the beginning of this story, I said that balancing
<v Speaker 1>loyalty and conscience is just about the hardest thing to do.
<v Speaker 1>Let me give you another example. It's not as wrenching
<v Speaker 1>as Chester Wenger's story, but it gets at some of
<v Speaker 1>the same issues. It's from Princeton University, one of the
<v Speaker 1>schools that's been swept up in the recent wave of
<v Speaker 1>campus unrest. The controversy is over Woodrow Wilson, who was
<v Speaker 1>president of Princeton from nineteen oh two to nineteen ten,
<v Speaker 1>and of course, later went on to serve two terms
<v Speaker 1>as President of the United States. Princeton named one of
<v Speaker 1>his most prestigious graduate schools after him, the Wilson School
<v Speaker 1>of Public and International Affairs. Wilson did many remarkable and
<v Speaker 1>important things as the head of Princeton and later as
<v Speaker 1>president but he was a racist, and not a mild one,
<v Speaker 1>a kind of nasty one. So in the fall of
<v Speaker 1>twenty fifteen, activists at the school staged a thirty two
<v Speaker 1>hours sitting in the office of the Princeton president. They
<v Speaker 1>want Wilson's name off.
<v Speaker 10>The graduate schoolerpetuated in ideology that has led to the
<v Speaker 10>continuous shut aside of black people in this country.
<v Speaker 3>He is a murderer. We all have nothing. This university everything.
<v Speaker 1>Jacob Smith, one of my producers, talked to one of
<v Speaker 1>the protesters, a sophomore named will Glory Tanjohn. The promise
<v Speaker 1>of Princeton, she argues, is that all its students will
<v Speaker 1>feel at home. This campus is for you. But everywhere
<v Speaker 1>she goes, she sees pictures of Wilson.
<v Speaker 10>Everywhere in the most random places, there are rooms that
<v Speaker 10>have just all these huge photos of this white man
<v Speaker 10>peering down on you. Right, So when you see these
<v Speaker 10>kind of things, you really feel like, what was this
<v Speaker 10>university meant for me? Or is it still really meant
<v Speaker 10>for white men?
<v Speaker 1>Now? I happen to agree with Tanjohn. How do you
<v Speaker 1>think Princeton became one of the wealthiest universities in the world.
<v Speaker 1>The place is ground zero for rich white guys. Just
<v Speaker 1>walk around campus. There's the carl Icon Laboratory. That's Carl Icon,
<v Speaker 1>rich white male, corporate raider billionaire. There's the Frick Chemistry Laboratory.
<v Speaker 1>That's Henry Clay Frick, white male robber baron. The Firestone
<v Speaker 1>Library that's the rich white guy who started Firestone Tires.
<v Speaker 1>The Bezos Center for Neural Circuit Dynamics, you know, the
<v Speaker 1>rich white guy who founded Amazon. Look over there, it's
<v Speaker 1>the Lewis Center for the Arts. That's Peter Lewis, the
<v Speaker 1>white guy who started Progressive Insurance. The John Scully Center
<v Speaker 1>for the Neuroscience of Mind and Behavior. Scully a rich
<v Speaker 1>white guy. Not to be confused, by the way, with
<v Speaker 1>the other John Scully, a rich white guy who used
<v Speaker 1>to run Apple. This is the even richer John Scully
<v Speaker 1>who manages billions of dollars on Wall Street. Do I
<v Speaker 1>need to go on Rockefeller Hall, richest white guy ever.
<v Speaker 1>Of course, there's also Emma B. Bloomberg Hall. Emma Bloomberg
<v Speaker 1>not a white guy, except wait, she's the daughter of
<v Speaker 1>Michael Bloomberg. Super super like forty three billion dollar rich
<v Speaker 1>white guy. They don't hide their identities at Princeton. They
<v Speaker 1>put their identities on every single building on campus. A
<v Speaker 1>few weeks after the students sit in, there was a
<v Speaker 1>town hall meeting on the Princeton campus to discuss whether
<v Speaker 1>or not to change the name of the Wilson School.
<v Speaker 10>I really hope that people really think about why we
<v Speaker 10>are so tied to this name, like what really changes
<v Speaker 10>if we change the name.
<v Speaker 1>It was held at the Richardson Auditorium, lots of dark
<v Speaker 1>wood in stone tapestries on the wall. By the way,
<v Speaker 1>a building named in honor of David B. Richardson, class
<v Speaker 1>of thirty three, usefully described in the Princeton promotional literature
<v Speaker 1>as a quote lifelong enthusiast of classical music and a
<v Speaker 1>successful lawyer and investor. Another rich white guy. Think about it,
<v Speaker 1>Princeton literally could not find a single place to discuss
<v Speaker 1>the troubled legacy of a rich white guy that was
<v Speaker 1>not named after a rich white guy. Here's the first
<v Speaker 1>guy who gets up to speak.
