Ministry on the Edge

Reflections of an Interfaith Pioneer, Civil Rights Advocate, and the First Bioethicist

Vaux

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781498272490
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Ministry on the Edge tells the story of Dr. Kenneth Vaux's long-standing career as theologian and minister--the first bio-ethicist, a civil rights advocate, and interfaith pioneer. Through a collection of essays, articles, and sermons, Vaux traces his prophetic assessment of important ethical issues from the perspective of theology and religion. He offers readers a deeper appreciation of the ethical implications of human and civil rights; medical and healthcare issues (such as abortion, stem-cell research, transplantation, death and dying); public policy; science and technology; war and interfaith conflict. By modeling a way of thinking through the questions that matter most, he helps readers find their own theological lens for wrestling with important moral and ethical concerns. Vaux's reflections are universal, exploring theology and ministry on the edge--the boundary between Godly and worldly, sacred and secular, evangelical and ethical--what Bonhoeffer called the boundaries of good and evil, truth and falsehood, hope and despair.

part one

The Search for a Standpoint

Early Experiences

Memories Begin

My earliest ministry-shaping memories begin on the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. I remember stumbling around our small apartment in Mount Lebanon, Pittsburgh. I was nearly 3 years old. Seven decades later, such events frame my consciousness and conscience. I remember an early Christmas at the home of my Pap and Grammy Shoup in the hills of western Pennsylvania. It may have been 1941 or 1942. The snow was clinging to the majestic pines on the steep hills along the Scrub Grass creek. My gift that magical Christmas morning was a wonderful set of wooden boats with spring-fired wooden rockets—a patriotic gesture soon regretted by mom and dad. After several bruises on the folks’ legs, the boats disappeared, and my warrior ambitions were nipped in the bud.

My grandparents, and even great-grandparents, on the Shoup side were very special people. The old folks had been born toward the end of the Civil War. They celebrated their 73rd wedding anniversary on IVs and urinary catheters before they were put out of their misery by a loving nurse-daughter. They rooted my life in a long history and remote European cultural background that I would soon get to know and in a rural simplicity, which, for a city priest, was a constant reality check.

Sara has written four volumes on our family history, and I here offer eulogies and a memoir to tell you of two of them. First, I offer my tribute to “Grammy” Shoup, who died of congestive heart failure at home along the Scrub Grass Creek at age 80.

Tribute to Grandma Veda Mae Armstrong Shoup

July 13, 1974

We now bring to a close our hours of mourning. We close the casket (a provocation to the folks of Clintonville) and enter some minutes of reminiscence and self-examination and witness to the enduring promise of our God. Then we drive over the hills to the place she was born and lay her to rest with so many of her forebears. Our mood will pass from sorrow to comfort, then to sadness, but sadness chastened by joy and hope.

Veda Mae Armstrong Shoup: born in the verdant northwestern Pennsylvania. She never journeyed far from this place. Abandoned as an infant by her father; her mother taken early by death; reared by relatives in those harsh years at century’s turn; meeting the dear companion of her life. The loss of a child, then the birth of twins so small that survival would be a miracle, even today, with advanced neo-natal care.

Then another daughter comes, and she has always been near. School days, sports days, coming and going, she cherished the beauty of nature, teaching all by example to revel at the sight of wildflowers and birds and old hound dogs. Tears came to her eyes, and anger, as she watched the slow destruction of hills and forests and streams.

Persons were her greatest joy. By dim light at night, she finely penned letters to her family and friends. Her home and hearth welcomed both friend and stranger. Travelers who one day stopped by became life-long friends and rise today with her sons and daughters to call her blessed.

Four score years, not so much by reason of health, as by sheer German willpower and by the grace of an abiding sense of humor. A saint and sinner, like us all. She knew it—knew her need of savior in life and death, as the old German Reformed catechism, by which she was raised, had it. She knew her destiny to be to care and she did.

