by Dr. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church of New York, president of the State University of New York at Old Westbury and

of the Council of Churches of New York City

Presented Saturday, June 2, 2001

To the Class of 2001, to all your family members, and the administration, faculty and staff here at The Culver Academies, I bid you all a good morning.  Thank God for the glorious day.

I would like to lay the foundation for the brief talk I will give this morning with a piece of scripture found in the New Testament of the Judeo-Christian Bible. It is found in the last book of that Bible, the Book of Revelations; and the prisoner on the island of Patmos after he had seen all of the apocalypses and visions that had been placed before him, cried out “I see a new heaven and a new earth.”  I think that will provide a foundation for what I am going to say. “I see a new heaven and a new earth.”

First, let me greet you on behalf of the two institutions that I serve, the Abyssinian Baptist Church in the city of New York and the State University of New York College at Old Westbury.  I am a minister, a pastor of a church, and a college president.  I hope in my talk that I emphasize, to me, the two important elements in nurturing our society: education and faith.

For me, education and faith are at the source of all American greatness.  They are the Tigris and Euphrates of our civilization. I want to talk to you about the importance of education and faith as you think about this graduated class and everyone gathered here today.  I looked at your program, and I see on the front words taken from James Davison Hunter’s book the “Death of Character”.  I look down on the page and I see the word character, and as I look further down it makes reference to vision: Character and Vision.

Education is the cornerstone of democracy.  And education is essential for civilization. I suggest to all of you gathered here today that there could not be a continuation of our civil democracy if we do not have a well-educated population.  An education should do three things in descending order: education should improve your character, education should increase your knowledge, education should help you to earn a living.

That really means that improving character, building character, shaping character is first.  I think one of the major challenges that we have in our society today is that we have turned it upside down and put earning a living at the top and character on the bottom. The problems in our nation today come from a failure of education to really do what Hunter says: strengthen our character.  The point is strengthening character is so important, it is important because the world is changing.  The world is changing rapidly before our eyes.  Now I’m just not talking about changes in the economy.

I still feel it is nice we have rotary dial phones. I just find push-button phones amazing. Cellular phones are absolutely devastating. And I advise those of you with them, to turn them off so you don’t embarrass yourselves.

Many years ago my wife said our son had purchased a CD, and I got so excited that I said, “The boy has got financial sense.” My wife shook her head and said, “compact disc.” Now many of you laugh, but you probably still have eight track tape players collecting dust somewhere.

But isn’t technology wonderful? You young men and women who are graduating today have parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles and thank God for them. Because many of them would not be here if it was not for the advances in medicine and science. Many of them have new hips and new knees and pacemakers and a little bitty pill that took care of their aches and pains this morning or they wouldn’t be here right now.

The world is changing but when I think about a changing world, I’m not thinking about technology, I’m talking primarily about changes in our society that are so fast that a man or a woman who lacks character will be unable to deal with what’s happening.  For example, there is a blending of cultures in our world, this is a part of our civilization.  You don’t really know who’s who anymore.  People can’t set up barriers any more. They can’t segregate themselves. The world is so small and so intertwined that no longer are there these segregated pieces where people try to hide themselves from the rest of civilization.

There was a great writer, it is debatable whether he was great or not, Lothrop Stoddard. He used to be the head of New York Zoological Society. He wrote a book called “The Rising Tide of Color.” Actually what he was doing was warning the white race that there was a rising tide of color people all over the world and that the white race must protect itself against this rising force of colors. But the fact of the matter is that he was right. Most of the world is filled with people of color. And the truth of the matter is that there is no longer the kind of barrier where people can protect themselves from others. In the words of the famous Joe Louis “You can run but you can’t hide.”

It is coming from every direction.  Every one of us, all of us, know that. And so my brothers and sisters, I suggest to you the world is changing. I was watching television, ice skating – why I was watching ice skating, I don’t know – and I saw a black woman skating. She would turn around and skate backwards and then she would jump up in the air and spin around three complete times and come down so smooth. 

