Thomas Starr King Statue Dedication in Sacramento

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

The statue of Rev. Thomas Starr King formerly in Statuary Hall in Washington D.C., was installed on Dec. 8, 2009 in Sacramento's Capitol Park in the Civil War Grove.

Rev. King, a leading abolitionist and former minister of the First Unitarian Church of San Francisco, helped keep California in the Union during the Civil War.

Rev. Rebecca Parker, president of Starr King School of Ministry, spoke at the dedication on December 8.

Read the full text of Rev. Parker's speech below.

King's statue returned to Sacramento after the California Legislature voted in 2006 to remove it from the U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall and replace it with a bronze of former President Ronald Reagan.

An exhibit detailing King's efforts for the Union and the nascent Red Cross is on display at the Capitol through June 30.

The statue dedication was reported by several area newspapers, including this Sacramento Bee article which quoted from Rev. Parker's speech.

Listen to Rebecca Parker's speech online here (.wma audio). Her talk begins at approximately 13-1/2 minutes into the recorded audio. Other speakers include the Rev. Lindi Ramsden, a Starr King graduate and Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry CA.

Speech by Rev. Rebecca Parker, President of Starr King School

On Thomas Starr King’s Statue Returning to California
from Washington, DC

Brief remarks at the Dedication Ceremony.
Sacramento, December 7, 2009

Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, President and Professor of Theology
Starr King School for the Ministry

Thomas Starr King was not a big man.  “I may weigh only 120 pounds,” he once said, “but when I am mad, I weigh a ton.”

This statue looks pretty heavy to me.   Starr King was not easily budged from the things he stood for and if he were here today, he would counsel us not to budge.

He’d tell us that now is the time to stand firm on behalf of the earth and to counter the threats to earth’s ecologies.    

Starr King loved California’s mountains, and grasslands, and lakes, and forests.  He was more popular as a nature-writer in the 19th century than Henry David Thoreau. Starr King’s writings about Yosemite and Lake Tahoe were widely published in papers back East and influenced the passage of the first bill in congress in 1864 setting aside Yosemite as protected land. 

“I believe,” he wrote, “that if on every Sunday morning before going to church, we could be lifted to a mountain-peak and see a horizon line of six hundred miles enfolding the splendour of the light . . . our materialistic dullness would be broken, surprise and joy would be awakened … our hearts would mount in praise and prayer.”

Today, Starr King would be lashing himself to ancient redwoods along with Julia Butterfly Hill to stop the cutting of old-growth forests; He’d be stumping the country with Al Gore to persuade people to face the facts about global warming and take action to stop it.  He would challenge us to see that there is more to life than material wealth—and he would ask us to learn virtue from the earth itself:

“There is,” he said, “no sinful planet; there is no selfish or miserly sun; there is no galaxy of wicked or discordant stars.”

Earth can teach us reverence, and wonder, and generosity

Were Thomas Starr King here now, he would ask us to be as good as the good earth: he’d urge us to take care of one another – to make the struggles and suffering of our neighbors our own.  He’d tell us, Life is not about looking out for number one; it’s about how we are together.

“We are not intended to be separate, private persons, but rather fibers,  fingers and limbs . . . The creator does not propose to polish souls like so many pins—each one dropping off clean and shiny, with no more organic relations to each than pins of a card…There can be no such thing as justice,” he said, “until people are rightly related to one another.”

For him, right relationship meant we bind up one another’s wounds, we don’t let anyone fall through the cracks; we give from what we have to assure the common welfare. During the Civil War, Starr King raised over a million dollars to provide blankets and medicine for wounded soldiers—helping to found what would become the Red Cross.     

Today, he would be challenging us to give a cup of water to the thirsty and shelter to the homeless.  He’d tell us to measure our lives not by our personal acquisitions but by our collective accomplishments. He would advocate for more than “private charity” for addressing the struggles of the poor.  He’d call for a living wage and safety for all workers, he would say that “the spirit of social justice” must “enter more deeply into our policy and domesticate itself in our code.” He was never one to shrink from unpopular positions if he felt they were the right thing to do for the common welfare.  So, he would probably today be advocating to raise taxes to support health care reform, saying that paying taxes is how we love our neighbor as ourselves.

Above all, were he here today in person, Thomas Starr King would urge us to “stand on the side of love.”  “Where ever there is oppression,” he said, “Christ is present and not on the side of power.”  Starr King would call us to stand up for the equality and dignity of all people.  He saw America’s great mission to be establishing a society in which all races were equal.  Today, his spiritual descendants  (Unitarian Universalist ministers and congregations  and those of us studying and teaching at Starr King School for the Ministry) are working to defend marriage equality so that same-sex couples are not second-class citizens.  I believe Starr King would cheer us on.  I also believe he’d fight to close the detention camps holding immigrants without due process; he’d be engaged in the continuing struggle against racism in all its forms, including Islamophobia.

Thomas Starr King was a small but weighty advocate for justice and for joy.  Despite fragile health, he worked tirelessly for abolition of slavery and led California to join the Union cause. And he did it all with what Theodore Parker called, “a rare sweet spirit.” 

At the graduate school I head, Thomas Starr King School for the Ministry, we carry on his legacy.  We educate leaders who will counter-oppressions, foster multi-religious understanding, and build just and sustainable communities.

Now that Starr King is symbolically standing here on California soil, I pray that all of California will join him in stubbornly not budging when it comes to love for the earth, love for one another, and love for our nation’s promise: liberty, justice, and equality for all.