Get it right he did. His novel won the 2016 National Book Award and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. "Underground" tells the story of Cora, a teenaged slave, who escapes the Randall Plantation in Georgia and its sadistic owner by taking a fantastical, actual train system; she is led through a trap door and down to a subterranean platform where rails stretch away into the darkness. When Oprah Winfrey interviewed Whitehead about this creative approach, he replied,
"A lot of people, when they first hear about the Underground Railroad, think it really is a subway or a locomotive. When they find out its not, they feel a little disappointed. So I thought, what if it was a literal underground train network traveling from state to state, with each state it goes through representing a different opportunity or danger?"
Oprah, who chose the book for her book club, was also intrigued by young Cora's courage. She commented on the reality that so many slaves were so terrified of their masters' murderous retribution if they escaped and were caught, that they never found the courage to "leave the yard." Cora, who had never seen life outside the yard, outside the rigid confines of the plantation, eventually is so horrified by what slavery has done to her physically and emotionally, that she takes the chance to leave. Oprah commented "I imagine myself in that position and know for sure I was born at the right time. I couldn't have done what Cora does. I would never have left the yard. I wouldn't have had the courage."
Yet all of us, in a sense, live in a "yard," a rigidly confining mental and emotional state that affects our perceptions, our religious beliefs, our stereotypical attitudes towards ourselves and other people. All of us have to have the courage to leave that inner, confining plantation and jump on a train to take us to freedom: new vistas, new understandings of ourselves and of reality.
Perhaps the most seductive religious attitude, which can confine us, is to think that only our Scriptures and our Churches, our prayers and our actions in Church, are sacred, are holy. This, unfortunately, leaves us with blinders on to the rest of life and reality, which we can unfortunately see as being unsacred. If we accept any unjust social or religious system which refuses to look at the reality that the oppressed are also sacred sons and daughters of God, we will misuse and selectively misquote Scripture. This was the kind of attitude that led slaveowners to quote St. Paul's admonition to slaves: "Obey your earthly masters in everything and do it not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord."
The slaveholders conveniently left out the rest of Paul's admonition: "And masters, do the same things to them, and give up threatening, knowing that both their Master and yours is in heaven and there is no partiality with Him."
Paul also says to slaves "Were you called (to Christ) while a slave? Do not worry about it, but if you are also able to become free, rather do that....You were bought with a price (Jesus' death on a cross) ; do not become slaves of men." When Paul meets the slave Onesimus in jail, he befriends and converts him and sends him back to his master Philemon, urging Philemon to take Onesimus back as more than a slave - as a brother in Christ.
Was Paul approving of the status quo, the slave system of his time? No, he was operating within the reality of the system of his time, and yet protesting it. Elsewhere, he states powerfully in Galatians 3:28 "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Obviously he was praying that the unjust social systems of his time would be changed by an emerging Christian population. Then there would be no exceptions. No inequalities of race, status, or sex.
Is it any wonder that the slaveholders often refused to allow their slaves to attend Church? If they had been baptized, they would have become one with their masters in Christ Jesus. Sinfully the slave masters wanted to remain in control of people whom they chose to consider property rather than human beings. For the white Christian slave holder, religion was a way to prop up their egotistical superiority rather than a life-changing encounter with our Living God!
How conveniently we forget that the Power which raised Christ from the dead also dwells within us and can raise us up to new life! Christ's light within us can strengthen our weakness so that we can courageously rid ourselves of the chains and shackles of self-loathing and self-doubt, the shackles of sins of anger, envy, pride, and lust. The sin of prejudice. Do we allow ourselves to be dehumanized, to be considered property because of our race, religion, sex, sexuality, or social background? On the other hand, do we conveniently forget that God dwells not only within Christians but within all human beings, and even within all creation? Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M. reminds us
"Divine Incarnation took the form of an Indwelling Presence in every human soul and surely all creatures in some rudimentary way. Ironically, our human freedom gives us the ability to refuse to jump on board our own life. Angels, animals, trees, water, and yes, bread and wine seem to fully accept and enjoy their wondrous fate. Only humans resist and deny their core identities, which can cause great havoc, and thus must be somehow boundaried and contained. But the only way we ourselves can refuse to jump on the train of life is by any negative game of exclusion or unlove - even of ourselves. When we read the Gospel texts carefully, we see that the only people Jesus seems to 'exclude' are those who exclude others. Exclusion might be described as the core sin. Don't waste any time rejecting, excluding, eliminating, or punishing anyone or anything else. Everything belongs, including you."
We can easily look at the horrors of pre-Civil War slavery and think we're a safe distance away from its almost casual brutality. However the author William Faulkner said wisely "The past is never dead....It's not even past." Christianity has not yet instituted just social systems in our country. Whitehead's slave catcher, who is obsessed with finding Cora and dragging her back in chains to her master, defends
"The American spirit, the one that called us from the Old World to the New, to conquer and build and civilize. And destroy what needs to be destroyed. To lift up the lesser races. If not lift up, subjugate. And, if not subjugate, exterminate....If you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave, or continent. Our destiny by divine prescription - the American imperative...."
Cora, who had heard a slave on the plantation recite the Declaration of Independence, reasons that the white man understands its principles differently than the black man, reduced to slavery, or the red man, evicted from his land and massacred. For the white man, "All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man." For her, black slaves were "stolen bodies, working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood."
Every day, we have to cast off the mental shackles that keep us enslaved on a spiritual plantation. We were bought at a price - Christ's death on a cross - and should not allow ourselves to be slaves to men by automatically buying into the opinions of others. Every day we have to have the courage to leave the yard. Every day we have to have the courage to get on that train to be spiritually free and to ask ourselves:
Is there anyone or any group in our country or in our lives whom we do not think of or treat as a human being? Whom do we as individuals or a country de-humanize?
Are some in our country continuing to believe the false American imperative that the white man is superior, that every other ethnic group or race is "lesser"? Do some white Americans think they have the right to subject others to their domination?
Do some still have the mentality of slave catchers who want to evict innocent immigrants from our country? Or all Muslims?
Have we redefined the American Ideal as someone who is rich and healthy and definitely not poor? Do we buy into a false idea of Christianity that believes that if everyone would just "come to Jesus," they would no longer be sick and/or poor and in need of Medicaid, or be "on the government dole"?
Have we redefined the American Ideal as someone who is rich and therefore deserves bigger tax cuts, and who believes that it is both moral and politically expedient to turn the middle and lower social classes against each other?
Do the uber-rich, by eliminating labor unions and workers' rights, wish to become a new generation of slave masters "owning" a new generation of slaves - the almost-eliminated middle class and the lower classes who work for them and have become their "property"?
Do we have the courage to become the new generation of abolitionists, working for those who are losing everything, working for care of creation - our environment - ? Can we become truly free men and women in Christ Jesus - inwardly free to look at the Real, God present in all of creation, and to work for peace through bringing about our own contribution, small as it may be, to justice? The true Soul Train is boarding now, ready to leave the station.
On Saturday, June 17, from 9 AM to 4:30 PM, St. Lawrence Church, Buffalo, will be holding a workshop for teens and those in their early twenties called "The Courage to be Free." In the morning, we'll be visiting the Michigan Street Baptist Church, site of an Underground Railway slave hiding place, and in the afternoon we'll watch and discuss the film "Hidden Figures." Cost: $5.00. Visit the St. Lawrence Church, Buffalo N.Y. website for information and paperwork.