<v Speaker 11>I'm Harvey Rothberg, class of the great class of nineteen
<v Speaker 11>forty nine. I absolutely believe that the name of Woodrow
<v Speaker 11>Wilson should be preserved at the head of the School
<v Speaker 11>of Public and International Affairs.
<v Speaker 1>Rothberg says it's important that everyone know who Wilson was
<v Speaker 1>and what the man did.
<v Speaker 11>There could be a memorial plaque, engraved in bronze and
<v Speaker 11>so on, which would detail in a short paragraph his
<v Speaker 11>great achievements as president of this university, and in a
<v Speaker 11>second paragraph his great achievements as president of the United
<v Speaker 11>States and on the international scene as well. But there
<v Speaker 11>could also be a final paragraph, a short one, which
<v Speaker 11>would say something like Wilson's prejudiced views on racial matters
<v Speaker 11>were undoubtedly influenced and shaped by his background and his
<v Speaker 11>growing up in the post bellum South.
<v Speaker 1>Then another alum gets up and he agrees.
<v Speaker 11>He's a giant.
<v Speaker 5>You can't just take his name off of schools or colleges.
<v Speaker 5>We have to keep them. All people are flawed.
<v Speaker 1>He also likes the plack idea. But this speaker has
<v Speaker 1>a quibble with a short paragraph about prejudice.
<v Speaker 5>I think it can't just say Wilson was influenced by
<v Speaker 5>the prevailing more a's of the time, because a man
<v Speaker 5>of his stature should have seen beyond that. And I
<v Speaker 5>think some of the platforms to acknowledge that real harm
<v Speaker 5>was caused to real people.
<v Speaker 1>This is what the protesters are up against. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>can you believe these guys. When Wilson took office as president,
<v Speaker 1>the Federal Civil Service was one of the only institutions
<v Speaker 1>in Washington that was integrated. Blacks had jobs next to whites.
<v Speaker 1>One of the first things Wilson does is reverse that policy.
<v Speaker 1>Lots of black federal workers get fired, and it becomes
<v Speaker 1>really hard for educated African Americans to get a job
<v Speaker 1>in Washington. And when a delegation of black professionals comes
<v Speaker 1>to him to complain, you know what he says to them.
<v Speaker 1>Segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit and ought
<v Speaker 1>to be so regarded by you, gentlemen. This is the
<v Speaker 1>guy Princeton venerates. And the thing that the first two
<v Speaker 1>speakers are arguing about is the wording of the last
<v Speaker 1>paragraph of the plaque. They want to put up the
<v Speaker 1>plaque as if the whole controversy were really just an
<v Speaker 1>exercise in improving signage. For goodness sake, take the man's
<v Speaker 1>name down. If you don't want to change the schools stationary,
<v Speaker 1>just choose another Wilson. There are lots of Wilson's out
<v Speaker 1>there who don't hate black people. Jackie Rita Russell flip
<v Speaker 1>rebel Owen, how about the Owen Wilson School of Public
<v Speaker 1>and International Affairs. But the only way people like this
<v Speaker 1>are going to listen to the protesters is if they
<v Speaker 1>think the protesters care about Princeton, care about Princeton the
<v Speaker 1>way it is. They'll accept generosity only if it comes
<v Speaker 1>with some orthodoxy. They want some acknowledgment that the protesters
<v Speaker 1>appreciate what they've been given, some concession that the rich
<v Speaker 1>white guys who make them so uncomfortable also made it
<v Speaker 1>possible for them to attend a school that looks like Versailles,
<v Speaker 1>if Versailles, by some accident of history, had been built
<v Speaker 1>not outside of Paris, but between Trenton and Newark, New Jersey.
<v Speaker 1>But instead, what do they hear?
<v Speaker 3>This university owes us everything.
<v Speaker 12>I walked around on this campus understanding that this was
<v Speaker 12>built on the backs of my people, and I owe
<v Speaker 12>none of you guys anything.
<v Speaker 3>We owe white people nothing, and not for the for
<v Speaker 3>the evilness and.
<v Speaker 12>A white hatred in this country, we would not have
<v Speaker 12>to be fighting for our rights.
<v Speaker 3>All of this is mine. My people built this place.
<v Speaker 1>She's angry, she's passionate. Maybe right now she regrets her
<v Speaker 1>choice of words when I was an angry young student
<v Speaker 1>a generation ago. I ended up regretting my words. But
<v Speaker 1>I went to school before every emotional outburst got immortalized
<v Speaker 1>on YouTube, and those words are what every crotchety old
<v Speaker 1>Princeton alum heard when they went online. All of this
<v Speaker 1>is mine. How do you think they felt when they
<v Speaker 1>heard that or some version of this.
