Rennie Davis

“I would like to use your church for a worship service.” “Of course,” I responded. “That’s what our sanctuary is for. Tell me more about how I can help you.”I
“It’s to worship Guru Maharaj Ji!”

I swallowed hard and then did my best to dissuade Rennie from using a Christian worship center for this celebration. I thought that ended things—but two hours later I was called to the church to witness what I assumed I had discouraged. The chancel had been decorated with flowers, and above the altar there had been erected a large picture of this 15 year old Indian lad dressed in a long white jewel-encrusted robe. Before it six of his disciples were swaying as they chanted what I was told were songs of praise. It appeared when I arrived that the event was just about over, and a group of my friends were standing by ready to dismantle the decorations. This event took place several months after the trial of the Chicago Seven.” 

I had known Rennie Davis, one of the seven, during what had taken place surrounding the trial that focused on events at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Davis, with Tom Hayden, had formed the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) whose purpose was to demonstrate against the Vietnam war. Together they had rallied a dedicated group of young antiwar radicals. While I was called before the grand jury and accused of being a co-conspirator, my role as the informal chaplain of the group was to keep “the days of rage” as non-violent as possible. (You may want to check out the film, “The Trial of the Chicago Seven”)

Rennie had struck me as the movement’s most intellectually bright, and emotionally stable of the political activists. The journalist, Nicholas von Hoffman, once described him as “the most stable, the calmest, the most enduring of that group of young people who set out to change America.”

I had not been aware of Rennie’s fascination with this Guru he wanted to worship using the church. Some time after the trial he was given a ticket to India and had returned an avid devotee of Guru Maharaj Ji, declaring that the Guru’s teachings would provide “a way to fulfill all the dreams of the 1960s, through a practical method to end poverty, racism, sexism and imperialism.” He later proclaimed, “I would cross the planet on my hands and knees to touch his toe.”

The guru, who turned out to be enormously wealthy while less than godly, subsequently dropped out of sight as quickly as he had arisen.

In the years since, I had lost track of Rennie, and then on Feb.3 I opened the New York Times to discover that he had died at his Colorado home at age 80. According to his surviving widow, Rennie had never abandoned his political passion, but had spent the ensuing years in relative obscurity where he worked as a business consultant promoting socially responsible investing.

I imagine each of us has somewhere tucked in the brain a list we might title “where are they now?” Rennie and the other members of the Chicago Seven have been on my list. Tom Hayden is the only member of the group I have seen during this last half century. Yes the trial, whose details are still etched in my mind, took place over fifty years ago.

I am the product of my encounters with the untold numbers of people who have crossed my path, beginning with my parents. I include those who have died as well as those who have confronted me in books, music and all the complexity that is history. The notion that who I am is totally spelled out in my genetic make-up is false. Those of you I have personally known have shared in making me who I am. I also realize that every encounter has somehow influenced who you are. I am aware that much I have done has made a positive impact. I also know that my influence has not always been positive. I have done some terrible things, and others have felt the negative impact, and I now must live with that guilt.

As I look back over a long life, and call into awareness the matrix of my encounters, I know again that we are not just individuals, but members of one another. So when Rennie Davis asked to have that worship service in my church, he helped form part of who I have become.