more heroes needed

This has been a week for heroes.  My attention was drawn to the story of Henry V Langford (photo), someone I hadn’t heard of till his death at the age of 93 was reported in the religious newspapers in the US.  Langford supported the cause of racial equality in the 1950s and was subsequently hounded out of his church.

The Religious Herald Newspaper reported that “his life changed after he used a weekly column he wrote for the local newspaper to voice support for the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that declared the “separate but equal” doctrine used to support school segregation unconstitutional.”

In 2007 a resolution was passed honouring his commitment to Justice but by then life as a Pastor was no longer possible and in any case he had long reshaped his life to recover from his punishment.

This past week has seen the case of another hero brought to international attention. Malala Yousafzai is the 14 year old girl who started blogging at the age of ten about her inability to go to school because the Taliban banned girls from being educated. Her blog was reposted on the BBC Urdu site and gained worldwide attention. 

Eventually girls were allowed to go to school again, but the Taliban harbour grudges like no other and this week she was shot in the head coming home from school.  Cowardice knows no limits, or so it appears. Yesterday she arrived in the UK  for advanced treatment and we pray that her recovery will be complete.

But this is the thing about heroes.  No one is born a hero, or finds it easy to be one.  The heroes are those who know what is right and are willing to say so long before the majority comes round to the same view, by which time its safe to do so.  

When I look around at the world today, or more narrowly the church, I have to ask myself the question ‘what are the injustices that we live with today, or the things that I sense are unjust’.  The issues that one day may be seen as such by the majority but which – right now –are defended by the majority, at least by their silence or their acquiescence.  And among that majority, there I stand, silently.

For example, when a politician voiced the view last week that the limit for legal abortion might be better brought down to 12 weeks, the argument raged about whether it should be 20 weeks or 22 or 24.  I couldn’t help thinking that the day may yet come when our children’s children may say of us ‘what on earth possessed you to think that abortion was ever acceptable, at any number of weeks?  You were killing babies!’ 

You will have your suspicions about where we need to stand up and be counted and I have mine.  Would I be willing to do so when the reaction is not that you’re a hero – that comes long after you’re dead if it comes at all – but you’re no longer welcome.  Or you’re fired.  Or even fired at.

What are the areas where we need heroes to take such a stand today? And where does such courage come from?

David Kerrigan

Comments

[Andy Goodliff]

David, thanks for this. I wonder though whether it is more heroes we need or saints ... Sam Wells in his book Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics argues that in a world of heroes, we are called to be saints, which may be a better description of what you mean by hero ... see my (old) post from my (old) blog here:
http://andygoodliff.blogspot.co.uk/2004/07/heroes-and-saints.html

[David Kerrigan]

Good link to your blog Andy. Food for thought, certainly. However, I wonder if the hero as you describe is a reality or a myth. I want to distinguish between plastic heroes and real ones.

The plastic hero is the Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman, Daniel Craig variety who don’t exist in real life. When you write "the hero has to be the hero, that is, he has to save the day. The hero gives salvation. Because the hero believes the story revolves around them, they think everyone needs the hero to save them. They give, everyone else receives" – that's a hollywood-esque variety of hero that doesn’t exist in real life.

The real heroes are ordinary people. In fact I think being ordinary is a prerequisite for being a hero. Heroism is the ordinary undertaking the extraordinary. So for me, its people like Henry V Langford and Malala Yousafzai, Rosa Parks and Maximillian Kolbe. Heroes, and saints too!