<v Speaker 10>I don't feel welcomes when you walk on this campus
<v Speaker 10>and you see the name of POJOA. Wilson on the
<v Speaker 10>graduate building, right will.
<v Speaker 1>Glory Tanjohn complaining about the privileged white guys peering down
<v Speaker 1>on her. But she chose to go to Princeton Ground
<v Speaker 1>zero for the privileged white guy. It's not like the
<v Speaker 1>school covered over the names on those buildings when she
<v Speaker 1>came for her campus visit. She's basically saying that the
<v Speaker 1>school I chose to attend, the school that makes no
<v Speaker 1>attempt to hide what it is and what it stands for,
<v Speaker 1>is not I suddenly realize a place that makes me
<v Speaker 1>feel comfortable, and so I want to change it. These
<v Speaker 1>are not arguments that are going to convince anyone. I
<v Speaker 1>don't need to tell you what happens after a decent
<v Speaker 1>interval A few months later, the Wilson Legacy Review Committee
<v Speaker 1>comes out with the university's decision. The head of the
<v Speaker 1>committee says, at the end of the day, what we
<v Speaker 1>learned was that Wilson was a complicated and flawed individual.
<v Speaker 1>But when you look at the pluses and minuses, we
<v Speaker 1>didn't feel that the minuses were enough to eliminate his
<v Speaker 1>name a whitewash. Here's what the protesters should have done. Instead,
<v Speaker 1>they should have said, Wilson's name makes us so uncomfortable
<v Speaker 1>that we're not coming back next semester unless you change it,
<v Speaker 1>and we're going to tell other perspective Princeton students, minority
<v Speaker 1>and otherwise to do the same. Instead of talking about
<v Speaker 1>what they were owed by Princeton, they should have talked
<v Speaker 1>about what they were willing to give up for Princeton.
<v Speaker 1>I am willing to give up my position at the
<v Speaker 1>New Jersey Versailles in order to make the school a
<v Speaker 1>better place. That's how much I care about Princeton. Generosity
<v Speaker 1>mixed with orthodoxy, Now would that have worked idea? But
<v Speaker 1>the best and brightest standing up and saying I'm giving
<v Speaker 1>up my place at one of the world's great universities
<v Speaker 1>in order to save it from itself. Certainly has a
<v Speaker 1>better shot than a sleepover in the president's office. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>it would have been a costly strategy. It would have
<v Speaker 1>required a real sacrifice. That's why generous orthodoxy is so hard.
<v Speaker 1>When he was twenty nine, Phil Wenger fell in love
<v Speaker 1>with a man named Steve. They'd been together ever since.
<v Speaker 1>Then about ten years ago, Gene Robinson became the first
<v Speaker 1>openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church, and Phil and
<v Speaker 1>Steve found themselves a new spiritual home.
<v Speaker 8>I was confirmed and joined the Episcopal Church, and I
<v Speaker 8>invited mom and dad to come and participate in that,
<v Speaker 8>and a couple of other siblings came, and after I
<v Speaker 8>rejoined the church, my father could hardly stop weeping his
<v Speaker 8>tears of joy.
<v Speaker 1>When a state at Pennsylvania legalized gay marriage in twenty fourteen,
<v Speaker 1>Phil and Steve raced down to the courthouse to apply
<v Speaker 1>for their marriage license. They were a second in.
<v Speaker 8>Line, and the couple in front of us offered to
<v Speaker 8>let us go first, but we let them go first
<v Speaker 8>because we knew each other.
<v Speaker 1>Then they had a big party at the Hamilton Club
<v Speaker 1>in downtown Lancaster as they waited for their marriage certificate.
<v Speaker 1>Invited four hundred people. Phil's rector from the Saint James
<v Speaker 1>Episcopal Church, performed a ceremony. Phil had his father say
<v Speaker 1>a blessing at the end.
<v Speaker 8>But afterward he shared with me that he sort of
<v Speaker 8>was a little bit envious that I had not asked
<v Speaker 8>him to actually marry us. So as soon as we
<v Speaker 8>got the wedding certificate, and as soon as I knew
<v Speaker 8>we were going to get married, I went to Dad.
<v Speaker 8>I said, would you be willing to do this officially,
<v Speaker 8>sign our wedding certificate, our marriagetif and would you be
<v Speaker 8>willing to do the vows with the two of us?
<v Speaker 1>They gathered in Phil's backyard, Phil Steve, two witnesses, Chester
<v Speaker 1>and his wife Sarah Jane. I asked Chester Wenger about
<v Speaker 1>that day, why would it matter to him that someone
<v Speaker 1>else would officiate at his son's wedding.
<v Speaker 2>He told me that the mayor offered to marry him.
