Theologian's Almanac for Week of October 3, 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, October 3:
October 4 is the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, born in 1182, today considered the patron saint of animals and the natural world. He was a friar — a kind of monk who lived not in a monastery but rather among the poor out in the world. Here are three ways to honor St. Francis this month.
October 6 is the day in 1683 the first Mennonites arrived in what would become the United States. Francis Daniel Pastorius, a German lawyer and teacher, founded Germantown in Pennsylvania. After eating with a group of Native Americans, Pastorius wrote that they “have never in their lives heard the teaching of Jesus concerning temperance and contentment, yet they far excel the Christians in carrying it out.” In 1688, he wrote to slave-holding Quakers in Germantown, urging them to free the people they were enslaving — the first formal abolitionist protest by European immigrants in the American colonies.
October 7 is the birthday of Desmond Tutu, born in Klerksdorp, South Africa, in 1931. For his leadership in opposing apartheid in South Africa, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984; two years later, he elected to be the first black archbishop of Cape Town, the head of the country’s Anglican Church. In 1995, President Nelson Mandela appointed Tutu to lead the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, investigating apartheid-era human rights abuses.
Tutu said: “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.”
And again: “How does peace come? Peace doesn’t come because allies agree. Allies are allies — they already agree! Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that’s where the courage of a leader comes.”
October 8 is the day in 1971 that John Lennon released his second solo album, Imagine. The title track was the best-selling song of his solo career. It’s often understood as anti-religious (“...no religion too…”), but Lennon insisted otherwise. He and Yoko Ono had received a prayer book, he explained, and that book inspired him to write the song as a kind of “positive prayer.” He put it this way: “If you can imagine a world at peace, with no denominations of religion — not without religion but without this my-God-is-bigger-than-your-God thing — then it can be true.”