America was riding high in the saddle in the early twentieth century. We were flexing our economic and political muscles on the international stage. New inventions and technologies were taking hold. Our progress seemed inevitable.
Georgia Harkness was born in 1891 in Harkness, New York, a small town named in honor of her great-grandfather. She was educated in the glory days of American social progress. Georgia was a pioneer in her field, becoming the first woman to obtain a full professorship at an American seminary. The myth of human progress was punctured by two world wars and a major economic depression. Georgia also faced limits of her own, a serious illness and the death of her beloved faither. Her center of gravity shifted from confidence in human progress to a deeper reliance on God’s promises. She was an activist by nature, turning her theology outward to address social ills facing the church: racism, poverty, and a new wave of immigration. She recognized the danger of activism apart from a life of prayer.
One of Georgia’s thirty books, Prayer and the Common Life, written in 1947, seeks to wed prayer with social concerns. Without prayer, action becomes misdirected by self-interest. She advocates for prayer “that makes a difference in the common life.” She writes in the introduction, “We begin by saying there is nothing of which the world has greater need than the upsurge in vital, God-centered, intellectually grounded prayer.” I was struck by the quote from her book, “Prayer is not overcoming God’s resistance; it is laying hold of God’s willingness.”
The prayer she wrote that became the hymn, “Hope of the World,” summons us to pray: