When the Stars Begin to Fall | February 15, 2026 | Rev. Dr. Kathryn Benton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=RDtO2NL8DVN6E&v=tO2NL8DVN6E

My Lord, what a morning;

my Lord, what a morning;

Oh, my Lord, what a morning,

when the stars begin to fall.

You’ll hear the trumpet sound,

to wake the nations underground,

looking to my God’s right hand,

when the stars begin to fall.

This song, a spiritual most likely inspired by Richard Allen, founding bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was based on bible verses portraying the apocalypse…the end times. The hymn is thought to have been inspired by the original hymn which went as follows…

Behold the awful trumpet sounds,

The sleeping dead to raise,

And calls the nations underground:

O how the saints will praise! . . .

The falling stars their orbits leave,

The sun in darkness hide:

The elements asunder cleave,

The moon turn’d into blood! . . .

I’m wondering if this speaks to some of us today…is this a time of apocalypse? Is this a time when the stars are falling and we need to call on the underground nations for help? What are the underground nations? Of course, we could speculate on the meaning of these words…was it the Underground Railroad…or merely the nation under free skies…under God? I think we could speculate on its meaning for us today…in this time of stars falling…of the sun hiding. We are in a time of darkness on so many fronts, beginning with the environmental disaster…global warming, species depletion, habitat disappearance and of course, our own health. And even the small progress we have made since Earth Day in 1970, is being drastically dismantled. The other disasters are intimately connected with these environmental nightmares…war and oppression…devastation for so many. This may be why many of us are finding inspiration in the spirituals…a time when we may feel hopeless, but a time when we must find hope if we are to survive.

I listen to many people each week who have lost hope. They see our current reality as so distressing that they are unable to hear the trumpet sound…unable to call the underground nations. They are also, to a large extent, unable to look to God in this time of distress. So many no longer hold a belief in God. Often, we are unable to see the connection between creation and our creator…like our ancestors were able to see. They were able to see the hope of the morning…of the new day…of the praising of the saints and of the protection of God.

Discussing this reality with a friend, I was challenged to consider the idea that we are experiencing a period of fascist rule in the United States. Of course the parallels are undeniable and interestingly I did not have to look further than our own Howard Thurman for some clarity on this topic. In 1946 he wrote an essay entitled The Fascist Masquerade in which he argues that the fascist will use Christian trappings to implement their plans for holding onto power. He begins by defining fascism in a number of ways, starting with the words of Benito Mussolini:

Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State … The Fascist State is itself conscious, and has itself a will and a personality—thus it may be called the “ethic State”…The State is a spiritual and moral force in itself, since its political, juridical, and economic organization of the nation is a concrete thing.

Thurman’s thesis then is a challenge to the Church in its commitment to an ethic which is at once revolutionary and compelling. His focus was on the aspect of fascism which lends itself to the release of unrestrained passions in human nature, causing the focusing of hatreds on individuals because of race, class or religion. Thurman cites examples of groups representing these hatreds including: Christian Americans, Ku Klux Clan and others. He then describes the appeal of fascism saying that it meets the needs of people that are not being met by the church. Could this be true today? Could people have needs for belonging…for connection…for love that are not being addressed by the church? Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote of this need:

[Love] is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization.

Thurman agreed when he spoke of the love-ethic of the religion of Jesus. This is what Thurman says in his essay is missing from the teachings of the Christian church. He ends the essay by delineating the failings of the church, saying…

…there has been no adequate teaching of the meaning of the faith in terms of human dignity and human worth

Thurman says this is partly because the church holds a place for those who have focused on hatreds of individuals because of race, class or religion. He continues:

The crux of the issue for the Church is this: The Church is irrevocably committed to a revolutionary ethic, but it tends to implement the ethic by means that are short of that which is revolutionary.

Thurman speaks of what he means by a revolutionary ethic throughout his life. He wrote an entire thesis on it, Jesus and the Disinherited. He described the life of Jesus of Nazareth as a revolutionary one...one based on a commitment to justice and a commitment to the love-ethic. Thurman is clear. He wraps up his consideration this way:

If it be true that God is the source of life, then it follows that each individual is grounded in God in a direct and primary manner. There can be no valid distinction between the God of religion on the one hand and the God of life on the other. The task of the Church then must include the conquest of the world, and in the fulfillment of that task it can rely upon the guarantee of God in whom life and all of the great potentials of mind and spirit are grounded. Such a position establishes the infinite worth of all individuals and denies that for which fascism stands in its regard for persons. The degree to which the Church stands for less marks the measure of its tacit support of such theories of life as fascism affirms.

Wow! He sure did not mince words. Now Thurman wrote this essay on fascism after being asked to write a more general essay on race relations by Randolph Crump Miller, an Episcopal priest from California. Writing about Thurman’s consideration of fascism, Peter Eisenstadt, author of Against the Hounds of Hell: A Life of Howard Thurman, asked:

What would Thurman have to say about Donald Trump and the Capitol insurrection? Such retrospective ventriloquizing is always dangerous, but it is fair to say that he would have been appalled, and would have been dismayed that for all the changes in the United States since 1946, the descendants of the Christian American Association are still engaged in a version of the same old Christian American fascist masquerade.   

I think Eisenstadt is correct. Thurman would want us to be revolutionaries…revolutionaries for the love-ethic and for justice. He would encourage us to make a commitment to this community…this Beloved Community that continues to meet in order to stand for the value of each individual and denies that for which fascism stands. Are we able to make this commitment…a vow to be present as the stars are falling and to become revolutionary in a way that furthers this commitment in our lives?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=RDS_GeXozNcXg&v=S_GeXozNcXg