Grolier’s On-line Encyclopedia discussion of the rise of commercial television notes that between 1946 and 1951 the number of family-owned TVs increased from 6,000 to around 12 million. By 1955 around half the American public owned one of those early behemoth sets with glowing tubes, undependable reception, and few stations. And, in a cloud of dust with superb timing, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans came galloping onto the screens and lassoing the hearts of America on December 30, 1951. The “King” and “Queen” of Cowboys & Cowgirls were a talented musical duo who thrilled America with escapades of the Wild West set in mid-twentieth century Cowboy Land. With Roy’s horse Trigger and Dale’s horse Buttermilk they demonstrated their impressive equestrian skills as well. This wasn’t the usual setting for the Wild West. Automobiles, electricity, and even telephones shared the camera with holdovers from the days of Billy the Kid and cohorts.
Eventually, it became clear that the Cowboy royalty were also devout, decidedly Evangelical, and finally quite outspoken Christians. Neither of them had experienced a smooth road to success. Roy’s [a.k.a. Leonard Franklin Slye] early life was something out of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath given his family’s experiences during the Great Depression. Struggling alongside his family in the Midwest, he eventually moved to California, breaking into showbiz with his obvious talent on the guitar, a decent singing voice, and his ability to yodel [big during the 1930s, apparently]. By the 1930s he and colleagues formed the legendary Sons of the Pioneers. Meanwhile, his future partner and wife Dale Evans [a.k.a. Florence Olivia Smith] had been struggling since the late 1920s to become established. Eloping at the age of 14, giving birth to a son when 15, her first of four husbands abandoned them a year later. Between 1929 and 1946 she endured two other difficult and failed marriages. Landing a job at 20th Century Fox, she proved herself a powerhouse talent, mastering jazz, swing, and the big band sounds, not to mention acting. The studio, not wanting a scandal, billed Dale’s son as her “younger brother” while transforming her public image into a cowgirl destined for the crown. True love blossomed and she married her earlier costar Roy on New Year’s Eve 1947. Her two big hits were Happy Trails which she wrote as the theme song of The Roy Rogers Show and Faith, Hope, and Charity [The Bible Tells Me So], a 1955 pop-religious song which made it to Number 7 on Billboard’s Honor Roll of Hits.
Dale and Roy were obviously committed people of faith. Their efforts to overcome the debilitating realities of earlier problematic or disastrous choices in relationships [Roy’s two previous marriages and Dale’s three] and their ability to gather their children from those marriages along with a number of adopted children as part of their burgeoning family also captured the hearts of America. Their own daughter was born with severe challenges, dying at a very early age. They became spokespeople for more enlightened support and much needed education about mentally and physically challenged people. Despite their undoubted trials in living and loving, Dale’s songs in particular spoke of a fervent trust in God and the importance of such abiding trust as folks negotiate the vagaries of life.
While I was growing up a copy of Evan’s “Faith, Hope, and Charity” sat on the piano at home, Dale’s highly lacquered “helmet hair” on the cover a subtle reminder of her Evangelical leanings. The lyrics, happy and positive, exhorted the listeners that having “…faith, hope, and charity” is the way “to live successfully.” I’ve dealt with hymn tunes and texts most of my life, and this is one that I think might need to be edited a bit. Living “successfully” back in 1955 when the song was written may quite likely have meant to Evans and others what the on-line Oxford Dictionary suggests as living life with a clear “aim or purpose” in mind. However, “successful” like most any word may evolve in meaning over the decades. More recently it centers on “achieving popularity, profit, or distinction” [Oxford Dictionary meaning #2]. There are folks who preach a “prosperity gospel,” suggesting that God materially rewards those who toe the line. Some Christians have prospered amply by their faith, although I know of no passage in scripture that espouses such a blatant “reward theory” for simply being Jesus’ disciples.
A closer look at the first words of Dale’s song, “Have faith, hope, and charity…,” may reveal a more helpful focus on the life to which God calls us rather than burdening it with some odd notions of making a decent profit from “successful living.” The three words – faith, hope, and charity [I Corinthians 13:13 in the King James Version] – do, in fact, offer a concise synopsis of what it means to be Jesus’ disciples confronted with life’s challenges. Nevertheless, “charity” has undergone a decidedly problematic shift in meaning from the original 1611 translation from the Greek. It is now readily understood through experience as condescending by many who have had few opportunities in life. It suggests not hospitable support but the cast-offs and pittance handed out by sometimes smug believers to “those people” who “…just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” Ask Rosa Parks or others what it was like to do menial labor back in the Jim Crow era. Not much help getting a leg up when one had no one to advocate for them in the first place. Read the excellent novel, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. I heard a presentation years ago at the seminary of a woman, an obviously capable and “successful” individual who had been down on her luck a decade or so before. She had lost a job given the turbulent market and thus her financial security, eventually her home, small that it was, and no place to land other than on the street. No drugs were involved, no moral indiscretion, nor any of the other things those “better off” might at first suspect.
Dale Evan’s song lifts up the conclusion of I Corinthians, a letter of Paul’s to help steer the problematic congregation in Corinth back onto a healthier path for living a faithful life. What St. Paul’s, Dale’s, and our Bibles tell us is that God has unceasingly called us into life-giving relationship rooted in God’s first blowing breath into our ancestors in the opening chapters of Genesis. We continue to carry God’s life-giving breath and invitation even now. In essence, FAITH is this divine-human relationship God so long ago established seen from huaman perspective. It is not always easy to negotiate [another way of saying that is that we’re not always “successful” being the folks Jesus calls us to be!] but God and the community of faith remain present, encouraging us to trust, using our Spirit-given gifts to BE the folks we were created and baptized to be. HOPE is the dependence on “things unseen,” that is, it is the growing awareness of the abiding trust which reveals God’s perspective for this divine-human relationship, sometimes called GRACE, the heart of hope, God’s power to act, to heal, to save, to enlighten, to encourage, to correct and forgive, and to send folks into the world to be God’s ambassadors. And finally, that problematic word CHARITY is based on the Latin word caritas, a word translating the original Greek word for loving, supportive, relationships: AGAPE [John 3; I Corinthians 13, I John 4], how we embody our callings.
What this coming Sunday’s appointed readings do is bear witness to God’s determination to establish and maintain a loving, healing, abiding, forgiving, and joyful relationships with humankind. It is holy work which overturns suspicions, discards grudges too long held, and the awareness that there is a holy life waiting beyond our sins, frustrations, and brokenness. Lest we attempt to determine on our own who is “worthy” of God’s love, ponder well what John’s gospel says. The original Greek text is “God so loved (not just the “world” but) …the cosmos, the entire panoply of God’s creation. That includes folks not at all like us, folks who’ve not ever heard of a Jesus of Nazareth, and any number of other issues that tidy little definitions and druthers attempt to ignore. To embrace the expansiveness of God’s redeeming love, we WILL need every bit of faith, hope, and charity we can muster! Happy trails for the journey!