The single most repeated question I’ve been asked of late as a cultural historian has easily been: “Have you ever been as worried about the future of the United States?” And yes, our present situation certainly calls to mind another grim moment in our country’s recent history.
As Watergate began unfolding after Nixon was reelected to a second term as President, each day brought yet another revelation. Deep Throat kept unveiling secret after secret about the levels of fear and corruption undergirding every move made by Nixon and his infamous cronies. Senators Irwin and Baker led a bipartisan committee whose meetings were anxiously watched by millions of Americans. Millions more listened on the radio, glued to new revelations provided to the American citizens seemingly every minute or so. The torrent from our national news sources continued at a stupefying pace. As a young doctoral student at Columbia, I could not remember the horrors of the McCarthy era, but I can still recall my grandparents listening every night to Walter Cronkite’s evening news broadcast, waiting for President Eisenhower to counter McCarthy’s heinous claims that the noble General George Marshall was a Communist. My grandfather would shake his head and say, “The thought of that fine general listening to the radio from his farm in Gettysburg, to hear his old friend Ike repudiate what the insane McCarthy is claiming is enough to make any American cry for shame.”
Back to Nixon’s inglorious exit from the White House. The Episcopal bishop of New York, the six-foot-eight Paul Moore, and Canon Edward Nason West — sub-dean of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine and one of the world’s greatest liturgical authorities — planned a service for the state of the nation four days before Nixon resigned. The service was of historic execution. At dusk on the Sunday before Nixon left office in shame, Canon West had a major Jewish rabbi and a Muslim imam participate. The clergy all wore black cassocks, as did the crucifers, torch bearers, and vergers. The processional crosses were draped in black, as they are on Good Friday. The lights in the vast cathedral were dimmed. The readings were all from scriptures focused on the abuses of power by those leaders who had lost their way, as their consciences failed to act with honor. The unforgettable Telford Taylor, chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials and McCarthy’s most articulate critic, was the featured speaker. The cathedral was packed, as if the sainted sanctuary were a haven for our fears about the future of our democracy with Nixon in the White House. Toward the end of the unbelievable service — marking our country’s most serious threat since the Depression, if not since the Civil War — Bishop Moore read the prayer for our nation from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, the rabbi read a prayer for the President of the United States, and the imam read a prayer for the future of freedom in the United States.
I tear up every time I think of what then transpired in the Cathedral on that occasion. The lights were dimmed even more; one blazing spotlight shone upon a huge American flag draped from the ceiling of one of the columns, and my friend Alec Wyton, the beloved organist and Master of Choristers at Saint John the Divine, played “The Star-Spangled Banner” largo, as if a funeral dirge. Then he very slowly tolled the huge bourdon bell as the retiring procession made its way down the central aisle into the cathedral darkness at a snail’s pace.
My young wife and I left the cathedral in silence, along with the thousands of people gathered nationwide that night as the country was engulfed in scandal.
We were not surprised after the service’s weight sank in when, three days later, Senators Goldwater and Scott and Representative Rhodes went to the White House to tell Nixon that if he did not resign immediately, he would be roundly impeached.
As I wrote for this site last year, Trump makes the heinous Nixon look like Mother Theresa. And what is truly terrifying at this fragile moment for our cherished democracy is the utter cowardice of those Republicans now sitting in the congressional chairs once occupied by the likes of Goldwater, Scott, and Rhodes. And as if that statement were not enough to make us tremble for our children and grandchildren, instead of Gerald Ford, should Trump be man enough to resign, we have JD Vance.
We need a second service for the state of the nation at every church, temple, and mosque all over the country. We all need to pray for the future of the United States and then act accordingly. The demonstrations all over the country on Saturday April 5th should give us some glimmer that our present “nightmare,” to borrow from Gerald Ford’s public announcement all those years ago, might start at long last to be confronted.
There’s an urgent need for a service for the state of the nation — redux.
James F. Jones, Jr. is the President Emeritus at Trinity College and Kalamazoo College, the former president of Sweet Briar College, and the Canon Precentor Emeritus, Church of Saint Michael and Saint George.
