Be Thou Discontent

"It distresses me not that the congregations of great
churches have become small, but that people continue
to use the Church as a refuge from the world's problems.
So much of the emphasis today is on escape from stress.
Some American ministers achieve a great hearing by
using self-help slogans to lull people into a dangerous
tranquility. There's too much talk about 'burn-out'.

"I'd rather see a healthy discontent...the American public
needs a lot of disturbing."

-- Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers,
quoted in No Stone Unturned: The Life and Times of Maggie
Kuhn, by Maggie Kuhn with Christina Long and Laura Quinn
New York 1991 Ballantine Books

Ms Kuhn was a life-long Presbyterian. It was after she was
forced to retire from her executive position with the national
headquarters of the Presbyterian Church at the age of 65,
that she founded the Gray Panthers- "Youth and Age in
Action"- and continued to be active with the group
through her 80's, agitating over such issues as housing,
medical care, social security, equal opportunity for women
and for minorities, and demanding that the old be treated
with dignity, and not, as was- and still is- so often the
practice, be patronized as if they were simply old children.

Unfortunately, the Gray Panthers are organized in only a
few states; There is no chapter in Georgia.