Theologian's Almanac for Week of May 17, 2020
Welcome to SALT’s “Theologian’s Almanac,” a weekly selection of important birthdays, holidays, and other upcoming milestones worth marking - specially created for a) writing sermons and prayers, b) creating content for social media channels, and c) enriching your devotional life.
For the week of Sunday, May 17:
May 17 is the 66th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the unanimous Supreme Court ruling in 1954 stating that racial segregation in public schools violated the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing equal protection under the law. The ruling completed the reversal of Plessy v. Ferguson, which in 1896 permitted “separate but equal” public facilities. Brown v. Board of Education was a momentous decision, but in many ways is still being worked out: it would take many years for integration to be widely implemented, and de facto school segregation still exists in many American communities today. In fact, such segregation is getting worse, not better. Here’s the remarkable opening statement by Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott at last year’s hearing of the House Committee on Education and Labor, which Scott chairs. The hearing was entitled: “Brown v. Board of Education at 65: A Promise Unfulfilled.”
May 19 is the birthday of Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925. When he was a young boy, white supremacists set fire to his family’s home in East Lansing, Michigan, killing his father (the police later declared it a suicide) and so traumatizing his mother that she later entered a mental institution. Arrested for larceny as a young man, Malcolm spent his time in prison reading books - and eventually joined the Nation of Islam, for whom he served as a minister upon his release, soon rising to national renown. He took the name “X” to symbolize his stolen African heritage, and advocated a fierce defense of black rights and dignity “by any means necessary.” He broke with the Nation of Islam in 1964, and the same year made the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, where he met Muslims from a wide range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds - and so returned to the United States with a new message of racial cooperation. He was assassinated soon after, in 1965; he was 39 years old.
May 21 is the Feast of the Ascension, commemorating the stories in Luke and Acts when Jesus withdraws from the disciples, ascending into heaven (Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:6-11). Check out SALT’s commentary on the ascension stories here.
May 22 is the anniversary of the debut of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, introducing generations of young children to ideas of kindness, diversity, peace, and even death and grief - eventually becoming the longest-running children’s program on television. Fred Rogers was a Protestant pastor who considered the show to be his ministry. Rogers said: “The world is not always a kind place. That’s something all children learn for themselves, whether we want them to or not, but it’s something they really need our help to understand.” One of his trademark cardigans hangs today in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. Here’s a lovely gift from Rogers, “One Silent Minute.”
May 23 is the birthday of poet Jane Kenyon, born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1947. Kenyon’s grandmother was a fire-and-brimstone Methodist, frightening Kenyon as a child, and eventually leading her to withdraw from religion. But she returned to Christianity later in life, and many of her later poems explore theological territory. She translated the work of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, and attended a local Congregational Church in New Hampshire. When asked if her newfound faith influenced her writing, she said, “My spiritual life is so much a part of my intellectual life and my feeling life that it’s really become impossible for me to keep it out of my work.” Here’s an example, and another. Her advice for living: “Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours.”
May 23 is also the birthday of Margaret Wise Brown, author of the classic, Goodnight Moon (1947), which she wrote out of frustration that the children’s literature of her day didn’t include familiar, everyday objects children could relate to - as well as one of best (implicitly) theological picture books of the twentieth century, Runaway Bunny (1942).