Being educated, empowered
Richard Hoehn used to deliver the Butler Eagle as a paperboy growing up.
Now, he's delivering good news about contributing to the human spirit with his just-published book, “We Carry the Fire: Family and Citizenship as Spiritual Calling.”
Hoehn has had a varied career since graduating from Butler High School in 1954.
He has been a Lutheran pastor, an associate professor at Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth and then director of Bread for the World Institute for 17 years.
“Bread for the World is an advocacy organization,” Hoehn said. “My job was to meet with people in churches and college campuses and keep them informed of pending legislation, and help them develop their skills to implement policies that would help people who are poor and hungry.”
His work, which also included securing grants, producing policy documents and reports on world hunger, took him to meet with United Nations organizations dealing with food.
Hoehn said when he retired at 69 in 2005 he considered “retired” a relative term.
Pastor, volunteer
He served as interim pastor at a couple of Lutheran churches near his Maryland home. He volunteered for a United Nations program that develops sustainable development goals.
And he wrote “We Carry the Fire,” which promotes a different definition of spirituality.
“For most people, spirituality means going on a retreat, meditating, seeking God and reading the Scriptures,” Hoehn said. “It's mostly a way of finding personal satisfaction.
“But I can't be serene when there is human trafficking every hour of every day and 20,000 children die of hunger,” he said.
In “We Carry the Fire,” Hoehn recommends that readers begin with social and political actions that increase the human spirit, that is, people live rather than die, and to be educated, empowered, loving and helping to restore the Earth.
The goal is not to do something to become more spiritual, but to save people and the Earth.
Deeper spirituality
This challenging labor in solidarity with others is a spiritual work that provides a deeper personal spirituality as our spirits unite with the strivings of good people of all times and places, he said.“Make the changes so that children are fed, wars are minimized,” Hoehn said. “To me that is real spirituality. It contributes to the human spirit.”Hoehn lives in Adelphi, Md., just outside of Washington, D.C., with his wife of 30 years, Carole Zimmerman.He said its been two or three years since he's visited his old hometown, but his memories are still vivid.Hoehn said he grew up in Butler and attended Institute Hill grade school. His father, Albert, worked at Armco and his mother, Mary Reiger Hoehn, was a school teacher.Delivering the EagleHoehn said he started out delivering a Pittsburgh newspaper and, when he turned 12, he started delivering the Butler Eagle on two routes: one covering First, Second and Third streets and one in the area between Brady and McKean streets.“After school, I would come to the office across from the courthouse, pick up the papers, fold them and throw them on the front porch,” he said. He delivered papers five days a week.As for sales of his books, Hoehn got some good news himself.“It's been good,” he said. “I'm not a big public figure. People are writing books every day, but it's going very well. The reviews have been good.”Peter Paris, professor emeritus of Christian Social Ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary, called the book “informative, inspirational and persuasive ... difficult to put down.”Hoehn added the book, published by Church Publishing Inc., is available online. It can also be ordered at a bookstore.
