Introduction of the Rev. Dr. R. Stuart DeLorme, Ph.D.

Friday, 17 November 2006,

Feast of St. Hugh of Lincoln

Ladies & Gentlemen, I’m Jerome Maryon, the President of St. Paul’s Lay Committee on Contemporary Spiritual-&-Public Concerns, i.e., our CSPC Committee. On behalf of all the volunteers who staff the CSPC – the folks who make these events possible – I should like to welcome you to this, our third Address of the year.

Those of you who were here at our Inaugural, when the Cardinal Archbishop presided, may recall a few words from the Introduction of our Speaker, George Weigel. They are words taken from

... [T]he Book of Micah, chapter 6, verse 8. It is the counsel of Our Lord, as received, understood, and relayed by the Prophet Micah; it reads thus: “He has showed thee, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of thee, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” This echoes through Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, and John: that we should seek to be full of grace and truth, and that we should, always and everywhere, seek to do justice.

In that Inaugural Address, as you may also recall, Mr. Weigel asked how the Europeans were doing when it came to the very difficult issue – at least difficult for London, Paris, Berlin, what with their empty cathedrals – to do justice to faith. Then, in our second Address, offered by the former Dean of the Northeastern Law School, Dr. David Hall, a similar question was posed, but in a very different context. Professor Hall noted how very secularized our Law had become – as secularized as the public discourse of Europe – and so he asked how we might reintroduce our own spiritual awareness (not a denominational awareness, but a spiritual awareness) into our practice of Law. After all, when it comes to justice, we can scarcely preach one perspective on Sunday, and then practice an entirely different perspective on Monday!  And yet, despite all of the lip-service our politicians pay to religion, that great divorce between Sunday and Monday pretty much sums up American Law.

Given that divorce, the obvious question is, How did the divorce occur? How did we start out so very differently from the Western Europeans and yet end up in Law being so similar to them? If we started out with the Pilgrims and the Puritans, how did we change so drastically? What happened to the socio-political project of the Pilgrims and the Puritans, right here in Massachusetts?

To delve into that socio-political project, we must ask a deeper question, we must confront the most fundamental issue for the Pilgrims and Puritans: What was their theological project, the project that drove them here from Europe, and why was it that that theological project, for all its sound and fury, was buried with them?

We all of us Americans – Muslim, Jewish, Christian – celebrate Thanksgiving. Yet, we none of us are Pilgrims – and, most assuredly, none of us wish to live like Puritans!

So, why do we honor them?

And a still tougher question: If the theology of the Pilgrims and the Puritans (the two edges of the original, evangelical sword) is a theology as dead and buried as that of the Albigensians (the Cathars) in the Middle Ages or that of the original Manichaeans in the Ancient World, then, What is the subtle influence of those intrepid settlers, an influence that still endures today?

And toughest of all: What is the influence of the people who helped the Pilgrims stay alive their first year here, what is the influence of the First People, the Native Americans? For at that first Thanksgiving, we had, not one, but two theologies celebrating at that table: the fierce, even crusading, theology of the Pilgrims, and the live-and-let-live theology of the Indians. Now, as Tuesday, November 7^th reminded us, both the sense of a socio-political mission theology and the sense of a mutually forbearing theology are very much with us; indeed, they are in such competition with each other today that, unlike Thanksgiving, 1621, they no longer care to sit at the same table. They, too, have divorced - and we Catholics certainly know what it is like to be caught in the middle of that divorce!

In sum, to ask, What was the socio-political project of the Pilgrims and Puritans, is to ask, What was their theological project? To ask that, in turn, is to ask, Why, if it is dead, does is legacy still influence us? And to ask that, finally, is to ask, How did the Pilgrims and Puritans mediate … albeit unwittingly … the tolerant theology of the First People?

Those questions are extraordinarily difficult; they are as deep as they are broad. To address them would require someone of a similarly deep and broad formation, someone well steeped in New England Protestant spiritualities, and yet someone, too, who has experienced the tolerance (or even the indifference) of the great non-Christian world.

Ladies & Gentlemen, we are singularly blessed this evening to have just such a speaker. To suggest how blessed, I can do no better than to quote the words of Madam Vice President of the CSPC, Angela Jones. Accordingly, I shall read those words, and as soon as I have finished them, I suggest that we give thanks for the blessing of his presence, thanks to the God of Congregationalists and Catholics, of Pilgrims and First People, alike.

            Dr. DeLorme is Minister to Internationals at historic Park Street Church in Boston, whose fellowship community is composed of people from approximately sixty nations.  A native of Boston, Dr. DeLorme received his Bachelor of Arts in Asian Studies and his Doctorate of Philosophy in Educational Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania.  He obtained a Master of Divinity at Westminster Theological Seminary, Glenside, PA, and a Master of Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education.  Before coming to Park Street, Dr. DeLorme’s ministerial international focus inspired him to engage in service in several countries.  He worked with Go Ye Fellowship, Inc., as a cross-cultural minister to the Kazakh people in Germany, Turkey, China, and Kazakhstan.  The subject of his doctoral dissertation was on the Kazakh people in post-Soviet Kazakhstan in which he explored issues of identity and language.  From 1985 to 1989, Dr. DeLorme taught English and American literature at Xinjiang-Normal University, Urumqi, China.

Ladies & Gentlemen, we are twice blessed: for his wide knowledge of the world and for his deep knowledge of New England Protestant spiritualities, let us welcome Rev. Dr. Stuart DeLorme!