Above:  Flag of the Republic of China, 1928-

Image in the Public Domain

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BLISS MITCHELL WIANT (FEBRUARY 1, 1895-OCTOBER 1, 1975)

U.S. Methodist Minister, Missionary, Musician, Music Educator, and Hymn Translator, Arranger, and Harmonizer

husband of

MILDRED KATHRYN ARTZ WIANT (JUNE 8, 1898-MAY 1, 2001)

U.S. Methodist Missionary, Musician, Music Educator, and Hymn Translator

Bliss and Mildred Wiant come to this, A Great Cloud of Witnesses:  An Ecumenical Calendar of Saints’ Days and Holy Days, via the companion volumes to The Methodist Hymnal (1966) and The United Methodist Hymnal (1989).

The Wiants combined music and missionary work.  Bliss Mitchell Wiant, born in Dalton, Ohio, on February 1, 1895, was a son of William Allen Wiant (1861-1923) and Loretta Hoak Wiant (1864-1904).  Mildred Kathryn Artz, born in Lancaster, Ohio, on June 8, 1898, was a daughter of Frank E. Artz (1867-1933) and Minne Belle Walters Artz (1867-1953).  Bliss studied at Wittenberg College, Springfield, Ohio, before doing so at Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio.  Both of our saints graduated from that institution in 1920.  They married in the fall of 1922.  Bliss became an ordained minister (as an elder) in the Ohio Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1784-1939) in 1923.  Mildred, a singer and an educator, continued her operatic vocal training in Boston, Massachusetts, for a year (1922-1923).

The Wiants served as missionaries in China from 1923 to 1951, with some gaps.  Bliss led the Department of Music, the University of Yenching, Beijing.  He also played the organ at the funeral of Sun Yat-Sen in 1925.  Mildred taught singing at the university.  During furloughs, Bliss studied at Harvard University (1928-1929), Boston University (M.A., 1936), Union Theological Seminary (1941-1942), and Peabody College, Nashville, Tennessee (Ph.D., 1946).  During furloughs, Mildred continued her operatic voice training and taught vocal music at Scarritt College, Nashville, Tennessee.  The couple raised four children, all born in Beijing.  The children were, in no particular order, Allen, Cecilia, Bliss Leighton (died 89 years old, September 2, 2017), and Benjamin (January 17, 1935-January 22, 2020).  Cecilia contracted polio when she was 2.5 years old.  Bliss and Mildred compiled collections of Chinese music and translated many Chinese hymns into English.  He was the musical editor of Hymns of Universal Praise (1936).

The Wiants returned to the United States in 1951; the People’s Republic of China had expelled many missionaries.  The Wiants remained active in musical ministry.  Bliss was the pastor of St. Paul’s Methodist Church, Delaware, Ohio (1953-1955); the minister of music at Mahoning Methodist Church, Youngstown, Ohio (1955-1957); the director of music at the Methodist Board of Education and the executive secretary of the National Fellowship of Methodist Musicians, Nashville, Tennessee (1957-1961); the director of music at Scarritt College, Nashville, Tennessee (1961-1962); and the director of music for the Ohio Council of Churches (1962-1963).  Mildred also taught at Scarritt College (1961-1962) and at the Biennial Convocations of Methodist Musicians (1957-1961).

The Wiants returned to Asia in 1963.  From 1963 to 1965, they served on the faculty of Chung Chi College of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  Bliss, the National Council of Churches’s director of music programming in Hong Kong, lectured in theological schools during his time in Hong Kong.  The National Council of Churches published the Wiants’ Worship Materials from the Chinese (1969), a booklet.

The Wiants gave presentations about Chinese music.  These presentations entailed lectures, vocal performances, and Chinese instruments.

Bliss, aged 80 years, died in Delaware, Ohio, on October 1, 1975.

Mildred, aged 102 years, died in Columbus, Ohio, on May 1, 2001.

In 1989, Ohio Wesleyan University created the Bliss and Mildred Wiant Award “to remember the importance of leadership which promotes interfaith and intercultural understanding.”

