The Man Without A Country

 The Man Without a Country is a short story by Edward Everett Hale, published  in 1863. The story is about a young Army Lieutenant Philip Nolan. Nolan was on trial for treason. During the trial  he angrily shouted, "I wish I may never hear of the United States again!"  Upon his conviction, the judge grants his wish. He was sentenced to spend the rest of his life aboard navy ships. He was not only exiled from America, but he could never disembark at any port of any country. Furthermore, he was never to be told anything about the United States of America. He was, in fact, a man without a country.

This is the way I feel about a significant part of my education. Sandwiched between earning a Bachelor of Music Education and a Bachelor of Business Administration, I earned a Master of Church Music at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. This degree was my most proud musical and academic accomplishment. In the months leading up to my entering "Southern", a former student warned me, "No matter what you think you're going to do there, you are there to earn a master's degree and they don't give them away." No truer words were ever spoken. For two years I worked my butt off completing my course work and the activities demanded of me as a church musician. In June of 1979, I graduated with a Master of Church Music. Maybe to you this seems like only a degree to prepare me to become a minister of music at a Baptist church. Well, it was that, but it was so much more.  You can subtract "church" from the degree and you're left with Master of Music, and that's what it was. I earned a Master of Music from what was then one of the most prestigious schools of music in the country.

That was then and this  is now. Religious fundamentalists took over the Southern Baptist Convention during the 1980s and with it took over the major institutions of the convention. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was one of the first to fall. What was at the time a world-renowned school of theology and music, is now only a shadow of its former self. Under the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention and its board and  its president, over the years "Southern"  has become nothing more than a Calvinistic Bible College. Attendance has fallen significantly and there has not even been a school of music  there for nearly a decade. 

So all of this leaves me with a difficult choice. When preparing a resume or stating my education, I am so proud of that degree. But I'm concerned that when you see that affiliation, you think I graduated from "Southern" as it is now and not as it was when I graduated from there. I mean, how are you to know? So I never mention it. It's  like it never happened. 

Nearing his death, Lieutenant Philip Nolan showed one the sailors his room. It was a virtual shrine to the United States. He told the sailor, "America is your  home; you need to love America as your mother". He smiles and says, "Here, you see, I have a country."

Philip Nolan had a country because the United States still existed; it had always existed. In the case of my seminary and my degree, it is dead to me. Unless you were a classmate of mine and know of the blood, sweat and tears that went into that degree, you'll never hear from me that I graduated from there, except right now with these explanations. But like I said, in 2009 at the age of 56, I walked the stage to receive my Bachelor of Business Administration in Management from Dalton State College in Dalton, Georgia. I graduated Cum Laude. That's an accomplishment that I will brag about till my dying day.  I'm not out an education, I'm just out a master's degree.