The Legacy of Arch Stuart by The Rt. Rev. Andrew Smith
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ARCH STUART
I didn’t know what to make of him at first. That was early in 1985, when I had arrived in Manchester to become Rector of Saint Mary’s Church.
Once every three weeks Arch Stuart showed up at church, and informed me he was the person “on” that Sunday to lead worship as a Lay Reader of Saint Mary’s at Manchester Manor convalescent home. I didn’t know who he was, didn’t know where he came from, but every three weeks he was there, Arch Stuart, never missing a beat.
Later, when I was serving as Bishop Suffragan in the Diocese of Connecticut, he was there also. This time as a member of the diocesan Social Concerns and Witness Committee. Again, never missing a meeting. Often quiet, frequently insistent, usually presenting a cause, or a paper, or a petition, or a letter to the legislature or governor; and usually finding those meetings with the committee-that-didn’t-do-what-he hoped, frustrating.
I still didn’t know what to make of him.
He would drop by Diocesan House, and push in to our lives as bishops with one agendum and then another, asking, no, directing, us to address in the public forum the issues he identified.
I learned from one graduate of the University of Connecticut School of Social Work that Professor Stuart was “a clear-eyed progressive, always positive and energetic.”
In the course of time, Arch and I came to know each other, better. He talked about his family. We talked. I listened. He was forthright, yes? with his perspectives, opinions, and my responses seemed to glance off him like raindrops on a highly polished car.
His cause was social justice, complete, pure, simple.
We shared very human moments, such as the time in 1996 when he was heartsick over the “Welfare Reform” push – and the consequent “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act” which President Clinton signed in to law, which replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children, a program in effect since 1935. Arch was devastated, absolutely devastated, by that act of Congress and the President’s signature. “My whole life’s work and belief in social welfare has been torn apart, destroyed.”
Arch was immensely proud of his relationship with the Anglican Church in Australia, especially with Archbishop Keith Rayner, whose letter Don read a few minutes ago. Every time he returned from his annual, beloved trip to Australia, he was eager to tell of his meetings and conversations.
There was loneliness. And there was the cancer too. And the strokes. Then there was a new light in his eyes, a greater energy in his presence. Alice Custer, that was you; you were the source of that. Arch and Alice were married, and both their lives were blessed. It was so good to see them, him – outside of agenda, in their home, surrounded by his paintings, Arch with a smile. Yes.
Here at Trinity, when Kate and I returned after my retirement, here Arch was again. Present in Sunday worship as often as he could be, and that was very regularly, because of its importance to him and in the later years supported by members who talked with him here, called, visited, and ferried him back and forth. Thank you!
Yet, again, I didn’t know what to make of him. He was unrelentingly opposed to intercessory prayer, where we ask God to do things, which we do here in worship every Sunday. He was dissatisfied with the witness of the Church in the public arena. He opposed the creation of Trinity Episcopal Day School here at Trinity. And yet he was here, with his walker, participating, receiving communion, week in, week out.
It wasn’t until I dug out the several monographs he had given me years ago, and also began to read Arch’s 2012 book, “Putting Universal Human Rights to Work” that it all began to come together. Here’s some of what he reveals in those writings.
Arch was twelve when his father was stricken with Lou Gehrig’s disease. His father died less than two years later, when Arch must have been fourteen. During those two years a family member paid a specialized minister to come to read to his father from a book on spiritual healing so he would get control and overcome the disease. Arch saw the minister as exploitative, as he wrote, “to pretend that he had healing powers and to accept pay for this.” And, where from this man was the care for the rest of the family?
From that time Arch had a very clear, unshakeable conviction of the inefficacy of intercessory prayer, embraced in his theology that God would not wait and bargain with those God loves. Not all prayer; Arch did write prayers: just prayer in which we try to convince God to do something -- outrageous, or miraculous.
In a draft paper on Hospice, in which he argues that its ministry is only special because “we” don’t provide equivalent ministry at other times in living, he again takes a swipe at bargaining prayer, and he raises the case for euthanasia; and – interesting -- he also envisions a practice where the person near death and friends and family gather for a service of recognition, in which all could reaffirm their faith in a loving God and in the power of the Resurrection.
Above all it is in the book that Arch takes an encyclopedic look at The World, especially at the economic, political, religious and social orders in that world, as he pours out a lifetime of observation, experience, thinking, analysis, and prescriptive admonition – “there needs to be” is a frequent phrase throughout the book – for all who would read. He was a dyed-in-the-wool John Maynard Keynesian, painting the macroeconomic picture, and clearly in these later days swimming against the tide in the current political and cultural throes which afflict America.
Social liberalism trumps laissez-faire conservatism (he refused to use the label “free-market conservatives”). Civil rights must check civil liberties. Macroeconomics is more important than microeconomics. Nonmarket exchange (concerned with the welfare of all) must be cherished as much as market exchange (requiring that everyone makes it or not on his or her own). Unions shops are workers’ major recourse to the concentration of power and wealth among those who own or control resources. For Arch the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a foundational document.
Unvarying, social liberalism.
Religion, his faith in God, also formed Arch Stuart as a scholar and writer and advocate. Throughout his papers and the book, are references to teachings, from both testaments of the Bible and especially the gospels, and from the Book of Common Prayer which we use today.
He was a modern voice for the old Social Gospel, a movement in Christianity from early in the last century for social justice, which, keenly reading the whole Bible, saw that God’s will extends beyond the redemption of the individual, but also includes the whole of cultures and societies.
The landowner who hired people at different hours, some for only one hour, and paid them all the same wage? Everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living: Arch, referring to that teaching, wrote, Jesus knew that.
Think of the Good Samaritan, who gave health care in the desert to the man who had been robbed not because he deserved it or had insurance, but because he was in need.
Recall the Gospel lesson we ready this morning – about God’s judgment with the sheep on one side, the goats on the other. We tend to see each “side” as a collection of virtuous or non-virtuous individuals. The gospel talks about gathering “the nations.” The social gospel also can see each group as a whole culture – the United States, for example, all of us, judged, on whether we cared for the poor, the hungry, the sick. Are we Sheep? Or Goats?
He has been one of a kind. He pushed on, in the worst of times. And yet he is but one of our kind: a person moved by experience, thought, faith – who like all of us lived equal with others before God and was loved equally by God in God’s justice. That moral vision is something huge to strive for, as we are reminded as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act.
And in that loving justice, we believe that God has brought Arch Stuart, as God intends for each of us, through this life and into a life far greater than we can ask or imagine. I hope in the new life there are some surprises for Arch: affirmation for those principles for which he lived his life? Maybe an active clearing house for intercessory prayer? Certainly a love that passes all understanding.
For us? Arch leaves us a clear legacy. That last afternoon in the hospital, he held our hands, tightly, as he tried to tell us some last things. Then he drifted into a deep sleep. Something from deep inside me moved me to say quietly, “Arch, we will carry on.”
To the glory of God and the well-being of all people. May it be so.