Theologian's Almanac for Week of May 16, 2021
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 16:
May 16 is the beginning of the Jewish Festival of Weeks, or Shavuot (pronounced “sha-voo-OAT” (rhymes with “coat”)), celebrated 50 days after Passover. For the ancient Israelites, this festival was an explicitly diverse, inclusive harvest celebration (see Deut 16:11; Lev 23:16), and over time, it also came to mark the reception of the Torah at Mount Sinai.
May 16 is also the birthday of writer, historian, and radio personality Studs Terkel, born in New York City in 1912. Famous for his oral histories of ordinary people, Terkel said of interviewing what might also be said of pastoral care: “It isn’t an inquisition; it’s an exploration, usually an exploration into the past. So I think the gentlest question is the best one, and the gentlest is, ‘And what happened then?’” Among other books, Terkel is the author (or “interviewer”) of Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith.
May 17 is the 65th 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 a 2019 hearing of the House Committee on Education and Labor, which Scott chaired. 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 22 is the anniversary of the 1967 debut of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on WQED Pittsburgh, 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 sure to lift your day: “One Silent Minute.”