Theologian's Almanac for Week of August 8, 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, August 8:

August 9 is the day in 1854 when Henry David Thoreau published Walden; or, Life in the Woods. His previous book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, was hardly a success, selling fewer than 300 copies — but Henry was undaunted. When the hundreds of unsold copies were sent back to him by the publisher, Thoreau dryly wrote in his journal: “I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself...” Walden didn’t do much better, selling modestly. After his death, however, thanks to the tireless promotion of family, friends, and admirers, millions of copies of Walden have now been sold, and the book is considered an American classic. Here’s a taste of a few highlights on “Simplicity.”

August 11 is the feast day of Clare of Assisi, the early-thirteenth-century visionary inspired by Francis of Assisi to found a corresponding order for women, which became known as the Poor Clares. Like Francis, Clare was a young woman of some wealth and prestige, and decided to leave these behind for a life of poverty, service, and devotion. Legend has it that when she cut off her long hair to mark her conversion, a flock of birds came to gather up the strands, weaving them into their nests in the surrounding countryside. Another story: once too ill to attend a morning worship service, Clare had a vivid vision of the service, complete with singers and an organ — and in this way, she effectively attended the service from afar. With this story in mind, in 1958 Pope Pius XII named Clare patron saint of television writers (should we add patron saint of online worship?). She is also patron saint of embroiderers, owing to her renowned skill in embroidering liturgical vestments.

August 11 is also the birthday of the American writer Alex Haley, born in Ithaca, New York, in 1921 — exactly 100 years ago. He grew up in Tennessee, surrounded by stories of his enslaved ancestors. As a journalist and feature writer, he interviewed Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr., Miles Davis, and Malcolm X, with this last interview eventually becoming Haley’s first book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, in 1965.

During that same decade, Haley began researching his genealogy: tracing his family back to The Gambia, traveling to West Africa to interview Gambians, and booking his return trip on a boat where he spent the journey down below in the hold, in order to personally experience a semblance of what the Middle Passage must have been like. The resulting book, originally titled, Before this Anger, was published in 1976 as Roots: The Saga of an American Family, a blend of fact and fiction following seven generations from enslavement to the present. It was a runaway bestseller, received a Special Citation Pulitzer Prize in 1977, and was adapted into a 12-part television miniseries seen by 130 million people — a new record for a television audience, surpassing (ironically enough) the previously most-watched television event, “Gone with the Wind.”

Haley once summed up his work this way: "In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it."

August 12 is the birthday of American film director Cecil B. DeMille, born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, in 1881. Though many of his early films were sensational and scandalous, he eventually became known for sprawling Biblical epics, including The King of Kings (1927) and The Ten Commandments (1956, starring Charlton Heston as Moses). DeMille once remarked, “My ministry has been to make religious movies and to get more people to read the Bible than anyone else ever has.” It’s been estimated that by the time DeMille died in 1959, more than 800 million people had viewed The King of Kings. One of DeMille’s last unfinished projects was (you guessed it!) a film version of the Book of Revelation.

August 14 was the day in 1935 that the original Social Security Act was signed into law, part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s constellation of policies known as the “New Deal.” It was partly conceived as an expansion of the Civil War Pension Program, for which only war veterans (on the Union side) and their families were eligible. The Great Depression saw poverty rates steeply increase, particularly among the elderly. The other inspiration for the program was the “social insurance” policies in Europe. Upon signing the act, Roosevelt declared, “We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.” Bitterly criticized at the time as a form of “socialism,” today Social Security is one of the most popular of all government programs in the United States. At its core, it’s a way for a people to organize our efforts, share resources, and take care of each other.