One of the effects of this pandemic on my own creative spirit has been an ever increasing desire to research people of great merit, generosity, and Christian love. One such man is Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965): theologian, organist, author, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician.
As a Lutheran theologian, he challenged the secular view of Jesus Christ as being a person of history and the traditional Christian view of Him as being the Savior of the world through His death on the cross. To Schweitzer, the true Christian should be concerned about the unity of their faith with a purpose. Only through the uniting of these two concepts can we truly do what God wants us to do.
His faith took a broader form when he built and equipped a leprosy hospital in the country of Gabon, Africa. He became like a “medical father” to his patients and helped them to trust medicine as a means to “cut out” the illnesses they brought to him for healing. This was no easy task considering one of the most important leaders in an African tribe is the medicine man, one who forces evil spirits or illnesses out of his people. By showing Christian love, Schweitzer soon became one of the most admired man in these tribes.
Through no fault of his own, Schweitzer tried to keep his hospital supplied with things as well as personnel, but when those supplies began to dwindle, he and his wife traveled to the United States to ask for donations to keep his life’s work going. At this time, black lists and the Un-American Activities Committee of the Congress was being run by Senator Eugene McCarthy of Wisconsin. Their main goal was to seek out and destroy any American citizen who might have Communist leanings. Schweitzer and his wife did not realize that the CIA was tapping their phone calls, censoring their mail, tailing them to and from fund raisers, and openly trying to discredit their humanitarian efforts. Even when they returned to Gabon, the CIA continued to disrupt their supply chains, undermine their philosophies for helping the people, and used the Gabon military to force the couple to close down the hospital. The CIA left an old radioactive cylinder complete with a plutonium canister on the hospital’s property to scare away patients and its medical personnel.
Not to be deterred by man’s use of fear and hatred to settle situations, Schweitzer gratefully accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for philosophy in 1952. He sought to change people’s lives with his “Reverence for Life” philosophy. As he observed various creatures in the river that ran by his hospital and as he saw them living and dying according to their own survival needs, he began to realize that we all live together and take each other for-granted, no matter what species we are. The key to survival is who takes more to live. At the hospital in Lamborene, Gabon, everyone’s life mattered, and death was simply a reverent part of that life. You work together as a community unit; no one is more important than anyone else. However, sooner or later, one may arise who will impose his will on others; that is the end of any civilization. Schweitzer’s philosophy would fit in today’s societies as we have seen Western civilization decaying the more we have abandoned our affirmations for life. His “Reverence for Life” philosophy is at the heart of the Environmental Movement today.
As nuclear testing and weapons have proliferated in our world, it is important to remember that Albert Schweitzer was not a communist but a believer in our abilities to show compassion to one another. Only after every other option has been thoroughly analyzed and implemented would it be plausible to use nuclear weapons in any situation. Although many political leaders accused him of being an enemy of the Cold War, Albert Schweitzer joined Albert Einstein, Otto Hahn, and Bertrand Russell in calling for resistance to further development of nuclear power. The group supported many nuclear test ban treaties as they developed throughout the early years of the Cold War.
Albert Schweitzer led a very intelligent and compassionate life as a theologian and as a medical doctor, but perhaps his most peaceful accomplishment was his development as one of the world’s most studied pipe organists and builders of the German pipe organ. He is still considered to be one of the world’s foremost performers of the pipe organ and in particular, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. His translations and transpositions of Bach’s and Richard Wagner’s music are of the highest quality even today as digital music seems to have changed people’s desire for the purer Baroque and Romantic traditions. He also helped form the German Organ Reform Movement to make sure that kind of instrument would survive any kind of traumatic event or economic upheaval.
It is wonderful to realize that such people of high standards gave me a world that I could be proud of. Schweitzer’s hospital survives today through donations from American, European, and Gabonese contributors. We should appreciate that his philosophy of “all life matters” came before the United States’ struggle with racism, hatred, evil, and fear. Unlike the uncaring, aggressive, non-humanitarian former president, we need to protect our environment not just for us but for future generations to come. Nuclear power in the hands of good people can create a wonderful world; in the hands of the wrong people, as Albert Einstein once stated, “It is an abomination to the planet.”
Schweitzer used his faith with purpose in helping many tribal people overcome, malnutrition, poverty, and diseases, but as a musician, my heart understands his love of God’s most precious talent, music. Our shared love of playing the massive pipe organs of the world makes us kindred spirits and believers in the powerful presence of God when one hears the pipe organ played as a gift to God. In that moment when the instrument reverberates throughout the cathedrals and churches of the world, we can all pray without words, and in the words of that beautiful scripture verse, we hear, “Be still and know that I am.”
Anna Hartt