I was sitting there eating a baloney sandwich and I called to my wife, “Wife come here. Look at this black woman on television.”  I said, “I didn’t know black people knew how to ice skate. She must be from Minnesota. It’s cold there.”  Then she won the gold medal. And when they interviewed her she started speaking fluent French. She was from France. Who would have ever guessed?

I was walking down the street in New York City one day and I walked up to a guy I thought I knew from South Carolina.  I said “Hi, how are you doing?  I haven’t seen you for twenty years.” He started speaking fluent Spanish. He was from Santo Domingo. Who knew?  You don’t know who’s who. People you think are white may be black. Am I right?  Sure I’m right.

But only men and women of character will be able to deal with the changing world. It’s not just in the United States, it is all over the world.  It’s right here at this school: men and women of different colors, speaking different languages. And only men and women of character have the strength to stand and face this changing world.

I see a new heaven and a new earth.

Something else is about to change our world. Poor people – most of your parents are poorer because they are trying to pay your tuition – are tired of being poor.

I read something last night, they put me in this big house by myself and I tried to read so I wouldn’t be afraid.  I want to give you some quick statistics: there are six billion people in the world. 1.3 billion make less then $1 a day; three billion make less than $2 a day; 1.3 billion don’t have access to clean water; 1.1 billion don’t have adequate housing; two billion do not have access to commercial energy sources; two billion suffer from anemia; three to four billion have never placed a telephone call.

Seventeen million will die as a result of curable infections and diseases: diarrhea, measles, malaria, tuberculosis; and one billion have seen at least one episode of “Baywatch”.

What you see happening with these kinds of statistics, taken from New York University’s Sterns School of Business, is that people are beginning to realize – after they watch “Baywatch” – what they do not have is embarrassingly low and those who don’t have so much are getting tired. There was a prophet in the Bible, his name is Isaiah, who said, “One day every valley will be exalted and one day every mountain and hill will be laid low. And everyone will be on an even plain before God.”

Here is the truth, you can go around the world and see the poor people rising up. In Iran there was a man called the Shah; he and his family were in control of everything. He did not appreciate the Ayatollah Khomeini. However, the poor people did because they were so tired of so few having so much while so many had so little. Let’s take a look at Haiti and the Duvaliers. Some of us are old enough to remember Papa Doc. Most of us are more familiar with Jean Claude Duvalier, Baby Doc. Those people got so tired of one family controlling so much while so many had so little and they ran Baby Doc out.

And do you remember that woman with all those shoes, Imelda Marcos? The masses got so tired of so few having so much while so many have so little. The world is changing young men and women and don’t get caught up in the materialistic ways of the West so much that you don’t realize that there is nothing so wrong on God’s green earth as someone not owning a piece of land. It’s atrocious that people do not have clean drinking water; and, even more embarrassing for the United States, that 34 million people in this country don’t have health insurance.

Look at the energy crisis in California. My God, there is so much energy available that it would not only light up California but all the dark places in the world.

Only men and women with character who have learned to share and who have learned that the many must be addressed will be able to stand strong in the new world. Education builds that character.

There is something else happening in this world. It is the increasing and improving and growing status of women. Brothers, let me tell you something, if you are without character you’re gonna get run over by them. Women have always been the strong ones. Let’s go back to Arkansas before the Civil War. A black man and black woman are in the cotton fields with their 13-year-old daughter. The man asks the overseer if his wife can take a step up because a woman in her condition needs a step. The overseer says, “Go ahead, step up.”  The woman takes the 13-year-old daughter and they go about 100 yards and behind a bush. The woman squats and “Uh!.”  No labor, no pain. They cut the umbilical cord by any means they can. She picks up the baby and gives it to the 13-year-old who takes it back to the plantation house. Where does the woman go? Back to the cotton fields.

That story has been duplicated many different times with many different roots, many different cultures. Women have always been there; and be knowledgeable of the fact that in countries where the poor rise up, women have always been there. Remember at the beginning of World War II, when were building it was the women who lined up.

