Standing in the pulpit of the Presidents’ Church, the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, in Washington, D.C., the Rev. Peter Marshall began to feel the affects of a heart attack. Fearing that the attack had weakened the heart of one of America’s finest ministers, his doctor recommended a six-month leave of absence from his duties, but Peter went back to his pulpit after only a few weeks. Believing that God had given him a powerful voice to speak out against corrupt and selfish politicians, Peter’s last sermon in that church catapulted him into the chaplaincy of the United States Senate in Congress in January, 1947. He began to write what would be his last prayer for the Senate when God silenced his voice for the last time before he could pray it. A senator friend read the prayer to the Senate as a sign of respect for this great theologian.
As is my custom to go back and watch many of my more favorite movies, watching “A Man Called Peter” for the third time was not an exception to my rule. Yesterday, I had to have my twenty-two year old garbage disposal replaced in the kitchen sink. The serviceman finished up his work and asked me, “How do you feel about what’s going on in America today?” I responded, “I am very worried about the direction our country is going in. Our core values are disappearing.”
After he left, I realized that I needed to watch the story of Peter Marshall once again because the serviceman’s question stirred up my feelings about how divided we are as a nation. Peter Marshall’s last sermon was based on 1 King, Chapter 18, Verse 21 (KJV). “And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him: but if Ba’-al, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.” It didn’t take me very long to realize that Peter’s powerful words spoke to the politically elite of Washington in 1949 just like they should speak to us today.
Elijah called all of the people of ancient Egypt and their officials together to ask one question: “Who do we worship?” The Ten Commandments were like a bill of rights and a declaration of dependence on God. Moral decay was rampant among the people where they loved things more than principles. Materialism was their god, and the love of the flesh was their desire. Elijah asked the people, “What happens when our moral fiber becomes weak and we no longer love one another?” In his sermon, Peter cried out, “America needs a prophet like Elijah, one who will give us the essential choices of who we serve, God or Ba’-al.”
In the year of 2023, are we like the Egyptians in Elijah’s time as a nation? Rev. Marshall’s voice demanded that America face up to what it was becoming. It was his voice that challenged my father to be like him in his own pulpit, Sunday after Sunday, a voice that my father did not take lightly. Using American novelist and poet, Josiah Gilbert Holland’s poem, “God Give Us Men,” Rev. Marshall firmly encouraged his congregants to seek out leaders who had integrity, intelligence, and courage rather than those who would be corrupt. He demanded that we chose between God or Satan. And in his petitions to God, Peter asked for Americans to have the wisdom to live up to their core values.
A time like this demands strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands:
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue and damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty, and in private thinking;
For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds,
Their large professions and their little creeds,
Mingle in selfish strife, lo!
Freedom weeps, wrong rules the land and waiting Justice sleeps.
We do not need politicians who have no ideology and no inspiration for basic human values. We need leaders who care about human rights and who are willing to protect the environment instead of destroying our natural world. We do not need leaders who lie and promise social benefits before elections; once elected, these politicians break all their promises. We need leaders who will do everything possible so that democracy will survive. Through the power of our votes, we need to help change the pathetic political process by making wise choices, by electing people who are not greedy and who desire power for their own self-interests. Our leaders need to be selfless individuals willing to sacrifice their own needs for the success of humanity and the survival of of great nation.
Like the serviceman who put in my new garbage disposal, I, too, wonder if America is dangling precipitously over the edge and lying in bed with Ba’-al rather than truly believing in God as our Supreme Creator and placing all of our core values into His hands. Jesus said in Mark 12:30 (KJV), “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.” Rev. Peter Marshall cried out, “If God, then follow Him. If Ba’-al, then follow him.” But we must chose before our country, as we once knew it, becomes a thing of the past, a country that flourished and then died, because we, the People, did not care enough to love others as ourselves. I pray that Americans will chose God; as for my house, I will live in the house of the Lord.
Anna Hartt