The Wiants’ influence is more pronounced in The Methodist Hymnal (1966) than in The United Methodist Hymnal (1989).  The companion volume to the 1966 hymnal lists Bliss as a consultant on the tunes subcommittee for that hymnal.  The Methodist Hymnal (1966) also contains two hymns Bliss arranged and one he harmonized.  Both hymnals contain one hymn the Wiants translated.  That text is “Rise to Greet the Sun,” from 1946 and copyrighted in 1965.

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God of universal love, we bless you and thank you for the faithful legacy

of Bliss and Mildred Wiant, who blended music and the Great Commission.

May we, like them, strive and work for understanding across cultural barriers

as we seek to glorify you and draw others to you.

In the Name of God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Isaiah 42:5-9

Psalm 150

Ephesians 2:11-22

Matthew 28:16-20

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

APRIL 25, 2020 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF SAINT MARK THE EVANGELIST, MARTYR, 68

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The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

Above:  Gerard Manley Hopkins

Image in the Public Domain

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GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS (JULY 28, 1844-JUNE 8, 1889)

English Roman Catholic Poet and Jesuit Priest

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It will flame out, like shining from shoot foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed.  Why do men then not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

All is seared with trade, bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell:  the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

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And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs–

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

–Gerard Manley Hopkins

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Gerard Manley Hopkins comes to my Ecumenical Calendar of Saints’ Days and Holy Days via Robert Ellsberg, author of All Saints:  Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time (New York, NY:  The Crossroad Company, 1997).

Gerard Manley Hopkins, scholar and priest, was a giant of Victorian English literature, but only after his death.  He was one of those authors whose work entered the literary canon post mortem.

Hopkins grew up in a devout High Anglican family in which various art forms–visual and written–were common.  His father was Manley Hopkins, a former British consul general to the Kingdom of Hawai’i and the founder of a marine insurance company.  Manley was also a Sunday School teacher and a churchwarden at St. John’s Church, Hampstead.  The father was also a punster, fortunately.  Our saint’s mother, Kate Smith Hopkins, encouraged her children’s piety.  At her urging our young Gerard grew up reading from the New Testament daily.

Hopkins, born in Stratford, London, on July 28, 1844, was a fine student.  After studying at Cholmondley Grammar School, Highgate, he matriculated at Baillol College, Oxford University, in 1863.  According to Baillol College lecturer Benjamin Jowett, Hopkins was “the star of Baillol.”  Hopkins, influenced by the Oxford Movement, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1866; John Henry Newman received him into Holy Mother Church.

Hopkins became a Jesuit then a priest.  He entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1868.  At that point he burned the poetry he had written until then.  In 1875, in Wales, however, he resumed the composition of verse.  Unfortunately, he could never get any of it published.  Even literary friends who read Hopkins’s poetry commented that it was unreadable, due to its rhythms and odd syntax.  Hopkins, ordained a priest in 1877, served in parishes in London, Oxford, Liverpool, and Glasgow before teaching classics at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire.  From 1884 to 1889 he was Professor of Classics at University College, Dublin, Ireland.  Life in Ireland did not agree with our saint; his health failed and he worked too hard.  Hopkins died of typhoid fever in Dublin on June 8, 1889.  He was 44 years old.

Hopkins expressed himself eloquently in his poetry.  He delighted in nature, in which he recognized the presence of God.  His joys and sorrows were also evident in verse, not published until 1918.  Hopkins’s collected works have enriched the lives of many people since then, fortunately.

Hopkins, who spent much of his time in Ireland in emotional anguish and physical illness, found peace at the end.  His final words were

I am so happy!

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

JANUARY 18, 2018 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF THE CONFESSION OF SAINT PETER THE APOSTLE

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Eternal God, light of the world and Creator of all that is good and lovely:

We bless your name for inspiring Gerard Manley Hopkins and all those

who with words have filled us with desire and love for you;

through Jesus Christ our Savior, who with you and the Holy Spirit

lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

1 Chronicles 29:14b-19

Psalm 90:14-17

2 Corinthians 3:1-3

John 21:15-17, 24-25

–Adapted from Holy Women, Holy Men:  Celebrating the Saints (2010), page 728

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Above:  Roland Allen

Image in the Public Domain

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ROLAND ALLEN (DECEMBER 29, 1868-JUNE 9, 1947)

Anglican Priest, Missionary, and Mission Strategist

The Episcopal Church added Roland Allen to its calendar of saints at the General Convention of 2009.