And only men and women who have strong character will be able to endure. First of all, character is the capacity to understand that the race is not won by the swift, but rather by those who stay until the end. Character is the love of beauty. It is being able to get up on a crisp Saturday morning and appreciate what God has done. It’s the ability to go to Paris and look beyond the official name of a person and see deep inside the beauty of the love within. Character is the ability to stand in the Caribbean and watch the beauty of the moon as it unwraps itself over a deep blue lake and say “My, my, my, the beauty of the earth and the glory of the sky.”

It is courtesy, that’s what character is. It is the ability to say thank you; the ability not to push somebody out of the way.  It is the ability to stand up and respect another woman or man for what they are; the ability to ensure a capacity for endurance, a concern for courtesy. These things make up character and they are essential to education.  So if you are to deal with the rising tide of color, be ahead of the liberation of the poor, and the liberation of women, you must be of strong character.

The second part of my talk will deal with faith. I know some of you may object to me bringing that up. You may be an atheist, but I say you have more faith than anybody. You are betting that there is no God. I wouldn’t take that bet if I were you.

Faith. And what does faith provide? It provides that second word: vision.

I’m going back to New York tonight. I have enjoyed my time in Indiana, but I look forward to my return because every time I fly into New York I have a wonderful experience. I especially like flying there at night, with nocturnal winds blowing back into the heavenly tapestry and all is clear. The jet plane drops down from about a thousand feet and then you hear the captain: “Please return your tray tables and your seat back to their upright and locked positions.”  Then the plane turns, and I look out the window and what do I see?  I see New York City, Manhattan Island.

How many of you have ever flown in to New York? It is one of the most beautiful sites you will ever see. First, when you look out your window you see that lady dedicated to liberty standing in the harbor between New York and New Jersey, lifting her light high. Then if you allow your eyes to go to the west side of the island you will see several things. First you will see Grant’s Tomb, and just a little bit away from that you will see the great Riverside Church.  If you go all the way to the north of the west side you will see that span that connects New York and New Jersey, the George Washington Bridge.  If you come back down the east side, you will see that monument dedicated to world peace, the United Nations.

And if you let your eyes drift to the center of the island, you will see the city courts building, the Empire State Building, and then situated squarely in the middle of the island stands Central Park.  Then if you come to the south you will see the Manhattan Bridge, the Williamsburg Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge; and then you will see those twin towers, the World Trade Center, reaching up to heaven.

If heaven is going to look like anything, it is going to look like that.  Some of you out there in the rural sections of America are saying, “Ah, that’s too chauvinistic. You can’t say heaven is going to look like that. We live in God’s country.” You may, but the Bible does say that heaven will be a city, so we’ll just leave it at that.

As I looked down at the beauty of it all, I say “My God, how wonderful all that is.” Then all of a sudden, I jump from my seat, I reach up to the overhead compartment, grab my bag and run out to the parking garage, give the man $5,685, then I go out onto the streets of Manhattan.

And what do I see?  I see one young man passing money and another young man passing crack cocaine. What do I see?  I see garbage on the streets. I see houses deteriorating. What do I see?  I see an old man covered in shopping bags lying on a subway grate trying to stay warm from the air coming from underground. I hear ambulances and police cars screaming back and forth on the street and do you know what I say?  I say it looks a lot different a thousand feet in the air than it does down here.

That’s what character and vision gives you. Character and vision: the Tigris and Euphrates. Faith, every now and then you need something that takes you up high to give you a vision of what God wants this world to be. You need to go to that high place and look down and see the perfection and realize that after this moment you will come down and you will realize in your mind and your heart the work that you have to do.

And so you will think back to a day in June when a preacher from Harlem came to the Chapel and for a moment, hopefully, you were up high and you caught a vision. And you felt the strength of your character and the influence of your faith. That before you left The Culver Academies and walked out into the world, you said “I see a new Heaven and a new Earth.”

For the first heaven and first earth will pass you forever. And you say, “My God, what a beautiful day” because you realize that your education has strengthened your character, and your vision will smile with the faith in our Father’s gift.