The Hallowing of America November 2, 2025 Dr. Roger Ray
It was 100 years ago this year that America’s most influential poet, T. S. Eliot, published his work, The Hallow Men. Eliot was an adult convert to Catholicism and as is often true with adult converts, he was very ardent about his faith.
Eliot, apart from his rather inexplicable work devoted to cats, was a fairly somber person both before and after his conversion. He seemed to find people to be simultaneously vain and entirely void of meaningful content. And I tend to side with him on that point; there are few things as annoying as an arrogant person who is clearly below average in every meaningful way. As a Catholic, he seemed to view most of his peers as being religious in name but bereft of the kind of passion and devotion that made faith meaningful.
He opens this poem ominously saying, “We are the hollow men, he stuffed men, leaning together, headpiece filled with straw. Alas!” I don’t know what made him see the world of 1925, in that time between the two great world wars, as being occupied by animated scare crows, stuffed with nothing but straw in their heads, but the poem ends in judgement:
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
This poem appeals to me as it seems to go beyond talking merely about good people or bad people. Elliot’s concern was not simply a failure to be a good or a spiritual person, and more than becoming bad, or criminal, or even evil.
He seems to see the direction of civilization to be going towards something that is not just bad but rather more pathetic. Hollowed out people . . . people with heads full of straw. . . . lacking substance or virtue. I’m going to have to ask you to tolerate me being a bit Socratic today, taking some time to explore what we mean by being a good or a virtuous person.
We mean something different, don’t we, when we talk about a good dog or a good cat. A good dog is loyal, brave, maybe even noble. Dogs are pack animals and so they exhibit concern for their pack, their family. They exhibit what we interpret to be love, compassion, empathy, and certain breeds even have a work ethic. These are senseless aspects if we are talking about cats. Humans enjoy living with cats without expectations of courage and loyalty. They interact with us, but what makes a cat a good cat is entirely different from what makes a good dog. And, of course, we could go on to say what makes a good caged bird, or a good fish in an aquarium. Good and bad, in this sense is predicated in the context of expectations.
To a degree, virtue and sin in regard to people is also sometimes based on context. We Americans might easily conclude that Vladimir Putin is a bad person, maybe even a monster, a war criminal. He has led a war against Ukraine with apparent indifference to whether he is killing civilians or members of the military. He has not even shown much concern about the lives of his own soldiers, sacrificing lives and infrastructure, and resources to accomplish an expansion of Russia’s territory and power. We can easily dismiss his value as a good person, but it should not surprise you that there are many in Russia who do not view him this way because they have a belief that Russia should be more powerful, more significant on the world stage. That their superiority to Ukrainians, Poles, and Americans, and British, should be reflected in their dominance of other nations.
Even though the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip was provoked by a despicable surprise attack by Hamas terrorists, the way that Benjamin Netanyahu has conducted that war, indiscriminately killing the residents of the Gaza Strip and taking away food, medicine, housing, and education from a population of 2 million people would make him a war criminal and a monster as well, however, many in Israel, who have lived in fear of their Muslim neighbors, either publicly or privately applaud not only his courage and determination, they may also applaud his techniques. I don’t agree with Russians who love Putin or Israelis who love Netanyahu but you have to acknowledge that there is a reason for their views.
We Americans certainly have an existential experience of this same thing. The MAGA supporters of Trump seem to be willing to tolerate dishonesty, anti-democratic actions, deportations, military strikes, graft, and political bribes, largely because Trump validates their own racism, their sense of American superiority, their prejudice against women, gays and lesbians, and their fear of immigrants, transgender folk, and, apparently, educated people. For about half of us, we easily conclude that Trump is a great threat to everything that might have been virtuous about America and to the other half, he is restoring what they believe to be the rightful inheritance of privilege and American status.
As a pastor, as a theological professional, I contend that we can, regardless of where we live or where we were raised, we can arrive at an objective view of human virtue. We may very well slide into an era of being entirely hollow people but we don’t have to. We can think. We can be honest. We can discern the difference between objective facts and self-serving propaganda.
We seem to have 20-20 vision when we are looking at the past. People in our age can almost universally use the name of Adolph Hitler to represent a pinnacle of human evil and yet, there are young people in many countries, races and religions, who identify with Hitler, his goals and his methods.
Nazis pointed to certain philosophers who seemed to advocate for their perspective. Specifically, Fredrich Nietzsche talked about the Ubermench, the superman, who lived out a will to power, dismissing weaknesses and vulnerability and pursuing personal transcendence and strength. You can see how that would appeal to Hitler, even though I don’t think Nietzsche meant what Hitler got out of his philosophy. But, it is possible for a twisted person to find virtue in what is, in retrospect, obviously sin.
