Dorothy Day, the Anarchist

I began this study of Day by admitting that my interest in, and therefore my knowledge of, her had always been limited to my focus on the history and thought of Christian anarchism. That narrow-mindedness has been corrected to such a degree that I am ashamed of many of the uninformed musings I have blithely made about Day in the past. Yet, for all that, I return now to Day and her place in Christian anarchism, though my intent is less to stand as ideological judge than it is to situate her within the broader realm of my thought. I find that I have has as much to learn from Day as a Christian anarchist as I have learned from her simply as a Christian. Some of this has just been to put a more gifted voice than I possess to common thoughts that ought to inspire all Christians, particularly those of us reading (or writing) this comfortably in our middle-class affluence:

I recall this tiny incident [where she slapped a man who made a pass at her] now because it illustrates a point that has since come up many times in our work with others. Our desire for justice for ourselves and for others often complicates the issue, builds up factions and quarrels. Worldly justice and unworldly justice are quite different things. The supernatural approach when understood is to turn the other cheek, to give up what one has, willingly, gladly, with no spirit of martyrdom, to rejoice in being the least, to be unrecognized, the slighted.

Other times, Day brought new dimensions to my thoughts as a Christian anarchists. Growing up in the deeply Baconian Stone-Campbell Restoration, my thoughts on power and on evil have always been more rational than emotional, tinged though they more than occasionally are by Orthodox mysticism. Day reminded me, however, that there is an emotive side to anarchism, one that may form the basis for more pragmatic cooperation between me and my ilk and those who either do not know or do not care to class themselves as anarchists.

Anarchism has been called an emotional state of mind, denouncing injustice and extolling freedom, rather than a movement.

Even so, I came away knowing that somewhere in our thinking Day and I diverge. At some point she conceives of power, and the violence inherent in exercising it, differently than I do.

The spiritual works of mercy include enlightening the ignorant, rebuking the sinner, consoling the afflicted, as well as bearing wrongs patiently, and we have always classed picket lines and the distribution of literature among these works.

The most dramatic change for me, however, is to read that now and see more our spiritual affinity than our categorical difference. I hope that Day is recognized as a saint by the Catholic church, but, for my part, I can rest easy in the knowledge that, as a Protestant, I am empowered by the hubris that mine is the only judgment that matters when it comes to seeking profound spiritual guidance from the holy departed.

The Many Faces of Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day is a fringe figure. She lived on the fringes of society, she is a hero of people still living there, and she continues to exist in the margins of popular consciousness. A noble if enigmatic figure, most people recognize her name only enough to know they should know it or perhaps to tap into a few superficial bits of trivia appropriate for coffee house discourse. For my part, I only knew Dorothy Day insofar as I needed to evaluate whether or not she fit, so far as I was the judge, the intellectual category of "Christian anarchist" often applied to her. I admit my judgments were largely negative and largely misinformed.

Yet Day was thrust into the national spotlight late last year when the Catholic Church took a strong step forward in her canonization process and, in response, the New York Times saw the startling unanimity of the bishops as an opportunity to convert Day into the staging ground for an ideological battle between progressives and conservatives who both want to lay claim to contradictory visions of Day. Thankfully, the vision of the Times and the tumult it created has largely died down as devotees of Day apparently want to focus less on her partisan alignment and more on the example set by her life:

The thing to know about Dorothy Day is not where she fell on the ideological spectrum, it is that she chose to follow Jesus radically, right down to the core of her life, the rhythms of her day, the habits of her heart, the fervency of her prayers. She was intensely loyal to the Church, but not above criticizing some of its potentates. She was suspicious of power in any form, except the power of Jesus' love. She understood, and lived, the call to both love and serve the poor in ways that shame the rest of us. She is undoubtedly a saint. She is also undoubtedly not fit fodder for anyone's ideological cannon.

Curiously, and mostly in ignorance of the debates about her in the popular press, around the same time I picked up Day's autobiography, The Long Loneliness, with much the same intent I always approached her writings with, as part of a broader potential historical study of anarchism in America. What I found therein, however, thwarted my one-dimensional, narrow-minded attempts to distill Day into her philosophy of power and response to the problem of evil. Instead I found a multifaceted person, like so many of us more often unsure of herself than our constructed icons of ideological juggernauts typically allow. She was, in short, a human being, and the authenticity of her self disclosure in The Long Loneliness instilled in me a profound respect and admiration for her (even if I also walked away still uneasy about where she fits on the spectrum of anarchist thought) and created in me an intense interest in her canonization effort, still decades away from fruition, I suspect.

In the following weeks I would like to share some of the new sides of Dorothy Day, new to me at least, that I encountered in her writings. The act of compartmentalizing her personalty is perhaps not much better than flattening her into a suspect Christian anarchist, but, short of meeting her in flesh and blood (an opportunity sadly not available), I can think of no better way to encounter her than this.