A TRIBUTE TO JIM CORBETT: concluded
Jim Corbett – Part III
Jim Corbett, this quakero muy catrolico, an
"unbeliever"?
Yes. Shortly after his 1985 indictment on federal charges of conspiracy
and "alien-smuggling," Corbett was feted at an interdenominational religious
program featuring Elie Weisel. When Corbett's turn came to speak, he startled the admiring
crowd by describing himself as an "unbeliever."
"That is," he explained, "I don't believe selfhood
survives death, and I consider any conceivable God to be an idol."
And yet, his "unbelief" was not conventional agnosticism or
atheism, he explained. "As I read the Bible, this kind of unbelief is entirely
consistent with the faith of Abraham and Moses and achieves classic expression in
Job." (Corbett had been a speaker at the 1989 Friends Bible Conference in
Philadelphia.)
Corbett pointed out that the biblical faith, as embodied in the first
three commandments brought down from Sinai by Moses, put opposition to idolatry at the top
of the list; and in the Book of Job, the smooth conventional theologizing of Job's friends
is relentlessly debunked, showing that idols include not only statues or golden calves,
but concepts of God–dogmas and theologies–as well.
Corbett illustrated this conviction of biblical anti-theologizing by
citing the prophet Isaiah, through whom God declares,
"I am the Lord, and there is no other.... I form the light, and
create darkness: I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things."
(Isaiah 45:5-7)
This is in stark contrast to many other passages, and to orthodox
theology, where God is spoken of as all-Good.
Such biblical demythologizing of the Bible itself, Corbett said,
reaches its zenith in the Book of Job, where the notion that God must be only the source
of good is completely undermined. In a modern parallel, Corbett noted a report that some
rabbis in Auschwitz put God on trial for injustice and pronounced a guilty verdict.
What are we left with then? Not with atheism, Corbett said, but without
much formal theism either; this is, instead, the basis of biblical "unbelief,"
namely that
"...the biblical faith has always required honest
God-wrestling....Consider: Abraham, ‘the father of believers,' was the ancient
world's trail-breaking unbeliever and iconoclast, rejecting all of humanity's purported
Gods....The prophetic faith has never ceased to need its idol-breakers who question all
authority. Over many centuries, it has also developed a profoundly seasoned piety that can
be amused by the Yiddish punchline: If You forgive us, we'll forgive You.'"(1996, p.
6)
This was a process Corbett understood; it was much of the basis of his
own self-identification as an "unbeliever." And it had a lot to do with his
attraction to the Society of Friends. He was drawn by our attempts at radical
simplification of the business of religion, the stripping away of outward paraphernalia on
which new forms of idolatry can hang as on hooks; and our emphasis on letting lives preach
through faithful response to leadings, rather than being bound by dogma or ritual. He
cited with Quakerly approval Psalm 62:1: "My soul waits in silence for God
only," and the rabbinical comment that Silence is "the worship least likely to
make an idol...silence is the height of all praises of God."
To sum up: Corbett encountered in the Sanctuary movement a new
manifestation of authentic religion, which takes form in communities that respond to the
leadings of an unimaginable but real presence which theologians typically call God. These
communities, especially as they work together, moving in concert even while maintaining
their specific identities, make up the true, "catholic" church, cutting across
lines of dogma, denomination and culture.
The mission of this invisible "church" is, in Corbett's
terms, the "hallowing of the earth." To hallow means to make holy; and the
holiness we are called on to manifest is capsulized by the prophet Micah (6:8): "He
has showed thee, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of thee, but to do
justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God?"
In the gospels this task is described in Matthew 25, where we heard
Jesus telling of the separation of the sheep from the goats at the last judgment: the
division is made not on the basis of belief or denomination, but according to whether a
person has, like the heretical Good Samaritan, been "moved with compassion"(Luke
10:33) and fed, clothed, housed and defended "the least of these, my
brethren."(Matt. 25:40)
For Friend Jim Corbett, and many faith communities in the borderlands
of the American Southwest and elsewhere, these texts came vividly alive as they joined in
the work of providing sanctuary for some of the thousands of refugees fleeing the horror
of war in Central America.
After his trial, as media attention faded, Corbett returned contentedly
to his ranch, his goats, and his writing. According to one news report, when his last
illness came over him, he hurried to finish work on abook manuscript, which was, according
to one friend, "a mixture of cabalistic and Jewish thought and his cow work."
I smiled at that. How thoroughly Jim to mix cabalism with cows. But if
anybody could do it, he could. And he'll make it good to, I bet. I'm anxious to read it.
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