<v Speaker 2>I was his father, and I was an ordained clergy
<v Speaker 2>in our church. And I didn't say a word. I
<v Speaker 2>just waited quietly, and when he asked, I said sure.
<v Speaker 2>So I was I appreciate that he let me do that,
<v Speaker 2>and signed the certificate.
<v Speaker 1>With that act, Chester Wenger made his family whole. He
<v Speaker 1>welcomed his son back into the fold of family and
<v Speaker 1>religious community. But he knew what that meant. It meant
<v Speaker 1>that he had broken the rules of his own church,
<v Speaker 1>which do not acknowledge same sex marriages. There was no
<v Speaker 1>work around this time, like when he had women preach
<v Speaker 1>in the pulpit of Blossom Hill.
<v Speaker 2>They had to discipline, and so they lifted my credentials.
<v Speaker 1>He was no longer I'm at a night pastor. You've
<v Speaker 1>had credentials as a clergyman for se many years, since
<v Speaker 1>nineteen forty eight. How did it feel to be stripped
<v Speaker 1>of them?
<v Speaker 2>It didn't make any difference to me, because I'm the
<v Speaker 2>same person I am. I'm respected in my congregation. I
<v Speaker 2>don't intend to marry anybody else. I don't intend to
<v Speaker 2>be an authority for anyone. I just have a heritage
<v Speaker 2>life that I've lived. So they took away something that
<v Speaker 2>I'll never use anyway.
<v Speaker 8>I did think you might want to marry one of
<v Speaker 8>your great grandchildren someday.
<v Speaker 1>He laughs. But of course it made a difference to him.
<v Speaker 1>It made all the difference in the world. He gave
<v Speaker 1>up his profession, his position within the church, his identity,
<v Speaker 1>so he could officiate at the marriage of his son.
<v Speaker 1>He sacrificed, He gave something up because his son had
<v Speaker 1>been excluded from the world of church and family for
<v Speaker 1>a Mennonite, the most grievous kind of harm.
<v Speaker 2>And he's my child, He's my son, precious, precious child.
<v Speaker 1>Then Chesterwenger wrote his letter, an open letter to the
<v Speaker 1>Mennonite Church, the letter that went viral, written by the
<v Speaker 1>man who wasn't even sure what viral meant. It's a
<v Speaker 1>long letter, but here are the two sentences that struck
<v Speaker 1>me the most. When my wife and I read the
<v Speaker 1>Bible with today's fractured, anxious church in mind, we ask,
<v Speaker 1>what is Jesus calling us to do with those sons
<v Speaker 1>and daughters who among the most despised people in the world,
<v Speaker 1>in all races and communities. What would Jesus do with
<v Speaker 1>our sons and daughters who are bullied, homeless, sexually abused,
<v Speaker 1>and driven to suicide at far higher rates than our
<v Speaker 1>heterosexual children. That's generous, Chester Wenger, open to seeing the
<v Speaker 1>world in new ways, but there's no anger in his letter.
<v Speaker 1>Alongside the generosity is orthodoxy respect for the body. He
<v Speaker 1>is trying to heal. He goes on to say that
<v Speaker 1>he reported his transgression to the church leadership himself. He
<v Speaker 1>told them what he had done, and they responded, and
<v Speaker 1>these are his words with grace filled pastoral listening. And
<v Speaker 1>then he writes, I am at peace with their decision
<v Speaker 1>and understand their need to take this action. Chester Wenger
<v Speaker 1>is going to win. Maybe not right away, but he'll
<v Speaker 1>win because he makes plain not just how beautiful, generous
<v Speaker 1>orthodox he is, but how powerful, which is something that
<v Speaker 1>everyone who stands up in protest needs to remember. You
<v Speaker 1>must respect the body you are trying to heal.
<v Speaker 11>Are you going to.
<v Speaker 1>Read something to his Chester adverse?
<v Speaker 2>I thought I wanted to read from Romans. It's very familiar.
<v Speaker 2>For I'm not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ Jesus.
<v Speaker 2>It is the power of God for salvation to everyone
<v Speaker 2>who has faith. The Gospel is open. I just think
<v Speaker 2>that's so precious.
<v Speaker 1>You've been listening to Revisionist History. If you like what
<v Speaker 1>you've heard, do us a favor and rate us on
<v Speaker 1>iTunes it helps. You can get more information about this
<v Speaker 1>and other episodes at Revisionististory dot com or on your
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<v Speaker 1>Roxanne Scott and Jacob Smith. Our editor is Julia Barton.
<v Speaker 1>Music is composed by Luis Kira and Taka Yasuzawa. Flon
<v Speaker 1>Williams is our engineer and our fact checker is Michelle
<v Speaker 1>Sarraka Panalty Management team Laura Mayer, Andy Bauers and Jacob Weisberg.
<v Speaker 1>I'm Malcolm Gladwell.