Extract 51, Karl Jaspers Forum

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NOTATION (2-9-2006)—By the time TA 51 was written I had become acquainted enough with Mr. Muller’s conceptual leanings to suspect he was not properly representing Jaspers’ concepts. My initial approach to Muller was that of trust more than doubt, however I had been aware since the 60’s that there were subtle forces bent on the control of Jaspers’ influence. I wanted to zero-in and eliminate that effort if found in Muller’s Website. The Article was written with the hopes that Mr. Muller would respond by normal Comments in line with his own established protocol, that his apparent religious aversions could be clearly defined in the sequential dialogue. In my first sentence below the comment about not having found any disagreement with Jaspers simply meant that not enough of Mr. Muller’s personal history was known to make a fair assessment of the consciousness and conscience behind his words.

[1] DIFFERENTIATION BY LIMITED COMPARISON

I've wanted to respond to Muller's comments on religion but have found no disagreement -- yet -- by comparison with Karl Jaspers. There must be a difference -- as in the uniqueness of personal history. We have Jaspers' personal account: His father told him "religion is one of the regulative forces ...[but]… once you are seventy … before death, when we are no longer active in the world, we may clear the deck by leaving the church." He was suggesting his son not then leave the "church." Jaspers then says: "When my father was past seventy he did, indeed, leave the church." (Library of Living Philosophers, Philosophical Autobiography, X Theology and Philosophical Faith.p.76.) My view is that Jaspers did not leave the church in the sense of the Encompassing of the encompassing; he remained in the former, but didn't need the latter. His father needed the church because his work tied him to the community; Jaspers work was in the freedom of the university and empirical restraints of the hospital, but he had not excommunicated himself from communicating with the religious community at large. (See for instance the debate between the theologian Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Jaspers, Myth and Christianity, an inquiry into the possibility of religion without myth.)

[1.1] We also have Nietzsche's description of religious experiences that suggests the importance of memory regarding faith and action: His father, a minister, painfully died, buried in proximity of the early home, when N was five. N was learning how to read and write before his third year -- had great recall -- and was very close to his father. Within a few months after his father's passing he dreamed his father came out of the grave, went into the church, and then carried a small child back into the grave--interpreted to be N's baby brother. The next morning he told his mother the dream. Within a short time his brother died. (Nietzsche, A Critical Life, by Ronald Hayman.)

[1.2] These accounts may provide some understanding as to one's willingness to risk leaning toward transcendence and the other's risking a confinement to immanence. Both accounts tend to provide private interpretative processes with illumination as to the necessity of the existential data regarding ultimate situations such as the limits of thinking, conflict, guilt, suffering, and death. To me, N's beloved father or God-type died for all practical purposes, and as N could not avoid living without one, he functioned as if the other did not phenomenally and therefore objectively exist, avoiding any image or dream that might bring about unbearable disillusionment. His ontological musings were limited by the dangers inherent in his ontological flux of experience not excluding the imagination. These early-life polarizing eventful grounds of experiences and his concomitant genius -- whether sane or not -- provided infinite reason to distrust the mind's images. Intense experiences can cut ties with objective grounds and affect a leaning toward a state of subjectivism.

[1.3] Ultimate circumstances contributed to N's influence not the least of which was the syphilis epidemic's direct impact on N's life. However there's no evidence that N had the disease or that…his…behavior put him at risk, there's question regarding the extent of its effect including the effect in Nietzsche's thinking. He says: "In the organic kingdom there is no such thing as forgetting, but there is a kind of digestion of what has been experienced." (Nietzsche by Jaspers. P. 313)

[1.4] Jaspers' experience was also not independent of a disease with which he had to learn to cope. He died at age 86 while others previously diagnosed with the disease had not survived beyond thirty. "Human life reaches its peak through the depth of its memories." "The man grows 'wise'; he attains his new and final fulfillment at his greatest age." (Philosophical Autobiography, p.9 and General Psychopathology, Biographical Study p. 701)

[1.5] But, though important to a more thorough comparison, as far as I know Mr. Muller's religious experiences are unavailable -- in print; so differentiation is limited. It seems like it would be of value to the philosophical and scientific community. The above paragraphs about Nietzsche are therefore included as a substitute for the absence of a similar personage. We must move along anyway … and include the testimony or confessions attainable, even though some are of no universal value unless similar to the existential notables whose … activity … included drinking hemlock; or suffering a crucifixion that ultimately led to -- at the very least -- the outlawing of crucifixions by Constantine.

[2] JASPERS' CALL FOR RELIGIOUS REVIVAL

I know my own religious experience, however, which is somewhat similar to an environment described by Jaspers: "The human situation, now as ever, demands a rebirth of man. How it will occur must be left to experience and action. If I see the best chances for it on Protestant soil, this is due only to the Protestant principle which approximates philosophy: no mediator; direct contact with God; universal priesthood -- and a corresponding institutional dismemberment of the Church into many creeds and independent congregations." (The Future of Mankind: p. 259)

[2.1] My experiences with the church are different than Jaspers in that I've had less apparent struggle with revelation than he seems, to me, to have had. I do easily understand what Jaspers is concerned about, for in normal work-a-day performance we encounter those who speak out of authority -- or revelation. My experiences are similar to Nietzsche's only in that my father was a minister, but I felt no early-life father-son closeness, and no ultimate loss with which to come to terms. My experience with revelation has always been biblically orientated, I think, and dogmatism restrained eventually by an acceptance of the limits of thinking, which is probably the reasonable side of a non-biblical concept of original sin.

[2.2] The previous and following comments are not sermonizing any more than Carl Sagan's 23rd Psalm, I mean his 23rd Chapter, which he entitled a "Sunday Sermon" in his book Broca's Brain. He says, "the enterprise of knowledge is consistent with both science and religion, and is essential for the welfare of the human species." I hope they are no less biblical than KJ's belief that "… the one equating God's will with the survival of mankind at any cost seems unbiblical and unphilosophical." (Future of Mankind, Substitutes for Reason, p.256.)

[3] PRIMARY EXPERIENCE

My identity with much, but not all, of Jaspers' statement, regarding the ground of change, includes an appreciation for diversification, such as local autonomous independent churches, which have a historic basis, including an established book's pattern for its organization. It is a book the falsification of which seems perpetual. It limits the dangers of faith in revelation and tends to never lose sight of the necessity of interpretation and that when interpretation exists, the book is always there as an objective launching pad for restructuring; the book reminds that no interpretation is subject to any private subject's objectification. My experience includes a history of religious activity not unrelated to the First Amendment, to be mentioned more below. While reading Muller's TA18[10] words about destructive religious substitutes "as seen in groups which advocate homicide or communal suicide" I was reminded of my experience with The Disciples Of Christ while curiously and partially participating in an Ordination/Licensing procedure very shortly after the Jim-Jones deaths -- it was reported that the organization was involved in his ordination. Jim Jones' earlier social religious … activity … probably gave the organization some assurance his acceptance was worth the risk of official approval. I withdrew from the procedure understanding the process had become apparently too defensively engaged in protecting the organization from further publicity. It seemed that the organization had become too large and centralized with a defensiveness to match. I had previously been ordained by a local independent and autonomous church with no central headquarters and was able to compare the two.