Roland Allen was, during his lifetime, a marginal figure in global missions.  He, born in Bristol, England, on December 29, 1868, was the fifth of five children of an Anglican priest.  Our saint, an Anglo-Catholic, attended St. John’s College, Oxford, then the Leeds Clergy Training School.  Allen, ordained to the diaconate in 1892 and the priesthood the following year, turned to foreign missions early in his career.  The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) dispatched him to its North China Mission in 1895.  Allen was planning to lead a new school for the training of Chinese catechists in 1900 when the Boxer Rebellion started.  He wrote of that time in The Siege of the Peking Legations (1901).  Our saint, on furlough in England, married Mary B. Tarlton.  The Allens, in northern China, welcomed their first child into the world in 1902.  Our saint fell ill, however, so the family returned to England.

There Allen became a parish priest.  He resigned his post in protest in 1907, however.  Our saint could not, in good conscience, obey the rule requiring him to baptize all babies presented for that sacrament, even if the parents lacked any Christian commitment.

Allen spent the rest of his life–much of it in Kenya–researching and pondering missions strategies.  While he did this he supported himself and his family financially by lecturing and writing.  In a series of books, notably Missionary Methods:  St. Paul’s or Ours (1912), Allen argued for revolutionary propositions:

1. Missionaries should be voluntary clergy with secular employment, in the style of St. Paul the Apostle, who made tents.
2. Missionaries should abandon all paternalism.
3. Missionaries should adapt their methods to local customs.
4. Missionaries should train local people to take over the missions.

Allen, aged 78 years, died in Nairobi, Kenya, on June 9, 1947.  His work did not become influential until the 1960s, however.

Allen understood something crucial:  Western missionaries were often their own worst enemies, bringing with them to foreign lands their prejudices, ethnocentrism, and imperial politics.  This baggage interfered with the fulfillment of Christ’s Great Commission.  Our saint’s critique was sharp and accurate, meant to help the Church.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

JANUARY 18, 2018 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF THE CONFESSION OF SAINT PETER THE APOSTLE

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Almighty God, by your Spirit you opened the Scriptures of your servant Roland Allen,

so that he might lead many to know, live, and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ:

Give us grace to follow his example, that the variety of those to whom we reach out in love may

receive your saving Word and witness and their own languages and cultures to your glorious Name;

through Jesus Christ, your Word made flesh, who lives and reigns

with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Numbers 11:26-29

Psalm 119:145-152

2 Corinthians 9:8-15

Luke 8:4-15

—Holy Women, Holy Men:  Celebrating the Saints (2010), page 415

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It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.

Above:  The Last Stand:  Science Versus Superstition, by Udo J. Keppler

From Puck Magazine, July 19, 1899

Image Source = Library of Congress

Reproduction Number = LC-DIG-ppmsca-28614

Charles Augustus Briggs is the man on the left in the clergy collar.

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CHARLES AUGUSTUS BRIGGS (JANUARY 15, 1841-JUNE 8, 1913)

U.S. Presbyterian Minister, Episcopal Priest, Biblical Scholar, and Alleged Heretic

father of

EMILIE GRACE BRIGGS (1867-JUNE 14, 1944)

Biblical Scholar and “Heretic’s Daughter”

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–Galileo Galilei

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Progress in religion, in doctrine, and in life is demanded of our age of the world more than any other age.

–Charles Augustus Briggs

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Above:  Charles Augustus Briggs

Image in the Public Domain

The tribe of alleged heretics includes luminaries.

Charles Augustus Briggs was one of the relatively liberal clergymen who became epicenters of controversy in the old Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (“Northern,” but actually national) in the late 1800s.  He, born in New York, New York, on January 15, 1841, was a son of Alanson Tuthill Briggs (Sr.), who managed the family business, the largest barrel-making company in the United States, and Sarah Mead Berrian Briggs.  Young Charles studied at the University of Virginia from 1857 to 1860; there he had a conversion experience.  For a few months our saint was a soldier in the New York Seventh Regiment during the Civil War.  Next Briggs matriculated at Union Theological Seminary (UTS), New York, New York.  He left in 1863, due to his father’s extended illness, to manage the family business.