Consider the Trump administration’s decision to cut out almost all of America’s USAID program that provided emergency food and medicine to impoverished countries. The argument was made by Elon Musk and DOGE that America does not owe compassionate aid to the poor and starving, a harsh and hard perspective on what it means to be a good American but even if you can go there, when we became aware that there was millions of dollars of food in warehouses that we had already paid for that was being allowed to rot by simply not distributing it, even to the point of not allowing aid agencies to buy it and distribute it when America no longer would. There was, apparently, a preference for making a point by choosing to waste millions of dollars of food by preventing it from being given to starving masses. . . as hard as it is to imagine, there are those who take some satisfaction in even this heinous policy.
The hollowness of our current presidential administration is reinforced daily. Consider the ways in which Trump uses the presidency to enrich himself and his family:
1) Near the end of his first term, Rudy Guiliani was caught trying to sell pardons, apparently for his own gain as well as Trump’s.
2) But in this second term, pardons are flying off of the President’s desk for convicted criminals who made large political donations or who invest in his crypto or other businesses and in return, they are relieved of their obligation to pay huge fines to the government for their crimes. In just the past three months, Trump has waved off $1.3 billion in fines in exchange for business deals and political donations in much smaller amounts. Apparently, you not only can buy a pardon from Trump, but you can save yourself more than time in prison, you can shave off hundreds of millions of dollars that you owe the American government in the process. Trump is running the Kmart “blue light special” of selling pardons.
3) He recently has asked for more than $200 million from the Justice Department to repay lawyer fees and for punitive judgements against the justice department for indicting him for crimes which he clearly committed and for which he has dodged prison time only by having been re-elected president.
4) Beyond this, he sells Trump named products and arranges for federal staff and foreign dignitaries to backdoor millions of dollars into his pocket by arranging for them to spend lavishly at his hotels, resorts, and golf courses.
Trump may not have actually been very wealthy when he was first elected. Most of his properties were leveraged to the eyebrows, but he is rich now, almost exclusively by taking money from the American people through shameless exploitation.
Though this administration has tried to do everything they can to change the subject and avoid producing evidence about Trump’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein and his whole pedophile prostitution business, it becomes more clear every week that Trump’s role was something that he desperately needs to keep hidden. Casting the self-proclaimed super-Christians like Speaker Mike Johnson into a nearly full-time role of concocting lies to protect pedophiles from public exposure and accountability.
I’ve not had any moral expectations of Trump for years because he is clearly a malignant narcissist for whom talk about moral judgement is just a misnomer, but Johnson came into the spotlight amidst proclamations of his Biblically focused ethic and moral superiority. He is now almost the poster child for Elliot’s “Hollow Men” as everything he says is a lie or a misdirection, all just to hold onto power while he funnels government money into his wife’s Christian LLC without ever reporting the mount of her enormous government income.
Texas congresswoman and my personal hero, Jasmine Crocket, tried to pin Mike Johnson down as to the degree of the graft being funneled into the Johnson LLC on the floor of the Congress but Johnson, having no answer that would not be self-incriminating, just stood up and left the house.
This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
Not with a bang, but a whimper.
If these people are Christians then Christianity no longer means anything. Neither Christianity nor Judaism, neither Buddhism nor Islam, have managed to create a meaningful conversation in this country about character, honesty, public service, self-sacrifice, or virtue. If I may make a suggestion for those of you who are still church goers, especially those of you who are pastors:
Take a couple of months out to study the sayings of Confucious either personally or in a class. Confucianism is not a religion, maybe it isn’t even a philosophy. Most of the sayings you see on the internet that are attributed to Confucious are not real. The real sayings of confucious are moral teachings about how to be a good person, a person of conscience and content. Someone with something more than straw in their heads. Barnes and Noble has a nice $5 collection of the Sayings of Confucious and to get you started, I will copy 4 pages of my favorite quotes at the end of the manuscript for this sermon that you can find on our website. If you can’t find our website, write to me at RevDrRay@outlook.com and I will send it to you.
Dear listeners, Confucius said that “The fault is to cleave to the fault.” You know that the MAGA movement is without virtue, character, substance. You may have been tricked or seduced or mislead in the past, but the fault is to stick with what you know is wrong. Attach yourself to quest to find and embody virtue.
The Sayings of Confucius (Barnes & Noble)
Confucius “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
24. The master said: “To worship the ghosts of strangers is fawning. To see the right and not do it is want of courage.” p. 9
3. The master said: “A man without love, what is courtesy to him? A man without love, what is music to him?” p.11
1. The master said: “Love makes a spot beautiful: who chooses not to dwell in love, has he got wisdom?” p. 17
2. The master said: “Loveless men cannot bear need long, they cannot bear fortune long. Loving hearts find peace in love, clever heads find profit in it.”
