The Best We Have to Offer

SOURCE: "The Need for Creeds", Speaking of Faith
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/pelikan/
KEYWORDS: faith, creed, profess,

In an interview dating back to 2003, Jaroslav Pelikan told this story about his friend Stephen Jay Gould.

My late friend Stephen Jay Gould would insist with dogmatic fervor that he wasn’t a believer. In addition to being a distinguished paleontologist and a terrific communicator, Steve Gould was a member of the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston. He sang all this ancient music. In an interview several years ago, that we were both involved in, he was asked about communication with other planets and other worlds. How should we try to reach people who do not know our language or anything else? And he said, we should play the Bach B-Minor Mass, and we should say in as many languages as we can, “This is the best that we have ever done. And we would like you to hear it. And we would like to hear the best that you have ever done.” He would want broadcast systems blaring across our solar system and beyond it with the B-Minor Mass including “Credo in Deo Patre” (I believe in God the Father).