[4] FREEDOM AND RELIGION, EARLY AMERICAN EXPERIENCES

Earlier American religious activity apparently took advantage of the new religious freedom, i.e., some religious leaders continued pre-first-amendment activity without fearing the loss of private or organized religion due to the absence of possible legislation protecting a religion. For instance, in a very influential and publicized 1829 debate (see on-line reference) Robert Owen, propounding atheism, was enthusiastic about the freedom to speak out as never before possible. Alexander Campbell also speaks about that unhallowed alliance of church and state and points at Owen's social experimentation in New Harmony Indiana as the erection of a divine system of legislation that places mankind under a modern Theocracy.

[4.1] While the US Constitution's separation of church and state was settling into the state's constitutions around the early eighteen thirties, it was probably understood that the new freedom was accompanied by real dangers. There could be substitutes for religious activity, and there was no tried and tested potential legislative mechanism for protecting any particular religion. Then, as now, in both secular and religious thinking, many could not distinguish in their thinking between small independent religious groups from large and established organized religion. Rigid concepts did not potentially fit the new reality, that, freedom of religion in America might result in numerous independent churches. Old concepts could only think in terms of a church-and-state organization, or theocracy, or at least large organizations with a central headquarters governing the local churches. Or there was an encompassing understanding that a foreign religious or secular organization would move into the no-law void in the resultant confusion.

[4.2] To avoid this infiltration of foreign forces into the space of religious freedom it might have been thought that only a "revelation" comparable in authority to a continentally based history book -- Bible -- could break ties with foreign organizations already evident in the churches and prevent their further movement into the void. Bible-only-based organizations might not be enough and there would be insufficient strength in multiple sects to control the strength of established ecclesiastic's momentum, a potential danger through New England and especially through New Spain -- and through the Territory of New Mexico. The one-book and the two-book independent movements developed simultaneously and relate in special ways to value judgments about revelation and its misuse. The Campbellite and the Mormon movement serve as examples. They both proceeded as though the ever persistent dangers, like that later manifested in a Husserl/Heidegger type of ontological faith and jargon would be enticing enough to be picked, collected, or harvested by powerful organizations with an authority above or beyond question and critical activity.

[5] ONE BOOK

More specifically, Campbell's influence and movement beginning around 1830 and "grew to be very numerous, especially in the Western and Southwestern States." (History of the Christian Church, by Fisher, p. 565.) One book, the Bible, was the standard used for church organization for each independent local congregation--each being an autonomous organization. This movement's concept of revelation is supposedly limited to the book. This is the religion included in my encompassing experiences, my father being a farmer, and minister to a country church--a local autonomous group, the Coe Church of Christ near Shepherd Michigan. I was ordained by that group but after my father’s ministry there ended and during the ministry of Emanuel Collins.

[6] TWO BOOKS

Almost simultaneously (c.1830 and prior) Joseph Smith was having "revelations" which resulted in a second book (Ibid. 581). This leader's influence is well known. For instance, the Mormon movement in "Frontier and Modern New Mexico has nurtured many religious communities" and "… the Mormons have maintained homogeneous social orders and continue to maintain religious neighborhoods …" (Quote is by a Mormon in Religion in Modern New Mexico, p. 120.) (The importance of research regarding religious activity is especially appropriate in New Mexico because it is still the new-frontier rich in experience relative to the lack of a law separating church and state -- to be briefly mentioned later.)

[7] EXAMPLE OF FALSIFICATION APPLIED TO REVELATION

The second book of the two-book movement does not lend itself to empirical falsification. It amounts to subjective phenomena--subjectivism. Its existents can be handled as abnormal, or, the way a psychopathologist would consider the data related by patients withdrawn from reality. This is not to suggest the adherents are psychopathological, as though they might be harmful in some universal sense, and may even be considered more than less balanced. Its ontology is subjective and an ontology unto itself. I apply a method of interpretation that is still phenomenological nonetheless than with normal experiences. The second-book account of revelation about the anthropological history in the Americas lies in the area of ingenious fiction -- not unlike existentialists who resort to story telling to describe their existential views -- so far as universal acceptability is concerned. Its influence is based partly on faith in authority excluding critical evaluation by empirical verification e.g. archaeological. But because it is an affirmed second-revealed book equal to the one-revealed book, what distinguishes its religious organization from others in a peculiarly uniquely American way, is its meaning to individuals and indirectly then to community activity. The behavior of two-book proponents is community-testable, but the second book can be shelved for science's methodology; it has nothing to do with empirical investigation and as such a test of exclusive faith. It cannot be subjected to falsification. It's not a provable type of universal fact. How the second revelation has been quietly circumvented and accommodated to society is of interest and is probably determinable. (The method used to understand such religious subjective phenomena, a second-book revelation, is no different than applying the same test to any outstanding religious leader. Example based of fact: A world famous TV Evangelist sermonizing from a one-book position states what Jesus wrote in the sand, whereas the book does not reveal what was written in the sand. Then, rather than admit error, the leader claims authority as a revelator, and thereby escapes the falsification process. That leader is unwilling to risk his authority to objectivity, to falsification.)

[7.1] One must ask then the metaphysical question and hope for a wise philosophical idea: why the revelation? If one considers it an existent (data) within some subjective state, the enlightenment one can get from accepting it as existentially unavoidable is to allow an illuminating of consciousness. I mean, allow openness for understanding the data, i.e., an educated guess. I…guess…it was Joseph Smith's way of coping with imagined fears about the lack of legislative controls on independent churches. It could include fears about the immoral consequences of the secularization resulting from the completion of the trickle-down process -- the movement of the First Amendment from the US Constitution to State constitutions (codification and ratification). Its intense anxiety stemming from what Fisher refers to as "the effect of the voluntary system…to create a multiplicity of sects." (Fisher, 561) Fisher then says the fear was unrealized -- and he was writing around 1900. The last New England State to fully separate church and state was Mass. in 1833, and the process began in 1818 in New England -- the time and space span of the preparation of the second book. (New Mexico was not yet a State.) A Campbell/Smith debate never materialized though the former had made the attempt.