Briggs married Julia Valentine Dobbs in 1865.  The couple had seven children, five of whom survived our saint.  These five were:

1. Emilie Grace Briggs (1867-June 14, 1944);
2. Agnes Briggs, who married Philip Ketteridge;
3. Alanson Tuthill Briggs (II) (1871-January 31, 1946);
4. Herbert Wilfrid Briggs; and
5. Olive M. Briggs.

Briggs became a Presbyterian minister.  The First Presbytery of New York licensed our saint to preach in April 1866.  That June Charles and Julia Briggs traveled to Berlin, where he studied for his doctorate at the University of Berlin.  At that institution our saint studied under proponents of historical critical scholarship of the Bible; Isaac A. Dorner was, by Briggs’s account, an influential figure in the shaping of his theology.  Also in Berlin the Briggses welcomed their daughter Emilie Grace into the world.  Our saint, back in the United States, served as the first pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Roselle, New Jersey, from 1869 to 1874.  That year he accepted an appointment to Union Theological Seminary as Professor of Hebrew and Cognate Languages.

Briggs remained at Union Theological Seminary for the rest of his life, although not always as a Presbyterian.  He was, according to student then colleague, Presbyterian minister and UTS professor William Adams Brown (1865-1943), a

walking encyclopedia, combining an essentially conservative theology with a critical scholarship.

Most of Briggs’s critics within and beyond the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. never questioned his intellect, but they did doubt his orthodoxy.  Briggs, from 1880 to 1890 the Editor of the Presbyterian Review, was a champion of historical criticism scholarship, of Higher Criticism of the Bible.  Our saint argued for propositions that no not cause the author of this post to arch his eyebrows.  Briggs argued, for example that

1. The Book of Isaiah is the product of two authors.  (I have read commentaries that argue for three Isaiahs.  The editors of The Jewish Study Bible argue for two Isaiahs.)
2. The Book of Zechariah is a composite work.  (The study Bibles in my library agree with this conclusion.)
3. The Torah is not the work of Moses, but a composite of various documents edited, cut, and pasted during the time of Ezra.  (Renowned Jewish Biblical scholar Richard Elliott Friedman supports this conclusion in his books Who Wrote the Bible? (1987), Commentary on the Torah with a New English Translation and the Hebrew Text (2001), and The Bible with Sources Revealed:  A New View Into the Five Books of Moses (2003).)
4. The Book of Jonah is a work of fiction.  (Of course it is.  The story is a magnificent satire of the excesses of postexilic Jewish nationalism and a reminder that God’s love extends to all Gentiles, even national enemies.)
5. The Bible is neither inerrant nor infallible.  The dogmas that it is constitute barriers to faith for many people.  (I have read the Bible too closely to affirm either inerrancy or infallibility.  To label the recognition of the obvious heretical is  to encourage one not to love God with all of one’s intellect.)

These and other views of Briggs allegedly subverted the Christian faith.

Briggs favored the reordering of American Presbyterian theology and the revision of the Westminster Confession of Faith, to moderate the rough edges of its Calvinism.  He, an ardent ecumenist and supporter of organic union among denominations, argued against “orthodoxism,” or a false orthodoxy that betrays the principles of the Protestant Reformation and of the best aspects of the Presbyterian tradition.  In Whither? A Theological Question for the Times (1889) Briggs wrote:

Orthodoxism assumes to know the truth and is unwilling to learn; it is haughty and arrogant, assuming the divine prerogatives of infallibility and inerrancy; it hates the truth that is unfamiliar to it, and prosecutes it to the uttermost.  But orthodoxy loves the truth.  It is ever anxious to learn, for it knows how greatly the truth or God transcends human knowledge….It is meek, lowly, and reverent.  It is full of charity and love.  It does not recognize an infallible pope; it does not know an infallible theologian.