A wife and mother, great to two generations. Keeper of the citadel of a constant home, observer, and commentator on the foibles and aspirations of generations—of wars and depressions—of new starts and inventions. Strange new machines took the roads and the skies in her lifetime; she watched quietly. She watched the profound revolution that fashioned a thousand separate towns and nations into a global village, where brotherhood became the precondition to survival, as well as the gracious thing to do, something she had known instinctively.

Her last evening, she lay beside the window looking up that winding hill that had brought so many travelers to her home in the valley. If her eyes were not already dimmed, she could have seen a black bear ambling across the road. The Indians who once made village along that creek behind her house would surely have sensed an ominous sign of the mysterious fates that cross our path.

As dawn made ready to pierce the eastern sky, she startled as her spirit made its last tortuous cleavage from the shell that was her body, her family at her side, her work completed.

Second, I present a tribute I offered to Grandpa Shoup at a 1995 family reunion. I also conducted his funeral in a more conventional way, given the irascible character of “Pap.”

Tribute to Grandpa Lester Shoup

Family Reunion, July 29, 1995

Thanks Pap, for making it fun to be a kid. Wherever you are in heaven or hell, you old character . . . thanks Pap, for making it fun to be a kid.

For the lime on the garden, the lettuce and cukes . . . and the side porch and the swing and the hummingbirds in the trumpet vine . . .

For the drive one night to pick up Pedro—or was it Tech?—and place him in his mansion. What a fine line of homes, like Levittown, while old Edie, with her fine brunette mane, lay cozy by the gas fire . . .

For the simple, still joy of Christmas ‘43—snow on the hemlocks and ice on the scrub grass . . . thanks Pap, for making it fun to be a kid.

For the long evenings on the summer porch with Don, swatting flies, for about the same average that we did on the baseball diamond, until Ray came along . . .

For the weenie roasts back at the old stone fireplace up on the creek-bank behind the outhouse, where Grammy’s careful script of Edgar Guest hung above the farm journals and Sears catalogs.

This recalls the Fourth of July, rocking on the porch as the cars processed down the hill from near and far . . . like Petersburg.

Then the old outhouse was really put to use . . . and Uncle Bill lost his teeth ‘til along came my Dad, ever the fixer of potties and fixtures . . .

Meanwhile, the picnic . . . and the pink angel food cakes . . . and Grammy . . . thanks Pap, for making it fun to be a kid.

And for the old green Hornet left by Uncle Buss that we all learned to drive back and forth around the pump station . . . and down to the swimmin’ hole with Pearlie storming down the mountainside, and a flying dive . . .

And the rushing creek behind the house, and memories of the old pioneer village along those banks as we settled after good days to peaceful sleep and sweet dreams.

And the morning pancakes, mixed from scratch from the old Hoosier cabinet, shaped into turtles.

And the berries on the hill by Ross Phipps’ farm and the call from Grammy that came so clear to this bored and weary kid, “Come home now boys.”

And the tale of my mom’s first biscuits, tossed out like cue balls that winter’s night, still undisturbed come spring.

And the big dinner table and the game—rabbit, squirrel, venison, and pheasant—and the hand-made pot pie . . . thanks Pap (and Grammy), for making it fun to be a kid.

For the quiet evening reminiscing around the parlor, ‘til you headed up the hill at about eight and Grammy remained at the writing table.

And the early morning . . . and the groundhog standing poised across the road, down by the bridge beneath the great long-needle white pines that rose toward heaven before the blight took the hemlocks, and strip mine run-off silenced the spring-fed stream . . . and the bear that ambled across by the Phipps road the night Grammy died.

For the anticipating delight of winding down the hi...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part One: The Search for a Standpoint
• Part Two: The Search for Social Justice
• Part Three: The Search for Solemnity
• Part Four: The Search for Synthesis
• Part Five: The Search for Legacy
• Appendix
• Bibliography