[7.2] An appropriate analogue in an analysis of the value of a church's activity might be the moral behavior of its membership in general and the behavior of its forthright (not undercover missionaries) missionaries in particular including the mores of the ecclesiastical authorities and corresponding religious institutions of higher learning. Disease resulting from immoral activity would seem pertinent to such an analysis. Currently, the disease is AIDS whereas in Nietzsche's time it was syphilis. The epidemiology of the disease especially as to how it is transmitted from one generation to another, seems meaningful. In other words the analogue in an analysis used to determine the effectiveness—feedback--of religious performance might be communicable diseases -- like AIDS, the attitude of religious leadership included.

[8] Risking religious establishment's activity to falsification, disease can affect religion --risking to falsification the hypothesis that religious consensus is always good for the community -- The relativity of religious activity in the whole experience, conscious and conscience, is undeniable. It's also unavoidable, and certainly not to be overlooked because of a protectionist need to place an absolute buffer zone between any suggestion there might be a causal relation to community turmoil rather than peaceful resolution. The activity ought not to escape falsification such as in the following situation that happened in Sierra County, NM:

[8.1] In 1997-98 the local ministerial association was basking in new levels of community empowerment for having successfully influenced the voters to vote a certain way on a controversial "health care" referendum. Politicians and healthcare experts had collected, harvested, many local churches in the effort. The vote results strengthened the local ministerial association. Although, in principle, not a member, I was meeting with a concerned citizen's group. I had through research acquired enough information that convinced me that Santa Fee, the Capital, needed to disperse--dump, allocate--a growing load of HIV and AIDS patients not excluding those at high risk. Santa Fe was being publicly hailed as a Mecca for AIDS patients.

[8.2] After the referendum went the way the ministerial association wanted, though steered by local autocrats, State Health Care officials etc., that association -- having found an apparent justification for a static ontological and phenomenal existence -- allowed a charismatic minister to convince two other local ministers to approach the City and the County Commissioners. They were photographed standing over and behind the Commissioners as they signed proclamations declaring 1998 the year of the Bible -- posing for prearranged publicity by the local newspapers.

[8.3] Great turmoil was created over this act and there were vocal and active objections, none of which came from the churches involved in the ministerial association except in reaction against the objections. Except for mine, most vocal objections were coming from moral-liberals and leftist political sources including an organization of Citizens Defending Our Bill Of Rights. If it had not been for the organized influence imposed on local citizens by the prominent religious leaders with regard to the health care referendum, I probably would not have voiced an objection. It was one thing to have a County Manager and a few Commissioners managing processes but then the County Attorney defended the Commissioners by saying the signing of the proclamation did not established religion any more than if they had signed a proclamation saying the community should eat more beef. This legal Official’s statement convinced me that it could indeed establish the ministerial organization. A meeting was arranged -- not by me -- by the ACLU-NM. There were so many speakers a one-minute limit was imposed on each public comment. I was only allowed to read the last two paragraphs of the following statement. I then paid to have it published in the only local newspaper that remained uneasily neutral.

[8.4] "…The Sierra County attorney has reportedly said (Desert Journal 2-6-98) that for commissioners to sign a year-of-the-Bible proclamation is no different than a proclamation that the community should 'eat more beef' and it's all right because it doesn't establish a religion. He has chosen an emotionally charged and politically popular metaphor but I'd like to show how such a proclamation might establish an organization of religion in a community. Consider the following:

[8.41] In the US there are controls involved in feeding rendered diseased cattle parts to cattle. It's reported that British schools banned British beef from their cafeterias because of Britain's Mad Cow epidemic, and the European Union blocked imports of beef from Britain. That's not creating a negative beef-eating religion unless you happen to be religiously a United Kingdom cattle baron. But a governmental agency that encourages eating diseased beef, pork, or … humans … might violate a natural law of health while at the same time further establish an established or establishing religion:

[8.42] Within one generation the women of a New Guinea tribe, called the Fore, established the habit of eating their deceased relatives. They ate the whole body, sharing it with the children. It's reasonable to think some religious ritual was involved with eating a loved one, perhaps even deeper emotions were involved then the established cannibalistic custom of eating parts of one's enemies -- and eating certain parts was orgiastic.

[8.43] The Fore could have eaten more of their deceased kin, but they drew the line and would not eat those that died of leprosy. They ate those they thought to have been killed by sorcery called kuro (meaning shaking). Those dying of sorcery manifested symptoms similar to the mad-cow disease. As more and more sorcery victims were eaten, the death of women and children by sorcery -- shaking -- increased.

[8.44] If the Fore male cannibalistic leaders, having nothing but uncommon natural law, proclaimed 'let the women and children eat more sorcery meat' are they contributing to extending the practice of ritualistic cannibalism? Even though they had not created an ordinance -- having no constitution -- they would have aided the establishment of a form of cannibalism that was bad for community health.

[8.45] The Fore people were shown they were dying from eating diseased relatives and the practice was limited.

[8.46] I'm here to ask the religious leaders involved in the ministerial alliance to get out of local formal politics, and if you have a message to proclaim go door to door, use the newspapers, etc. or shout it from roof tops. All the ministerial alliance has to do is simply here and now confess that you momentarily lost faith in God and placed your faith in a bit of political propaganda.

[8.47] If you make this confession, it will resolve the immediate situation, and I'll not press for a similar confession regarding your official interference in the referendum regarding health care. We will attribute that to understandable ignorance." (See Deadly Feasts, Richard Rhodes)

[9] New England and New Mexico -- The spirit of the First Amendment hit New England about the time another spirit came ashore in the Southwest's New Spain. The separation of church and state was not included in the Mexico Constitution until 1859. (Fire and Blood, T. R. Fehrenbach.) The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848 prior to the constitutional separation of church and state and while the territory of New Mexico was then part of Mexico. The State of New Mexico's Constitution, Section 5, reads: "The rights, privileges and immunities, civil, political and religious guaranteed to the people of New Mexico by the treaty of Guadalupe shall be preserved inviolate." There's no separation of church and state in the New Mexico Constitution as there is in the US Constitution. But, Section 11 attempts to resolve the difference by adding, "No person shall be required to attend any place of worship or support any religious sect or denomination; nor shall any preference be given by law to any religious denomination or mode of worship." It's a State rich in observable phenomena such as politics and religion, and disease also becomes part of the interplay of forces. The close traditional interaction between religion and politics is measurably affected by the conduct of a traditional priesthood and its involvement in healthcare management through political maneuverings.

[10] LITTLE KNOWN RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY

Interesting too is the well known new New Harmony Indiana social-industrial experiment and the then, but not now, well known religious activity, which resulted in a much-publicized debate. It's the debate between the religious activist Alexander Campbell and social activist Robert Owen, all contributing to an interest in the activity of religion and the social views religiously maintained. (The Western Intellectual Tradition, J. Bronowski and Mazlish) (The debate is complete and on line: see references.)