Briggs did not remain either a Presbyterian or alive long enough to witness the triumph of his position in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.  He lived until 1913, a decade after the denomination revised the Westminster Confession of Faith.  The Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. did not side officially with the Modernist side in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy until the middle and late 1920s, however.  The Presbytery of New York put Briggs, since 1891 the Edward Robinson Chair of Biblical Theology at UTS, on trial for heresy and acquitted him on that charge in 1892, but the General Assembly of 1893 suspended him from ministerial duties until he repented.  He never repented.  Briggs, after preaching as a layman for a few years, became an Episcopal priest in 1899 instead.  He, 72 years old, died of pneumonia on June 8, 1913.

Briggs, working from his secure professional home at Union Theological Seminary, continued to teach, write, and edit.  One of his greatest accomplishments was the Hebrew and English Lexicon (1905), a classic and standard work.  His fellow authors were Francis Brown and S. R. Driver, but his daughter Emilie Grace contributed to the work also.  She, assistant to her father from the 1890s to 1913, was a crucial participant in his late scholarly endeavors.

Emilie should have had a doctorate.  In 1897 she made history by becoming the first woman to receive a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary.  She pursued graduate studies and wrote her dissertation, The Deaconess in the Ancient and Medieval Church, which the UTS faculty approved.  Yet she never received her doctorate, due to the fact she could never get the dissertation published, a requirement for receiving a doctorate from UTS at the time.  She revised the dissertation for decades and various professors helped her try to get it published, to no avail.  Emilie taught Greek and the New Testament at the New York Training School for Deaconesses, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, from 1896 to 1915.  After her father’s death in 1913 her main project was his legacy.  He left some scholarly books unfinished.  She, the author of several scholarly articles, finished and got published Theological Symbolics (1914), History of the Study of Theology (two volumes, 1916), and a commentary on Lamentations.  Emilie, who studied the order of deaconesses, completed other projects her father never had time to finish; she could not get them published, however.  She also collected and organized her father’s papers, which she donated to the library at UTS in 1941.  Emilie, who never married, died, aged 77 years, on June 14, 1944.

Charles Augustus Briggs and his daughter and intellectual heir, Emilie Grace Briggs, belong on my Ecumenical Calendar of Saints’ Days and Holy Days.  They were fearless in their embrace of both faith and reason.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

JANUARY 17, 2018 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF SAINT ANTONY OF EGYPT, ROMAN CATHOLIC ABBOT AND FATHER OF WESTERN MONASTICISM

THE FEAST OF SAINT BERARD AND HIS COMPANIONS, ROMAN CATHOLIC MARTYRS IN MOROCCO

THE FEAST OF EDMUND HAMILTON SEARS, U.S. UNITARIAN MINISTER AND HYMN WRITER

THE FEAST OF RUTHERFORD BIRCHARD HAYES, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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O God, you have endowed us with memory, reason, and skill.

We thank you for the faithful legacy of [Charles Augustus Briggs, Emilie Grace Briggs, and all others]

who have dedicated their lives to you and to the intellectual pursuits.

May we, like them, respect your gift of intelligence fully and to your glory.

In the Name of God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Psalm 103

Philippians 4:8-9

Mark 12:28-34

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

MARCH 6, 2013 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF SAINT CHRODEGANG OF METZ, ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP

THE FEAST OF EDMUND KING, ANGLICAN BISHOP OF LINCOLN

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Above:  Trinity College, Cambridge, England, Between 1890 and 1900

Image Source = Library of Congress

Reproduction Number = LC-DIG-ppmsc-08091

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HENRY DOWNTON (FEBRUARY 12, 1818-JUNE 8, 1885)

Anglican Priest, Hymn Writer, and Hymn Translator

Henry Downton, a priest of the Church of England, entered the world at Pulverbatch, Shropshire, England, on February 12, 1818.  His father was John Downton, sub-Librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge.  That bookishness carried over to Henry, who graduated from Trinity College with his B.A. in 1840 and his M.A. three years later.

