Theologian's Almanac for Week of May 29, 2022
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 29:
May 29 is the birthday of G.K. Chesterton, born in London in 1874. He’s best known for his stories featuring Father Brown, a crime-solving priest who appears to be ignorant, clumsy, and absent-minded, falling asleep during police interrogations, and so on — but who in fact knows more about crime anyone else in the stories, including the criminals. Chesterton invented the character when he converted to Catholicism and realized that Catholic priests, who hear confessions all day long, are veritable experts in depravity. Chesterton was remarkably prolific, and theology animates much of his work; his biography of St. Francis, for example, is a delightful classic. One of his signatures is to express serious ideas with a twinkle in his eye. “Thieves respect property,” he wrote. “They merely wish the property to become their property, that they may more perfectly respect it."
May 30 is the hundredth anniversary of the day the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in 1922. The structure was modeled on the Parthenon; a defender of democracy, the architect said, should be remembered with an homage to the birthplace of democracy. The marble and granite came from Massachusetts, Colorado, Georgia, Tennessee, Indiana, and Alabama, an arrangement meant to symbolize a divided nation reconciling in order to build something new together.
And yet, divisions persisted, then and now. A crowd of more than 50,000 attended the Memorial’s dedication ceremony that day — but though Lincoln was known as the Great Emancipator, the audience was segregated, and keynote speaker Robert Moton, president of the Tuskegee Institute and an African American, wasn’t permitted to sit on the speakers’ platform. 41 years later, on the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech from the Memorial steps.
May 30 is also Memorial Day, a day honoring American military veterans who have died in the midst of war. The brainchild of General John A. Logan, the first Memorial Day observance was in 1868 at Arlington National Cemetery, where members of both the Union and Confederate Armies were buried. Logan declared the day “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”
May 31 - June 1 will mark the hundredth anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre in 1921, in which white mobs, including people armed and deputized by city authorities, brutally attacked African-American people, homes, businesses, churches, schools, and other municipal buildings in the prosperous Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, burning virtually the entire neighborhood to the ground. During the chaos, the mobs savagely assaulted the newly-built Mount Zion Baptist Church with a machine gun mounted on the back of a truck, ultimately setting the building on fire. After the massacre, despite the church building’s total loss and its remaining mortgage debt (the insurance company refused to cover the damages), the Mount Zion congregration vowed to rebuild. Over twenty years, they paid down the original mortgage — and then built a new building on the site, finally dedicated in 1952, more than 30 years after the massacre. The Tulsa Preservation Commission puts it this way: “Mount Zion Baptist Church remains a testimony to the perseverance and tenacity of its congregants and the Black community in Greenwood."
June 2 is the day the Salem Witch Trials were convened in Salem Town, Massachusetts. The mass paranoia and panic had begun in January of that year, 1692, when a few preteen and teenage girls, including the daughter of the village’s minister, began having fits and reporting the sensation of being poked or pricked. The village doctor, unable to diagnose a cause, concluded that they must be bewitched — which led the adults to pressure the girls into naming their assailants.
No doubt picking up on the prejudices of their elders, the girls blamed Tituba, the minister’s slave; Sarah Good, a local homeless woman; and Sarah Osborne, an outcast who rarely attended church services. Local residents were aghast at the report of witchcraft, and soon “respected churchgoers,” too (including some who had the presence of mind to question the children’s credibility) fell under the growing cloud of suspicion. Paranoia stirred up paranoia, with some exploiting the atmosphere to play out quarrels or settle old scores. In the end, over 200 people were accused, and 19 were found guilty and sentenced to execution (14 women and 5 men).
Some of the judges and examiners later expressed remorse or formally apologized to their congregations for participating in the mob mentality, or for failing to speak out against it. In 1695, examiner John Hale wrote, “Such was the darkness of the day, and so great the lamentations of the afflicted, that we walked in the clouds and could not see our way.”
June 4 is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square confrontation, the day Chinese troops stormed the square in Beijing, cracking down on students’ pro-democracy demonstrations. Ordinary workers had gathered along nearby roads in support of the students; they tried to block the advance of the tanks toward the square, and many lost their lives in the process. The students left a message written on the wall behind them that said, "On June 4, 1989, the Chinese people shed their blood and died for democracy." The famous photograph of a student staring down a tank is one of the most influential revolutionary images of the 20th century. The identity of the steadfast student — and his fate — is unknown.
June 4 is also 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.
June 4 is also the anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote in 1920. The 2020 elections, with its ground-breaking election of Kamala Harris to the office of vice president, was the 100th anniversary of the first elections in which women voted in the United States.