Inadvertent Rabble Rouser

We sometimes laugh that our careers have been lived on the edge, a couple of Rabble Rousers.  Of course these days, I just try to stay out of trouble.  But as I led a Bible Study the other night a name reminded me how I once roused a rabble rather humorously and without meaning to.  Stuff follows you around. 

We were reading about Dionysius a 3^rd century bishop of Alexandria who wrote about how Christians rushed into a plague to nurse the sick while the pagans rushed the other way.  And then I remembered that weird teenage thing that happened to me.  In 1973 I saw old friend Ted Mayes who put his grin on and his finger in my chest and said, ‘So here’s the guy who got societies abolished at St. Johns.’  I didn’t know what he was talking about, but then he explained and we both had a laugh. 

In 1969 I was a freshman at St. Johns College.  Missouri Synod Lutheran colleges didn’t have fraternities since LCMS frowns on secret societies in a big way.  Instead they had Societies where you just joined and raised money for good causes, etc.  There were six societies at SJC, three for men and three for women.  Only one, the Demosthenians, was by invite only.  They were a group of big studs on campus, and I wanted to be invited like my roommate had been.  No such luck. So in a fit of sophomoric spite, I proudly declared myself GDI, an independent.  What I didn’t know was that the Demosthenians were a huge barb in the side of the faculty and staff of the college.  They had named themselves after a non-Christian, a failed Greek orator who committed suicide and called themselves “Demons” as a nickname.  Often they played practical jokes which bordered on vandalistic and they had a lot of beer parties down along the river.  Everything a rebellious teen loves and adults hate. 

I was vice president of our class and Ted was Prez.  Our Treasurer, I think was Pam Ochs, heard me proclaiming my independence and she decided she wanted to be one too.  But, she told me, everyone knows that GDI stands for “God Damned Independent” and the other girls didn’t like this label.  Did I know any early church father whose name started with a D.  “Ugh—Dionysius?” “Good, then we can be God’s Dionysian Independents,” she chuckled.  And so that year, the whole campus which normally divided itself into 3 groups, had about 40% of students who stayed independent.  And after that year I left to go to Kansas State and pursue a degree in physics. 

But, Ted related, the faculty, chagrinned over this rivalry and the Demons, decided it was the time to outlaw all societies—with almost half the students uncommitted.  “And you are the guy whose example gets thrown around all the time,” Ted said. “A promising Lutheran School Teacher who got discouraged over the atmosphere at the college.”  Whoa! That was hardly true, but good for an argument by the adults. Weird thing was that I learned about it ex post facto.  An absentee Rabble Rouser, no less!

Maybe this stuff runs in the family.  My seven-generations ago great grandfather was General Dan Morgan in the Revolutionary War.  October 7, 1777 marks the second battle of Saratoga at Freeman’s Farm.  Dastardly Dan re-wrote the rules of warfare. Prior to this, women were non-combatants and nobody shot at them.  But the women of the Hudson valley were tough women. [If the man of the house was felled in an Indian raid, the women grabbed the rifle and started shooting.] When British General Burgoyne brought merciless Hessian mercenaries with his army, rumors rose that the Hessians carried small pox. The women were ready to fight to the death for their families and farms.  So Dan posted them as sharpshooters and snipers behind trees and rocks.  The dumbfounded British and Hessian troups didn’t know how to handle this.  Burgoyne surrendered against an army that seemed to just rise out of the ground at Saratoga.  Subsequently, the French joined the war on America’s side, declaring us an independent country and the rest is history.

Okay, so once you get on Medicare, it may be cheap but not too smart to jump off a cliff.  I just need to learn to behave myself.