77 - Abraham Went Out: A Biography of A. J. Muste

Abraham Went Out:
A Biography of A. J. Muste
By Jo Ann Ooiman Robinson
Philadelphia, Temple University, 1981. $22.50.

"We now seem much more interested in the losers than in the winners," wrote Stanford Professor Peter Stansky in 1977. We are interested, he continued, "in those who offer alternatives, who seem to be in the margins of history but nevertheless have a far firmer grasp on what really matters than those who embody a flashy, meretricious, and very often transient success. This change is based on a profound disillusion with what the state can do." Jo Ann Robinson identifies Abraham Johannes Muste, the subject of her definitive biography, as such a loser and adds: "Exactly such an outlook informs the writing of this book."

The author is Associate Professor of History at Morgan State University. She seems an exceptionally competent practicioner of the historian's art; her language is clear, well organized, and to the point. She supports more than two hundred pages of text by more than a hundred pages of notes on sources. She has diligently consulted books, manuscripts, unpublished theses, scholarly monographs, articles, correspondence, and has interviewed many people. Her conclusion is that "Muste was unique." Among all the dissenters of his day, "no other life was shaped by a range of influences so vast as to include the orthodoxy of Reformed theology, the radicalism of Marxist thought, and the perfectionist ethic of Christian pacifism." No other reformer, she writes, was so "consistently open to new ideas." So, like Abraham, Muste "went out not knowing whither he went."

The first major influence shaping Muste's career was Reformed and specifically Calvinistic theology which he transcended by the social gospel and modern critical study of the Bible. The family into which he was born in 1885 in the Netherlands came to America six years later and settled among other Dutch newcomers in western Michigan. The father became an elder in the Reformed Church in America. He raised his family in the Calvinist principles of the sovereignty of God, original sin, predestination, and salvation by special grace alone. "A.J.," as he later came to be known, said he grew up "soaked in the Bible and in the language of the Bible." But the severity of the doctrinal creed was modified. To him, the sovereignty of God was personalized into believing that "you live your life in the light of God." At the age of twelve, he decided his destiny was the Christian ministry. He attended public school, a church preparatory school, and Hope College. His college valdictorian speech contained the pregnant sentence: "By some relentless law, thought begets doubt."

In the New Brunswick, N.J. seminary of his denomination, his doubts

78 - Abraham Went Out: A Biography of A. J. Muste

first clashed with the teachings of a professor who taught a course in Calvin's Institutes. He began commuting into New York to take courses in philosophy at New York University and at Columbia. After graduation, Muste became the pastor of a church in New York and studied at Union Theological Seminary. There he came under the influence of William Adams Brown and Arthur Cushman McGiffert. Campbell Morgan's preaching of the social gospel made Old Testament prophets and New Testament ethics come alive for him. Such doctrines as the Virgin Birth and biblical inerrancy lost their importance as concern For living the Christian witness, as it was interpreted by Walter Rauschenbusch, grew.

Muste resolved his doubts concerning Reformed theology by becoming pastor of a Congregational Church in a suburb of Boston. But World War I was in progress, and the United States became involved. For a time "A.J." vacillated in his attitude toward the conflict but finally took his stand against participation in it. That brought such tensions within his congregation that he decided he must resign. In his last sermon, he asserted that "Jesus was a pacifist and followers of Jesus could do nothing else" than oppose war. His church gave him a leave of absence and finally accepted his resignation. Then the Society of Friends in Providence, R.I., gave Muste and family a house and minimal employment. But Muste and several friends in the Boston Fellowship of Reconciliation were supporting strikers in the textile mills of nearby Lawrence. Muste was made head of the strike committee, which after a long struggle became victorious.

That engagement, by steps which Robinson faithfully describes, led to a fifteen - year career within the American labor movement, with steadily deepening involvement with various forms of Marxism. Muste began as a socialist supporter of Eugene Debs and ended as a champion of Leon Trotsky. During most of this time, he was director of Brookwood Labor College. Simultaneously he was chairman of the Conference for Progressive Labor Action. Eventually he was forced to choose and decided for the C.P.L.A., which he helped convert into the American Workers Party. The AWP positioned itself between the socialist and the communist parties and appealed for labor unity. After a period of strike activity, Muste was forced out of leadership by Trotskyite maneuvers. He found himself out of a job and so destitute he had to appeal to old friends for money to pay his rent. They responded so well that they sent Muste and his wife to Europe for a much needed vacation.

Muste, who had departed for Europe a dedicated if despairing Trotskyite, returned a pacifist seeking to renew his ties with some form of Christian community. The author attributes the change to a burst of illumination which came to "A.J." when he stopped to rest in an empty church in Paris. Sitting there, he suddenly realized that "this is where I belong." This account agrees with the story I myself heard from Muste shortly after his return to New York. He had come to see me as the Executive Secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. I believed his

79 - Abraham Went Out: A Biography of A. J. Muste

account and undertook to persuade others that his turn - around was genuine. The result of this and other meetings was that "A.J." was invited to speak at the fall conference of the F.O.R. His return was welcomed, and he became Director of Labor Temple in New York and four years later succeeded to the executive secretaryship of the F.O.R. He was identified with this post for the next thirteen years, and with the pacifist movement until his death in 1967.

To a man of Muste's background, it is reasonable to suppose that he saw an element of divine judgment in his experiences in the labor movement. It must mean something that after years in various posts of American labor leadership, after all his struggling with factionalism and bitterness, he had been thrown aside. It must be significant that in Europe, labor was helpless to avert the war that "A.J." saw coming, that both the Stalinist and the Trotskyite wings of communism practiced dictatorship and systematic deception. What could this mean but that God still ruled in righteousness, that the wages of the sins of lying, greed for power, and contempt for honor and honesty were still death? What could the social base for community be but the church; not the state, the party, or the union?

If Muste's career had ended when he was fifty, a book about him would have been interesting but hardly remarkable. But in the next thirty years, he became what Time called "America's number one pacifist." He threw himself with redoubled vigor into his new life. Robinson writes: "In the course of those years, Muste worked devotedly for the causes of racial equality, economic justice, free speech, and political liberty. But repeatedly he told his comrades in these struggles that they would never realize their objectives so long as U.S. foreign policy: (a) remained insensitive to the aspirations of Third World peoples, (b) military spending held priority over human needs, (c) the Cold War against communism continued, and (d) the stockpiling of arms brought disaster ever nearer. Indeed, he predicted that should nuclear war occur, such goals as "racial equality and jobs for all would become irrelevant."

Muste shook up conventional pacifism by introducing and leading in the application of many tactics he had found effective as a labor organizer. "He sought to resist, and if possible, clog, the machinery of the militarized, arms stockpiling, war - making modern state." To this end he organized campaigns against payment of taxes, against conscription, against nuclear testing, against civil defense, against the building of newer and more devastating weaponry, and of course against wars such as Korea and Vietnam. He tried to win the support of fellow pacifists, of racial minorities, of academics and scientists. He talked and wrote, but he also climbed over fences into forbidden military areas, suffering arrest. He recruited persons to join him in blocking roads into factories by interposing their own bodies. He organized violations of segregation in the South. During the Vietnam War he visited Saigon and, as one of his last acts, went to Hanoi.

80 - Abraham Went Out: A Biography of A. J. Muste

As a former Editor of The Christian Century, which chronicled much of Muste's comings and goings, I wonder what we now make of this man. In some ways, no doubt, Muste was a "loser." But what can be said of the society which still spurns what he stood for? As his biographer says: "The alternatives that he representsfreedom of conscience over coercion by the state; non - violent innovations over violent force; courageous disarmament initiatives over fearful stockpiling of weapons; economic justice over the greed and brutality bred by economic imbalance - increase in attractiveness as the consequences of their opposites become more dire."

Harold E. Fey
Pilgrim's Place
Claremont, California