4. The master said: “A heart set on love will do no wrong.”
14. The master said: “Be not concerned at want of place; be concerned that thou stand thyself. Sorrow not at being unknown, but seek to be worthy of note.” p. 19
24. The master said: “A gentleman wishes to be slow to speak and quick to act.” p.20
9. The master said: “Rotten wood cannot be carved, nor are dung walls plastered.” p. 24
11. Tzu-Kung said: “What I do not wish to have done unto me, I likewise wish not to do unto others.”
The master said: “This is still beyond thee, Tz’u.” p. 24
11. The master said to Tzu-hsia: “Read to become a gentleman; do not read as the vulgar do.” p. 32
20. The master said: “To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.” p.33
21. The master said: “Wisdom delights in water; love delights in hills. Wisdom is stirring; love is quiet. Wisdom enjoys life; love grows old.”
p. 34
28. “To learn from the near at hand may be called the key to love.” p. 35
3. The master said: “Neglect of what is good in me; want of thoroughness in study; failure to do the right when told me, lack of strength to overcome faults, these are my sorrows.” p 37
15. The master said: “Living on coarse rice and water, with bent arm for pillow, mirth may be ours; but ill-gotten wealth and honors are to me a wandering cloud.” p. 40
9. The master said: “The people may be made to follow: they cannot be made to understand.” p. 47
10. The master said: “Love of daring, inflamed by poverty, leads to crime: a man without love, if deeply ill-treated, will turn to crime.”
11. The master said: “All the glorious gifts of the Duke of Chou, if coupled with pride and meanness, would not be worth one glance.”
17. The master said: “Study as though the time were short, as one who fears to lose.” p. 48
17. The master said: “I have found none who love good as they love women.”
p. 54
21. The master said: “Some sprouts do not blossom, some blossoms bear no fruit.” p.55
25. The master said: “Three armies may be robbed of their leader, no wretch can be robbed of his will.” p. 55
Poem which pre-dates Confucius: “A flaw can be ground from a scepter white;
A slip of the tongue no man can right.” p. 64
11. Chi-lu asked what is due to the ghosts of the dead.
The master said: “We fail in our duty to the living; can we do our duty to the
dead?”
He ventured to ask about death.
“We know not life.” said the master, “how can we know death?” p. 65
2. Chung-kung asked, “What is love?”
The master said: “Without the door to behave as though a great guest were
come; to treat the people as though we tendered the high sacrifice; not to do
unto others what we would not they should do unto us; to breed no wrongs in
the state and breed no wrongs in the home.”
Chung-kung said: “Dull as I am, I hope to live by these words.” p. 74
6. The master said: “The man of upright life is obeyed before he speaks: commands even go unheeded where the life is crooked.” p. 83
3. The master said: “The scholar who loves comfort is not worthy the name.” p. 89
5. The master said: “A man of worth can always talk, but talkers are not always men of worth. Love is always bold, though boldness is found without love.” p. 90
21. The master said: “If the tongue have not fear, words are hard to make good.” p.94
25. The master said: “Men of old learned for their own sake: the men of today learn for show.”
29. The master said: “The fault is to cleave to a fault.” p. 104
4. Confucius said: “There are three friends that do good, and three friends that do hard. The friends that do good are a straight friend, a sincere friend, and a friend who has heard much. The friends that do harm are a smooth friend, a fawning friend, and a friend with a glib tongue.” p. 109
5. Confucius said: “There are three joys that do good, and three joys that do harm. The joys that do good are joy in dissecting courtesy and music, joy in speaking of the good in men, and joy in a number of worthy friends. The joys that do harm are joy in pomp, joy in roving, and joy in the joys of the feast.
6. Confucius said: “Men who wait upon princes fail into three mistakes. To speak before the time has come is rashness. Not to speak when the time has come is secrecy. To speak heedless of looks is blindness.” p. 110
7. Confucius said: “A gentleman has three things to guard against. In the days of thy, ere thy strength is steady, beware of lust. When manhood is reached, in the fullness of strength, beware of strife. In old age, when thy strength is broken, beware of greed.”
8. Confucius said: “A gentleman has nine aims. To see clearly; to understand what he hears; to be warm in manner, dignified in bearing, faithful of speech, painstaking at work; to ask when in doubt; in anger to think of difficulties; in sight of gain to remember right.” p. 110
17. The master said: “Honeyed words and flattering looks seldom speak of love.”
p. 117
24. “I hate those who mistake spying for wisdom. I hate those who take want of deference for courage. I hate evil speaking, cloaked as honesty.” p. 119
1. Tzu-Chang said: “The scholar who in danger will stake his life, who in sight of gain remembers right, who is lowly in heart at worship, and sad at heart when mourning, may pass muster.” p. 127
8. Tzu-husia said: “The vulgar always gloss their faults.” p. 128
17. Tseng-tzu said: “I have heard the master say: ‘Man never shows what is in him unless when mourning one near to him.” p. 130
1. “Loving hearts are better than men that are near of kin.” p. 134
