Theologian's Almanac for Week of June 12, 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, June 12:
June 14 is the birthday of Harriet Beecher Stowe, born in Connecticut in 1811. The daughter of Lyman Beecher, a well known Congregationalist minister, Harriet’s ministry would take a literary form: in 1852, her book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, became a national sensation. One of the bestselling novels of all time, the novel was for many an eye-opening, unsparing, tragic depiction of the evils of slavery, and a vision that helped galvanize the abolitionist movement.
June 14 is also Flag Day in the United States, the anniversary of the declaration by Congress on June 14, 1777, that “the flag of the United States be 13 stripes, alternate red and white,” and that “the union be 13 stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.” In the ongoing revolutionary war against the British, each state’s military regiment was often fighting under its own flag, and George Washington wanted a common, national flag instead, for both practical and aspirational reasons. Thus the roots of the holiday go back to the need for national unity and cooperation, and to the idea that this “new constellation” of states can only face our greatest challenges — today we might think of gun violence, inequality, racism, and climate change, among others — if we do so by working together.
June 15 is the day the Magna Carta (or “Great Charter”) was sealed in 1215 in the English meadow of Runnymede. Members of both the nobility and the church had grievances with King John, and so they pressed him to address them, and at the same time to guarantee certain rights to his subjects. The document itself, written by Stephen, the Archbishop of Canterbury, included several ideas that would go on to influence later legal charters, including the United States’ Bill of Rights: that the church should be free of governmental interference; that the monarch should be subject to the law and not above it; and that no one shall be seized, imprisoned, or exiled without due process of law.
June 15 is also the birthday of Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa, born in Japan in 1763. He became one of the masters of haiku, a poetic form using 17 Japanese characters grouped in three distinct units. His subjects were often common, everyday details, the small wonders of daily life — and the success of his work is largely responsible for the popularity of haiku today. He often explored spiritual subjects from down-to-earth, relatable vantage points, with both insight and a twinkle in his eye. Here’s one of his classics:
All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
killing mosquitoes.
June 16 is the Feast of Corpus Christi (we mixed up the date and had this in last week’s edition of the almanac — but it belongs here instead!), a holy day celebrated by Roman Catholics and others — historically with a public procession — to honor and give thanks for the “real presence” of the Body of Christ in the Eucharist. For their part, Protestants also believe in the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, but don’t locate that presence specifically in the Communion bread and wine. Some scholars argue that certain early Protestant leaders opposed these public processions in part because monarchs sometimes used them, with spectacular pomp and circumstance, to conflate royal and divine power. On the other hand, such processions can also evoke the passion’s Via Dolorosa (“Way of Sorrows”), calling attention to the fact that the Body of Christ is a wounded body, an abused body, a victim of violence and injustice in solidarity with all who suffer violence, injustice, pain, and death, in all times and places.
June 17 is the birthday of John Wesley, considered the founder of Methodism, born in England in 1703. (June 17 is his original birthday, according to the English calendar of the time; newer calendars reckon his birth date as June 28.) The term “Methodist” was originally derisive, used by some of Wesley’s classmates at Oxford because of his methodical style of study, prayer, and fasting. Wesley traveled on horseback throughout the English, Scottish, and Irish countryside, preaching to all he met. He was a lifelong Anglican; his idea was to form small groups for regular prayer and Bible study within the Anglican church. But when Methodist missionaries brought his approach across the Atlantic, it quickly spread under its own denominational banner — and by 1850, the Methodists were the largest denomination in the United States, widely popular among colonists along the frontier, as well as among African Americans, both enslaved and free.