It’s thousands of years ago. Humankind is undeveloped, living practically naked in caves. Wealth is not measured in gold, but rather in nuts and berries — the only things that will keep your family alive.
A neighboring cave houses another human, but you notice this human has better nuts and berries than you do.
Gary Dorrien will take the Interfaith Lecture Series audience on a century-long journey this week. He will begin with the life of Reverdy Ransom as a civil rights activist in the early 1900s and will end with Benjamin E. Mays’ work with Martin Luther King Jr., stopping on the way to discuss social and religious turning points that led to the concept of the Black Social Gospel.
David Gergen, Wednesday’s morning lecturer, told a short story about Benjamin Franklin to illustrate his point that it’s up to Americans to decide the future.
As Franklin was leaving Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the founding fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, a woman approached him. She pointed to a chair, which was painted with a half-sun on the horizon.