[10.1] Basic concepts were used in that debate and they are not unlike those used in the KJF. There's the ontological concept of Owen that a new harmony is possible independent of reality. There's the application of the concept that mind-body are unavoidably dual in function when dealing with reality. There's the application of mathematics and economics to the question in support of independence and the arguments against the elimination of the riddle of freedom. Owens had the affirmative and Campbell the opposing, though a switch took place, before the end of the debate.

[10.2] The debate is referenced here because it is peculiarly American in orientation. It is not being mentioned to show the concepts employed to defend or assert a position. The concepts are not new. An excuse for using some of them seems to be a means of escaping the unavoidable limitations of thought.

[11] CONCLUSION

So ... the direction of Muller's interest is ripe for the harvest from these shore-to-shore fields, ground of inexhaustible waving sea-like experiences. The KJF preparatory religious comments have greased some of the thrashing machinery, and I've tried to show there's no limit to where the thrashing circuit should go. It's possible that the machines won't be able to go to some fields and some sheaves brought from the fields will be too much or too little to thrash. It's also possible that some of the participants will get thrashed, as one did back in Gratiot County Michigan, when a man fell into the thrashing machine and was picked up in a wicker basket after … hitting the fan. But, it seems to me that the hitherto thrashings, the phenomenological and ontological discussions, continue to be most beneficial. For in close, honest, and humble communication is where the revival of the individual occurs, and disaster avoided, for, "… our only chance today lies in a change of man on a broad scale, affecting first a few, then many, and finally, perhaps, a majority." (Future of Mankind 261).

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REFERENCES:

Bronowski, J. and Mazlish, Bruce. The Western Intellectual Tradition. Penguin Books, 1970.

Campbell-Owen Debate,

http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/acampbell/cod/CODOO.HTM

Fehrenbach. T.R. Fire and Blood, A History of Mexico. Da Capo Press, New York, 1995.

Fisher, George Park. History of the Christian Church. Scribners, Preface dated 1887 (lost the publication page, but was professor of ecclesiastical history in Yale University).

Hayman, Ronald. Nietzsche, a critical life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980

Jaspers, Karl. The Future of Mankind, Phoenix Books. The University of Chicago Press, 1963.

__________. General Psychopathology. University of Chicago Press, 1963.

__________, and Bultmann, Rudolf. Myth and Christianity: An inquiry into the possibility of religion without myth. New York: The Noonday Press, 1957.

__________. Nietzsche: An introduction to the understanding of his philosophical activity. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1965.

__________. Philosophical Faith and Revelation. Collins, St James Place, London: 1967.

__________. Philosophy and the World, Gateway edition, 1963.

Rhodes, Richard. Dead Feasts, tracking the secrets of a terrifying new plague. Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Sagan, Carl. Broca's Brain, reflection on the romance of science. Random House, NY, 1979.

Schilpp, Paul Arthur. , ed. The Library of Living Philosophers: The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, Vol IX, New York: Tudor Pub. Co., 1957.

Szasz, Ferenc M, and Etulain., eds. Richard W., Religion in Modern New Mexico. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1997.

Biographical Note :

I grew up on a farm in the Saginaw Valley of central Lower Michigan. My father was a farmer and minister. I graduated from the Great Lakes Bible College -- then located at Rock Lake Michigan (Vestaburg) -- with a Bachelors in Sacred Literature -- lacking second year Greek for an Arts degree, which I picked up at Lincoln Christian College.

...Graduated from Lincoln Christian Seminary, Lincoln Illinois, with a Master of Arts. The Master's degree required 30 hours beyond the BA and the BD (divinity) 60 hours more. I had completed the hours for both degrees majoring in philosophy with minors in theology, archaeology, history, sociology, psychology, and counseling. Fulfilling the requirement for both degrees required either a thesis or dissertation. Under one major professor a two part dissertation was begun for both degrees. He was replaced by another, and finally a third. Meanwhile I had completed both parts and had it bound -- after the committee readings and oral exam -- but just before graduation the advising professor called and said the Dean of the Seminary said that both degrees could not be allowed unless the work was done under two covers (this just prior to having the work bound) I could wait and graduate later, or take one degree or the other. I was then working for the Indiana Department of Mental Health, Alcoholism Division, Northwest Indiana Alcoholism Clinic in Gary Indiana. My then advising professor suggested I take the Masters for it seemed more appropriate than a divinity degree (and I suspect safer for the School). After a meeting with the Dean, I decided for the Masters. I've no recognizable degree of divinity.

I was told then that I was the first and last to graduate from that institution with a degree associated with a major in philosophy. It was true, and the School now offers a divinity degree that does not require a demonstration like in the arts by thesis or dissertation.

At the Alcoholism Clinic I did patient and collateral one-to-one counseling and held group sessions. Patients were referred by courts, industry, social agencies, churches, AA, and included walk-ins. Most were not voluntary except as a lesser alternative. I used what I then called Existenz counseling, utilizing also a State contracted psychologist's diagnoses based on batteries of psychological tests given when patients came into the clinic and the results after a period of clinic participation. I was recommended for and received training at the Georgia Clinic.

The Clinic soon shut down due to the lack of allocated funds and I transferred to the Indiana Department of Public Welfare, as a caseworker in downtown Gary, and soon became a supervisor in the area of families in need of protection, and families with dependent children. The last year of nearly 25 I was the supervisor and director of a branch food-stamp office in Lake County, and retired at 55.

Moving to Truth or Consequences New Mexico, I got involved in community situations in unique and unusual ways. Doing the unusual is a challenge to me if there are practical consequences. I have liked doing mechanical work, and building-construction, having constructed three homes using what I've called the AMCP method (alternative modification completion process) meaning: the home is built small, paid for, but with built-in headers etc. with screws making a complete house easily restructurable. I'm currently getting ready to go to Oregon with my son to help him build a house there along the coast.

Prior to work with the State of Indiana I had worked my way through the educational institutions by farming, service station attending, as laborer at the Michigan Chemical Company, working at Fisher body on the line, in a GE factory, moving oversized mobile homes, student labor as a mason crew chief etc.; and also attempted the ministry -- but, I like to think unsuccessfully after the manner or excuse of Kierkegaard, i.e., becoming easily disillusioned with people, or simply too independent. Though committed to the independent church as such, I'm not involved with any and mainly for the sake of the church for I can too easily cause turmoil.

