Review: Seeds of Destruction

Seeds of Destruction by Thomas Merton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've been wanting to read this book for a long time, largely because of the first essay in it, the famous Letters to a White Liberal, which is crucial for understanding Merton's understanding of race in the 1960s. Seeds of Destruction collects this essay as well as other essays on race and on peacemaking in the 1960s and reveals much of Merton's social thinking in the last decade of his life. Merton in the 1960s can be a polarizing figure, but I appreciate the clarity of his thinking, which holds up generally quite well more than fifty years later.

The book is divided into two main sections- Black Revolution and the Diaspora. In Black Revolution, Merton considers how white Christians should respond to the revolution building in Black communities in the 1960s as the U.S. navigated the Civil Rights struggle. His discussion takes Black authors and activists seriously and he has an unusually clear idea of white privilege and the way that even white supporters of the struggle find it hard to understand it. Despite its occasionally archaic vocabulary and Merton's own shortcomings, it remains a useful discussion.

The second section, the Diaspora, focuses primarily on peace, the world crisis (i.e. the 1960s version) and the problem of the Christian in a post- Christendom world (my words, not Merton's). The discussion here is rooted in Scripture and Catholic thought and provides insights which continue to be useful today. Again, the lean is progressive and supportive of Vatican II, so remains somewhat controversial among conservatives.

This is an important book for those of us interested in Merton's social thought, which only really was published to the wider world after Merton's death. The view is still rooted in the 1960s, but remains curiously relevant to the world we find ourselves in during the 2020s.

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