Calhoun Touches Souls

John A. Calhoun. 2024. And the Souls Felt Their Worth: A Life of Purpose, Policy, and the People Who Inspired Me Along the Way. Brand Spoken Press (www.BrandSpoken.com)

Review by Stephen W. Hiemstra

We experience God in time. The first verse in Genesis makes this point: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth (Gen 1:1). Anything with a beginning has end. The Greeks talk about Chronos time, measured by your watch, and Kairos time, when we experience a divine appointment. The journey in life from beginning to end provides life purpose.

In his book, And the Souls Felt Their Worth, John “Jack” Calhoun chronicles his divine appointments. He starts with a Gandhi cite: “I am going to Calcutta;

that’s where the fire is.” (3) The context for this cite is his reason for departing a meeting to talk about change. If you have ever attended such a meeting, you know that talking about change is often a substitute for actually making it happen. Jack clearly gets the point.

Socially-Held Identity

The catch-phrase, And the Souls Felt Their Worth, appears repeatedly throughout Jack’s memoir. The Hebrew understanding of soul differs from the Greek, which we normally quote. For the Hebrew, body, mind, and soul are interconnected, while the Greeks distinguish them as independent. Their understanding of soul is also more than simple a person’s characteristics, worldview, and spirit. Soul denotes something more than the squishy notion of spirit and closer to the postmodern concept of identity. Your identity—soul—is not just a personal attribute; it is also socially held.

The idea of a socially-held identity seems strange to most of us, but it is fundamental to understanding Jack’s focus on social action. My identity in this day and age has to include my profession—one of the first things people ask about a person. I can describe myself as an author, pastor, and economist, but I will not be recognized as such unless I am credentialed by my publisher, seminary, or university. My profession becomes a socially-held part of my identity. Theologically, when I profess Christ as my lord and savior, the Holy Spirit comes into my life and my identity is held by the immortal God. In this sense, I experience everlasting life.

Jack implicitly recognizes that when someone, such as an inner-city youth, is deprived of connection with family, church, and community, their socially-held identity is stunted. In fact, it could become quite negative as various negative terms are applied to such people. Loser, gang member, deviant, delinquent, criminal, and more colorful terms may creep into their social-identity. Our social identity either lifts us up or smashes us down. And it is not necessarily under our own control. Consequently, most of Jack’s essays on social action close with his catch-phrase: And the Soul Felt Its Worth.

 Restorative Justice

A theme in Jack’s work is the concept of restorative justice. Normally, we refer to the justice system in America as the criminal justice system, which implies that the penalty for criminal acts is punitive. Restorative justice seeks to reform offenders, not punish them.

The primary example of restorative justice lies at the heart of good parenting. When I stole a candy bar from a grocery store at the age of five, my mother made me return to the store, apologize, and hand the candy bar back to the cashier. The purpose of this exercise was to teach me social responsibility and it worked. I never stole again.

Restorative justice is based on at least two principles: forgiveness and teachability.

Historically, the church has taught forgiveness. When Dylan Roof entered a prayer group at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina and shot to death nine members of the church only because they were black, the church later made a point of publicly forgiving him (159-161). The pathway to healing begins many times with forgiveness, something increasingly rare in our society today.

Teachability has historically been assumed with regard to juvenile offenders and most often neglected in the case of adult offenders, even when appropriate. This distinction is less valid today than in the past, both because juvenile offenders have gamed the system and because adulthood is harder to define in a boundary-free culture. If finding work and entering into marriage are increasingly out of reach for many young adults, how do we mark the transition into adulthood? It is often hard to judge who is mature and who remains teachable in this environment.

Whether or not you understand and support restorative justice projects, the distinction between restorative justice and criminal justice provides a helpful organizing concept for identifying the issues that we face today in dealing with crime.

Background and Organization

John Calhoun is a graduate of Brown University, has a Masters of Divinity from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, a Masters of Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Heidelberg College in Tiffin Ohio (192).

Jack has served in a number of high-profile policy roles, such as the U.S. Commissioner of the (Carter) Administration for Children, Youth, and Families (191). He writes in twenty-eight chapters, organized chronologically.

Assessment

John A. Calhoun’s And the Souls Felt Their Worth: A Life of Purpose, Policy, and the People Who Inspired Me Along the Way is both a memoir and a chronology of efforts to reach troubled youth since the advent of the Great Society in the 1960s.

For those of us who grew up in this period, Jack’s memoir offers rare insight into events that most of us only read about in the newspaper. While reading through these essays, I continually had flashbacks to my college days when I was a Nader’s Raider, worked on several political campaigns, and served briefly as a community organizer. This work convinced me of the social need to study economics so I transferred schools and concentrated on establishing a career.

Jack’s memoir is well-written and it is likely to inspire others to take up the call to action.

Calhoun Touches Soul
Also see:
Preface to a Life in Tension
Other ways to engage online:

Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com


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