Back Main	TARGET ARTICLE 51 AN APPLICATION OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGY'S PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD TO SOME ANTHROPOLOGICAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL-SOCIOLOGICAL RELIGIOUS PHENOMENA AND RELIGIOUSLY BELIEVED ONTOLOGISMS by Glenn C Wood 21 March 2002, posted 4 June 2002 (revised 2-9-2006)	PDF file
Site map	email me NOTATION (2-9-2006)—By the time TA 51 was written I had become acquainted enough with Mr. Muller’s conceptual leanings to suspect he was not properly representing Jaspers’ concepts. My initial approach to Muller was that of trust more than doubt, however I had been aware since the 60’s that there were subtle forces bent on the control of Jaspers’ influence. I wanted to zero-in and eliminate that effort if found in Muller’s Website. The Article was written with the hopes that Mr. Muller would respond by normal Comments in line with his own established protocol, that his apparent religious aversions could be clearly defined in the sequential dialogue. In my first sentence below the comment about not having found any disagreement with Jaspers simply meant that not enough of Mr. Muller’s personal history was known to make a fair assessment of the consciousness and conscience behind his words. [1] DIFFERENTIATION BY LIMITED COMPARISON I've wanted to respond to Muller's comments on religion but have found no disagreement -- yet -- by comparison with Karl Jaspers. There must be a difference -- as in the uniqueness of personal history. We have Jaspers' personal account: His father told him "religion is one of the regulative forces ...[but]… once you are seventy … before death, when we are no longer active in the world, we may clear the deck by leaving the church." He was suggesting his son not then leave the "church." Jaspers then says: "When my father was past seventy he did, indeed, leave the church." (Library of Living Philosophers, Philosophical Autobiography, X Theology and Philosophical Faith.p.76.) My view is that Jaspers did not leave the church in the sense of the Encompassing of the encompassing; he remained in the former, but didn't need the latter. His father needed the church because his work tied him to the community; Jaspers work was in the freedom of the university and empirical restraints of the hospital, but he had not excommunicated himself from communicating with the religious community at large. (See for instance the debate between the theologian Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Jaspers, Myth and Christianity, an inquiry into the possibility of religion without myth.) [1.1] We also have Nietzsche's description of religious experiences that suggests the importance of memory regarding faith and action: His father, a minister, painfully died, buried in proximity of the early home, when N was five. N was learning how to read and write before his third year -- had great recall -- and was very close to his father. Within a few months after his father's passing he dreamed his father came out of the grave, went into the church, and then carried a small child back into the grave--interpreted to be N's baby brother. The next morning he told his mother the dream. Within a short time his brother died. (Nietzsche, A Critical Life, by Ronald Hayman.) [1.2] These accounts may provide some understanding as to one's willingness to risk leaning toward transcendence and the other's risking a confinement to immanence. Both accounts tend to provide private interpretative processes with illumination as to the necessity of the existential data regarding ultimate situations such as the limits of thinking, conflict, guilt, suffering, and death. To me, N's beloved father or God-type died for all practical purposes, and as N could not avoid living without one, he functioned as if the other did not phenomenally and therefore objectively exist, avoiding any image or dream that might bring about unbearable disillusionment. His ontological musings were limited by the dangers inherent in his ontological flux of experience not excluding the imagination. These early-life polarizing eventful grounds of experiences and his concomitant genius -- whether sane or not -- provided infinite reason to distrust the mind's images. Intense experiences can cut ties with objective grounds and affect a leaning toward a state of subjectivism. [1.3] Ultimate circumstances contributed to N's influence not the least of which was the syphilis epidemic's direct impact on N's life. However there's no evidence that N had the disease or that…his…behavior put him at risk, there's question regarding the extent of its effect including the effect in Nietzsche's thinking. He says: "In the organic kingdom there is no such thing as forgetting, but there is a kind of digestion of what has been experienced." (Nietzsche by Jaspers. P. 313) [1.4] Jaspers' experience was also not independent of a disease with which he had to learn to cope. He died at age 86 while others previously diagnosed with the disease had not survived beyond thirty. "Human life reaches its peak through the depth of its memories." "The man grows 'wise'; he attains his new and final fulfillment at his greatest age." (Philosophical Autobiography, p.9 and General Psychopathology, Biographical Study p. 701) [1.5] But, though important to a more thorough comparison, as far as I know Mr. Muller's religious experiences are unavailable -- in print; so differentiation is limited. It seems like it would be of value to the philosophical and scientific community. The above paragraphs about Nietzsche are therefore included as a substitute for the absence of a similar personage. We must move along anyway … and include the testimony or confessions attainable, even though some are of no universal value unless similar to the existential notables whose … activity … included drinking hemlock; or suffering a crucifixion that ultimately led to -- at the very least -- the outlawing of crucifixions by Constantine. [2] JASPERS' CALL FOR RELIGIOUS REVIVAL I know my own religious experience, however, which is somewhat similar to an environment described by Jaspers: "The human situation, now as ever, demands a rebirth of man. How it will occur must be left to experience and action. If I see the best chances for it on Protestant soil, this is due only to the Protestant principle which approximates philosophy: no mediator; direct contact with God; universal priesthood -- and a corresponding institutional dismemberment of the Church into many creeds and independent congregations." (The Future of Mankind: p. 259) [2.1] My experiences with the church are different than Jaspers in that I've had less apparent struggle with revelation than he seems, to me, to have had. I do easily understand what Jaspers is concerned about, for in normal work-a-day performance we encounter those who speak out of authority -- or revelation. My experiences are similar to Nietzsche's only in that my father was a minister, but I felt no early-life father-son closeness, and no ultimate loss with which to come to terms. My experience with revelation has always been biblically orientated, I think, and dogmatism restrained eventually by an acceptance of the limits of thinking, which is probably the reasonable side of a non-biblical concept of original sin. [2.2] The previous and following comments are not sermonizing any more than Carl Sagan's 23rd Psalm, I mean his 23rd Chapter, which he entitled a "Sunday Sermon" in his book Broca's Brain. He says, "the enterprise of knowledge is consistent with both science and religion, and is essential for the welfare of the human species." I hope they are no less biblical than KJ's belief that "… the one equating God's will with the survival of mankind at any cost seems unbiblical and unphilosophical." (Future of Mankind, Substitutes for Reason, p.256.) [3] PRIMARY EXPERIENCE My identity with much, but not all, of Jaspers' statement, regarding the ground of change, includes an appreciation for diversification, such as local autonomous independent churches, which have a historic basis, including an established book's pattern for its organization. It is a book the falsification of which seems perpetual. It limits the dangers of faith in revelation and tends to never lose sight of the necessity of interpretation and that when interpretation exists, the book is always there as an objective launching pad for restructuring; the book reminds that no interpretation is subject to any private subject's objectification. My experience includes a history of religious activity not unrelated to the First Amendment, to be mentioned more below. While reading Muller's TA18[10] words about destructive religious substitutes "as seen in groups which advocate homicide or communal suicide" I was reminded of my experience with The Disciples Of Christ while curiously and partially participating in an Ordination/Licensing procedure very shortly after the Jim-Jones deaths -- it was reported that the organization was involved in his ordination. Jim Jones' earlier social religious … activity … probably gave the organization some assurance his acceptance was worth the risk of official approval. I withdrew from the procedure understanding the process had become apparently too defensively engaged in protecting the organization from further publicity. It seemed that the organization had become too large and centralized with a defensiveness to match. I had previously been ordained by a local independent and autonomous church with no central headquarters and was able to compare the two. [4] FREEDOM AND RELIGION, EARLY AMERICAN EXPERIENCES Earlier American religious activity apparently took advantage of the new religious freedom, i.e., some religious leaders continued pre-first-amendment activity without fearing the loss of private or organized religion due to the absence of possible legislation protecting a religion. For instance, in a very influential and publicized 1829 debate (see on-line reference) Robert Owen, propounding atheism, was enthusiastic about the freedom to speak out as never before possible. Alexander Campbell also speaks about that unhallowed alliance of church and state and points at Owen's social experimentation in New Harmony Indiana as the erection of a divine system of legislation that places mankind under a modern Theocracy. [4.1] While the US Constitution's separation of church and state was settling into the state's constitutions around the early eighteen thirties, it was probably understood that the new freedom was accompanied by real dangers. There could be substitutes for religious activity, and there was no tried and tested potential legislative mechanism for protecting any particular religion. Then, as now, in both secular and religious thinking, many could not distinguish in their thinking between small independent religious groups from large and established organized religion. Rigid concepts did not potentially fit the new reality, that, freedom of religion in America might result in numerous independent churches. Old concepts could only think in terms of a church-and-state organization, or theocracy, or at least large organizations with a central headquarters governing the local churches. Or there was an encompassing understanding that a foreign religious or secular organization would move into the no-law void in the resultant confusion. [4.2] To avoid this infiltration of foreign forces into the space of religious freedom it might have been thought that only a "revelation" comparable in authority to a continentally based history book -- Bible -- could break ties with foreign organizations already evident in the churches and prevent their further movement into the void. Bible-only-based organizations might not be enough and there would be insufficient strength in multiple sects to control the strength of established ecclesiastic's momentum, a potential danger through New England and especially through New Spain -- and through the Territory of New Mexico. The one-book and the two-book independent movements developed simultaneously and relate in special ways to value judgments about revelation and its misuse. The Campbellite and the Mormon movement serve as examples. They both proceeded as though the ever persistent dangers, like that later manifested in a Husserl/Heidegger type of ontological faith and jargon would be enticing enough to be picked, collected, or harvested by powerful organizations with an authority above or beyond question and critical activity. [5] ONE BOOK More specifically, Campbell's influence and movement beginning around 1830 and "grew to be very numerous, especially in the Western and Southwestern States." (History of the Christian Church, by Fisher, p. 565.) One book, the Bible, was the standard used for church organization for each independent local congregation--each being an autonomous organization. This movement's concept of revelation is supposedly limited to the book. This is the religion included in my encompassing experiences, my father being a farmer, and minister to a country church--a local autonomous group, the Coe Church of Christ near Shepherd Michigan. I was ordained by that group but after my father’s ministry there ended and during the ministry of Emanuel Collins. [6] TWO BOOKS Almost simultaneously (c.1830 and prior) Joseph Smith was having "revelations" which resulted in a second book (Ibid. 581). This leader's influence is well known. For instance, the Mormon movement in "Frontier and Modern New Mexico has nurtured many religious communities" and "… the Mormons have maintained homogeneous social orders and continue to maintain religious neighborhoods …" (Quote is by a Mormon in Religion in Modern New Mexico, p. 120.) (The importance of research regarding religious activity is especially appropriate in New Mexico because it is still the new-frontier rich in experience relative to the lack of a law separating church and state -- to be briefly mentioned later.) [7] EXAMPLE OF FALSIFICATION APPLIED TO REVELATION The second book of the two-book movement does not lend itself to empirical falsification. It amounts to subjective phenomena--subjectivism. Its existents can be handled as abnormal, or, the way a psychopathologist would consider the data related by patients withdrawn from reality. This is not to suggest the adherents are psychopathological, as though they might be harmful in some universal sense, and may even be considered more than less balanced. Its ontology is subjective and an ontology unto itself. I apply a method of interpretation that is still phenomenological nonetheless than with normal experiences. The second-book account of revelation about the anthropological history in the Americas lies in the area of ingenious fiction -- not unlike existentialists who resort to story telling to describe their existential views -- so far as universal acceptability is concerned. Its influence is based partly on faith in authority excluding critical evaluation by empirical verification e.g. archaeological. But because it is an affirmed second-revealed book equal to the one-revealed book, what distinguishes its religious organization from others in a peculiarly uniquely American way, is its meaning to individuals and indirectly then to community activity. The behavior of two-book proponents is community-testable, but the second book can be shelved for science's methodology; it has nothing to do with empirical investigation and as such a test of exclusive faith. It cannot be subjected to falsification. It's not a provable type of universal fact. How the second revelation has been quietly circumvented and accommodated to society is of interest and is probably determinable. (The method used to understand such religious subjective phenomena, a second-book revelation, is no different than applying the same test to any outstanding religious leader. Example based of fact: A world famous TV Evangelist sermonizing from a one-book position states what Jesus wrote in the sand, whereas the book does not reveal what was written in the sand. Then, rather than admit error, the leader claims authority as a revelator, and thereby escapes the falsification process. That leader is unwilling to risk his authority to objectivity, to falsification.) [7.1] One must ask then the metaphysical question and hope for a wise philosophical idea: why the revelation? If one considers it an existent (data) within some subjective state, the enlightenment one can get from accepting it as existentially unavoidable is to allow an illuminating of consciousness. I mean, allow openness for understanding the data, i.e., an educated guess. I…guess…it was Joseph Smith's way of coping with imagined fears about the lack of legislative controls on independent churches. It could include fears about the immoral consequences of the secularization resulting from the completion of the trickle-down process -- the movement of the First Amendment from the US Constitution to State constitutions (codification and ratification). Its intense anxiety stemming from what Fisher refers to as "the effect of the voluntary system…to create a multiplicity of sects." (Fisher, 561) Fisher then says the fear was unrealized -- and he was writing around 1900. The last New England