In recent weeks, an articulate and sincere young man, Harrison Butker, gave a speech to graduates of an obscure, religiously affiliated college in Kansas. He was given an Honorary Doctorate by the institution in recognition of his recently helping the Kansas City Chiefs win the Superbowl. He was their star kicker. Given his prowess in launching an oddly shaped ‘ball’ between two upright poles, the Trustees of Benedictine College apparently expected him to provide wisdom and challenges to the graduating class of just under 500. Many Americans were surprised by the content of his speech, but what struck me as most unexpected was that he delivered the speech in English to a gathering of both men and women in the heart of America in 2024. If he had delivered the speech in Dari, the Persian dialect favored by the Taliban, from a balcony in Kabul, Afghanistan, to a strictly male audience, at any time over the past few hundred years, it would have been much less remarkable.
Indeed, the men of Kabul would have repeatedly interrupted this speech with lengthy applause as their guest speaker reminded them of the true vocations for women and the threats from nonconformists. The celebration of values and customs now lost in other countries in their pursuit of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ would have brought tears to the eyes of even the most hard-hearted of the elderly Mujahidin. Making this commencement speech resonate with an audience intent on embracing seventeenth century values would have required changes in relatively few words and no full sentences.
This ‘enlightened’ speaker in Kansas described himself as chosen by God [i.e., Allah, Yahweh, etc.] to deliver the good news to the graduating class of women that their years of study and expense at the Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, qualified them, indeed entitled them, to assume and “embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.” Surely, Mr. Butker, the commencement speaker, opined, what “the majority of you are most excited about [is] your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.” He advised those whose antisemitism was not appropriately robust that, “Congress just passed a bill where stating something as basic as the biblical teaching of who killed Jesus could land you in jail.” [Really?]
I gather he was making reference to the Bill recently passed by the House of Representatives that effectively expanded the hate categories enumerated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include antisemitism. That Act does not threaten to punish or jail people for hating Jews or for advocating the hatred of Jews, but Mr. Butker felt the need to remind us that the Bible says that some Jews were involved in the decision to crucify Jesus a mere two thousand years ago. The commencement speaker obviously worried that any legislation discouraging antisemitism might blunt the religious fervor of the graduates to whom he spoke. Harrison Butker’s Bible apparently includes an admonition to never forgive and never forget, even if it means reaching back to ‘events’ that occurred thousands of years ago. Move aside Billy Graham.
In keeping with the Taliban playbook, Mr. Butker went on to decry the sinfulness of America with all its gender confusion, sexual misbehavior, abortion rights, and general lack of moral compass. With his special focus on the women in the audience, he reminded them that all forms of birth control, surrogacy, and in vitro fertilization [IVF] were sins. “I want to speak directly to you briefly,” he explained, “because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you.” Amongst those lies was the suggestion that women had the right to choose when, with whom, and how often they have children.
If the Benedictine College wanted attention, it succeeded. Not only did the National Football League formally dissociate itself from Mr. Butker’s anachronistic, misogynistic views on the roles of women in America in 2024, but even various Catholic associations, including the Benedictine Nuns, insisted that his views on the roles of women were, at best, exceedingly narrow-minded and uninformed. Obviously, women who chose to serve God in roles that did not include marriage or childbearing could not be expected to understand Orthodoxy according to Butker.
Mr. Butker’s commencement speech deserves more than derision. It was an appalling retreat to the sexism, bigotry, misogyny, and tribalism that infected America before the 1960s and that refuses to slink into the abyss where it belongs. He dressed his remarks in the fervent religiosity that has characterized many of America’s hate groups over the years. The Night Riders, Ku Klux Klan, America First Society, John Birch Society, Proud Boys and other such self-declared ‘patriotic’ organizations have routinely declared their devotion to a “true” religion while actually demonstrating disdain for all religions.
John Milton, the author of the epic poem “Paradise Lost” was blind, but even with his “light spent” [as he put it], he had the vision to recognize the diversity of human callings. He was a devout Christian and believed that his God had plans to fit the needs and abilities of each and every person. In addition to those with obvious and designated missions, he concluded, “They also serve who only stand and wait.” John Milton was a literary genius and deserved an honorary degree from a distinguished college but never received one. Harrison Butker is an excellent football kicker and for that he received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Benedictine College. He deserves free postage and handling to return any academic degrees he has received or ever will receive to the misguided institutes of higher learning that have given him a platform upon which to speak.
Dr. Lechtenberg is an Easton resident who graduated from Tufts University and Tufts Medical School in Massachusetts and subsequently trained at The Mount Sinai Hospital and Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan. He worked as a neurologist at several New York Hospitals, including Kings County and The Long Island College Hospital, while maintaining a private practice, teaching at SUNY Downstate Medical School, and publishing 15 books on a variety of medical topics. He worked in drug development in the U.S., as well as in England, Germany, and France.