State to fully separate church and state was Mass. in 1833, and the process began in 1818 in New England -- the time and space span of the preparation of the second book. (New Mexico was not yet a State.) A Campbell/Smith debate never materialized though the former had made the attempt. [7.2] An appropriate analogue in an analysis of the value of a church's activity might be the moral behavior of its membership in general and the behavior of its forthright (not undercover missionaries) missionaries in particular including the mores of the ecclesiastical authorities and corresponding religious institutions of higher learning. Disease resulting from immoral activity would seem pertinent to such an analysis. Currently, the disease is AIDS whereas in Nietzsche's time it was syphilis. The epidemiology of the disease especially as to how it is transmitted from one generation to another, seems meaningful. In other words the analogue in an analysis used to determine the effectiveness—feedback--of religious performance might be communicable diseases -- like AIDS, the attitude of religious leadership included. [8] Risking religious establishment's activity to falsification, disease can affect religion --risking to falsification the hypothesis that religious consensus is always good for the community -- The relativity of religious activity in the whole experience, conscious and conscience, is undeniable. It's also unavoidable, and certainly not to be overlooked because of a protectionist need to place an absolute buffer zone between any suggestion there might be a causal relation to community turmoil rather than peaceful resolution. The activity ought not to escape falsification such as in the following situation that happened in Sierra County, NM: [8.1] In 1997-98 the local ministerial association was basking in new levels of community empowerment for having successfully influenced the voters to vote a certain way on a controversial "health care" referendum. Politicians and healthcare experts had collected, harvested, many local churches in the effort. The vote results strengthened the local ministerial association. Although, in principle, not a member, I was meeting with a concerned citizen's group. I had through research acquired enough information that convinced me that Santa Fee, the Capital, needed to disperse--dump, allocate--a growing load of HIV and AIDS patients not excluding those at high risk. Santa Fe was being publicly hailed as a Mecca for AIDS patients. [8.2] After the referendum went the way the ministerial association wanted, though steered by local autocrats, State Health Care officials etc., that association -- having found an apparent justification for a static ontological and phenomenal existence -- allowed a charismatic minister to convince two other local ministers to approach the City and the County Commissioners. They were photographed standing over and behind the Commissioners as they signed proclamations declaring 1998 the year of the Bible -- posing for prearranged publicity by the local newspapers. [8.3] Great turmoil was created over this act and there were vocal and active objections, none of which came from the churches involved in the ministerial association except in reaction against the objections. Except for mine, most vocal objections were coming from moral-liberals and leftist political sources including an organization of Citizens Defending Our Bill Of Rights. If it had not been for the organized influence imposed on local citizens by the prominent religious leaders with regard to the health care referendum, I probably would not have voiced an objection. It was one thing to have a County Manager and a few Commissioners managing processes but then the County Attorney defended the Commissioners by saying the signing of the proclamation did not established religion any more than if they had signed a proclamation saying the community should eat more beef. This legal Official’s statement convinced me that it could indeed establish the ministerial organization. A meeting was arranged -- not by me -- by the ACLU-NM. There were so many speakers a one-minute limit was imposed on each public comment. I was only allowed to read the last two paragraphs of the following statement. I then paid to have it published in the only local newspaper that remained uneasily neutral. [8.4] "…The Sierra County attorney has reportedly said (Desert Journal 2-6-98) that for commissioners to sign a year-of-the-Bible proclamation is no different than a proclamation that the community should 'eat more beef' and it's all right because it doesn't establish a religion. He has chosen an emotionally charged and politically popular metaphor but I'd like to show how such a proclamation might establish an organization of religion in a community. Consider the following: [8.41] In the US there are controls involved in feeding rendered diseased cattle parts to cattle. It's reported that British schools banned British beef from their cafeterias because of Britain's Mad Cow epidemic, and the European Union blocked imports of beef from Britain. That's not creating a negative beef-eating religion unless you happen to be religiously a United Kingdom cattle baron. But a governmental agency that encourages eating diseased beef, pork, or … humans … might violate a natural law of health while at the same time further establish an established or establishing religion: [8.42] Within one generation the women of a New Guinea tribe, called the Fore, established the habit of eating their deceased relatives. They ate the whole body, sharing it with the children. It's reasonable to think some religious ritual was involved with eating a loved one, perhaps even deeper emotions were involved then the established cannibalistic custom of eating parts of one's enemies -- and eating certain parts was orgiastic. [8.43] The Fore could have eaten more of their deceased kin, but they drew the line and would not eat those that died of leprosy. They ate those they thought to have been killed by sorcery called kuro (meaning shaking). Those dying of sorcery manifested symptoms similar to the mad-cow disease. As more and more sorcery victims were eaten, the death of women and children by sorcery -- shaking -- increased. [8.44] If the Fore male cannibalistic leaders, having nothing but uncommon natural law, proclaimed 'let the women and children eat more sorcery meat' are they contributing to extending the practice of ritualistic cannibalism? Even though they had not created an ordinance -- having no constitution -- they would have aided the establishment of a form of cannibalism that was bad for community health. [8.45] The Fore people were shown they were dying from eating diseased relatives and the practice was limited. [8.46] I'm here to ask the religious leaders involved in the ministerial alliance to get out of local formal politics, and if you have a message to proclaim go door to door, use the newspapers, etc. or shout it from roof tops. All the ministerial alliance has to do is simply here and now confess that you momentarily lost faith in God and placed your faith in a bit of political propaganda. [8.47] If you make this confession, it will resolve the immediate situation, and I'll not press for a similar confession regarding your official interference in the referendum regarding health care. We will attribute that to understandable ignorance." (See Deadly Feasts, Richard Rhodes) [9] New England and New Mexico -- The spirit of the First Amendment hit New England about the time another spirit came ashore in the Southwest's New Spain. The separation of church and state was not included in the Mexico Constitution until 1859. (Fire and Blood, T. R. Fehrenbach.) The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848 prior to the constitutional separation of church and state and while the territory of New Mexico was then part of Mexico. The State of New Mexico's Constitution, Section 5, reads: "The rights, privileges and immunities, civil, political and religious guaranteed to the people of New Mexico by the treaty of Guadalupe shall be preserved inviolate." There's no separation of church and state in the New Mexico Constitution as there is in the US Constitution. But, Section 11 attempts to resolve the difference by adding, "No person shall be required to attend any place of worship or support any religious sect or denomination; nor shall any preference be given by law to any religious denomination or mode of worship." It's a State rich in observable phenomena such as politics and religion, and disease also becomes part of the interplay of forces. The close traditional interaction between religion and politics is measurably affected by the conduct of a traditional priesthood and its involvement in healthcare management through political maneuverings. [10] LITTLE KNOWN RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY Interesting too is the well known new New Harmony Indiana social-industrial experiment and the then, but not now, well known religious activity, which resulted in a much-publicized debate. It's the debate between the religious activist Alexander Campbell and social activist Robert Owen, all contributing to an interest in the activity of religion and the social views religiously maintained. (The Western Intellectual Tradition, J. Bronowski and Mazlish) (The debate is complete and on line: see references.) [10.1] Basic concepts were used in that debate and they are not unlike those used in the KJF. There's the ontological concept of Owen that a new harmony is possible independent of reality. There's the application of the concept that mind-body are unavoidably dual in function when dealing with reality. There's the application of mathematics and economics to the question in support of independence and the arguments against the elimination of the riddle of freedom. Owens had the affirmative and Campbell the opposing, though a switch took place, before the end of the debate. [10.2] The debate is referenced here because it is peculiarly American in orientation. It is not being mentioned to show the concepts employed to defend or assert a position. The concepts are not new. An excuse for using some of them seems to be a means of escaping the unavoidable limitations of thought. [11] CONCLUSION So ... the direction of Muller's interest is ripe for the harvest from these shore-to-shore fields, ground of inexhaustible waving sea-like experiences. The KJF preparatory religious comments have greased some of the thrashing machinery, and I've tried to show there's no limit to where the thrashing circuit should go. It's possible that the machines won't be able to go to some fields and some sheaves brought from the fields will be too much or too little to thrash. It's also possible that some of the participants will get thrashed, as one did back in Gratiot County Michigan, when a man fell into the thrashing machine and was picked up in a wicker basket after … hitting the fan. But, it seems to me that the hitherto thrashings, the phenomenological and ontological discussions, continue to be most beneficial. For in close, honest, and humble communication is where the revival of the individual occurs, and disaster avoided, for, "… our only chance today lies in a change of man on a broad scale, affecting first a few, then many, and finally, perhaps, a majority." (Future of Mankind 261). ------------------------------------ REFERENCES: Bronowski, J. and Mazlish, Bruce. The Western Intellectual Tradition. Penguin Books, 1970. Campbell-Owen Debate, http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/acampbell/cod/CODOO.HTM Fehrenbach. T.R. Fire and Blood, A History of Mexico. Da Capo Press, New York, 1995. Fisher, George Park. History of the Christian Church. Scribners, Preface dated 1887 (lost the publication page, but was professor of ecclesiastical history in Yale University). Hayman, Ronald. Nietzsche, a critical life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980 Jaspers, Karl. The Future of Mankind, Phoenix Books. The University of Chicago Press, 1963. __________. General Psychopathology. University of Chicago Press, 1963. __________, and Bultmann, Rudolf. Myth and Christianity: An inquiry into the possibility of religion without myth. New York: The Noonday Press, 1957. __________. Nietzsche: An introduction to the understanding of his philosophical activity. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1965. __________. Philosophical Faith and Revelation. Collins, St James Place, London: 1967. __________. Philosophy and the World, Gateway edition, 1963. Rhodes, Richard. Dead Feasts, tracking the secrets of a terrifying new plague. Simon & Schuster, 1997. Sagan, Carl. Broca's Brain, reflection on the romance of science. Random House, NY, 1979. Schilpp, Paul Arthur. , ed. The Library of Living Philosophers: The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, Vol IX, New York: Tudor Pub. Co., 1957. Szasz, Ferenc M, and Etulain., eds. Richard W., Religion in Modern New Mexico. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1997. Biographical Note : I grew up on a farm in the Saginaw Valley of central Lower Michigan. My father was a farmer and minister. I graduated from the Great Lakes Bible College -- then located at Rock Lake Michigan (Vestaburg) -- with a Bachelors in Sacred Literature -- lacking second year Greek for an Arts degree, which I picked up at Lincoln Christian College. ...Graduated from Lincoln Christian Seminary, Lincoln Illinois, with a Master of Arts. The Master's degree required 30 hours beyond the BA and the BD (divinity) 60 hours more. I had completed the hours for both degrees majoring in philosophy with minors in theology, archaeology, history, sociology, psychology, and counseling. Fulfilling the requirement for both degrees required either a thesis or dissertation. Under one major professor a two part dissertation was begun for both degrees. He was replaced by another, and finally a third. Meanwhile I had completed both parts and had it bound -- after the committee readings and oral exam -- but just before graduation the advising professor called and said the Dean of the Seminary said that both degrees could not be allowed unless the work was done under two covers (this just prior to having the work bound) I could wait and graduate later, or take one degree or the other. I was then working for the Indiana Department of Mental Health, Alcoholism Division, Northwest Indiana Alcoholism Clinic in Gary Indiana. My then advising professor suggested I take the Masters for it seemed more appropriate than a divinity degree (and I suspect safer for the School). After a meeting with the Dean, I decided for the Masters. I've no recognizable degree of divinity. I was told then that I was the first and last to graduate from that institution with a degree associated with a major in philosophy. It was true, and the School now offers a divinity degree that does not require a demonstration like in the arts by thesis or dissertation. At the Alcoholism Clinic I did patient and collateral one-to-one counseling and held group sessions. Patients were referred by courts, industry, social agencies, churches, AA, and included walk-ins. Most were not voluntary except as a lesser alternative. I used what I then called Existenz counseling, utilizing also a State contracted psychologist's diagnoses based on batteries of psychological tests given when patients came into the clinic and the results after a period of clinic participation. I was recommended for and received training at the Georgia Clinic. The Clinic soon shut down due to the lack of allocated funds and I transferred to the Indiana Department of Public Welfare, as a caseworker in downtown Gary, and soon became a supervisor in the area of families in need of protection, and families with dependent children. The last year of nearly 25 I was the supervisor and director of a branch food-stamp office in Lake County, and retired at 55. Moving to Truth or Consequences New Mexico, I got involved in community situations in unique and unusual ways. Doing the unusual is a challenge to me if there are practical consequences. I have liked doing mechanical work, and building-construction, having constructed three homes using what I've called the AMCP method (alternative modification completion process) meaning: the home is built small, paid for, but with built-in headers etc. with screws making a complete house easily restructurable. I'm currently getting ready to go to Oregon with my son to help him build a house there along the coast. Prior to work with the State of Indiana I had worked my way through the educational institutions by farming, service station attending, as laborer at the Michigan Chemical Company, working at Fisher body on the line, in a GE factory, moving oversized mobile homes, student labor as a mason crew chief etc.; and also attempted the ministry -- but, I like to think unsuccessfully after the manner or excuse of Kierkegaard, i.e., becoming easily disillusioned with people, or simply too independent. Though committed to the independent church as such, I'm not involved with any and mainly for the sake of the church for I can too easily cause turmoil.


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