Our saint was a priest from 1843 to his death, in 1885.  In 1843 he became the Curate of Bembridge, Isle of Wight.  Four years later he began to serve as the Curate of Holy Trinity, Cambridge.  From 1849 to 1857 he was the Incumbent of St. John’s, Chatham.  In 1857 Downton became the English chaplain at Geneva, Switzerland.  Finally, in 1873, our saint began to serve as the Rector of Hopton, where he died on June 8, 1885.

Downton wrote and translated prose and hymns.  He contributed hymns to the Church of England Magazine the  published them in Hymns and Verses Original and Translated (1873).  Other published works were Holy Scriptures and the Temperance Question (1878) and The Heavenly Father:  Lectures on Modern Atheism, by Ernest Naville (1865).

One of Downton’s hymns was “For Thy Mercy and Thy Grace” (1841), which I have added to my GATHERED PRAYERS weblog.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

JANUARY 15, 2015 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

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Dear God of beauty,

you have granted literary ability and spiritual sensitivity to

Henry Downton and others, who have written and translated hymn texts.

May we, as you guide us,

find worthy hymn texts to be icons,

through which we see you.

In the Name of God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 44:1-3a, 5-15

Psalm 147

Revelation 5:11-14

Luke 2:8-20

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

APRIL 20, 2013 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF SAINTS AMATOR OF AUXERRE AND GERMANUS OF AUXERRE, ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS; SAINT MAMERTINUS OF AUXERRE, ROMAN CATHOLIC ABBOT; AND SAINT MARCIAN OF AUXERRE, ROMAN CATHOLIC MONK

THE FEAST OF JOHANNES BUGENHAGEN, GERMAN LUTHERAN PASTOR

THE FEAST OF SAINT MARCELLINUS OF EMBRUN, ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP

THE FEAST OF OLAVUS AND LAURENTIUS PETRI, RENEWERS OF THE CHURCH

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Above:  Flag of Oklahoma

CLARA SHEPARD LUPER (MAY 3, 1923-JUNE 8, 2011)

Witness for Civil Rights

I sing a song of the saints of God,

patient and brave and true,

who toiled and fought and lived and died

for the Lord they loved and knew….

They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,

and his love made them strong;

and they followed the right, for Jesus’s sake,

the whole of their good lives long….

They lived not only in ages past,

there are hundreds of thousands still,

the world is bright with the joyous saints

who love to do Jesus’ will….

–Lesbia Scott, “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God,” in The Hymnal 1982, #293

And some of them died last year.

This is and Ecumenical Calendar of Saints’ Days and Holy Days.  And it is my calendar, so formal canonization by an ecclesiastical authority is not necessary.  Today I add a witness for civil rights in Oklahoma and elsewhere to that roll of honor which includes Apostles, martyrs, theologians, and founders of religious orders.

Clara Luper was born into a segregated society in Oklahoma in 1923.  Her father was a bricklayer and her mother was a laundress.  Since the family was African-American, they could not eat at certain restaurants or attend some schools.  The saint graduated from Langston College in 1944.  Then, in 1950, she and other African Americans integrated the University of Oklahoma.  She graduated with an M.A. in history education in 1951.

She became a high school history teacher and a civil rights activist.  So, in 1958, at Oklahoma City, the saint became a leader in the sit-in movement to integrate dining establishments in that municipality.  She also advised the local NAACP chapters’s Youth Council.  Between 1958 and 1964 the saint played a crucial role in integrating hundreds of establishments in Oklahoma.  The Civil Rights Act of 1964, of course, outlawed racial discrimination in privately owned  public accommodations, such as restaurants.

The saint also sought to improve society in other ways.  She continued her teaching career.  And she participated in the March on Washington (1963) and the marches at Selma, Alabama (1965).  The saint also ran for the United States Senate in 1972.

Clara Luper died in 2011, aged 88 years.  The State of Oklahoma had honored her by then.

Those who claim that one person cannot change society are mistaken.  Society is concrete, not abstract.  It is simply us.  It is what we have made it; so we can change it.  May we do so for the better, expanding civil rights and diminishing discrimination, among other things.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

MAY 8, 2012 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF SAINT BENEDICT II, BISHOP OF ROME

THE FEAST OF DAME JULIAN OF NORWICH, SPIRITUAL WRITER

THE FEAST OF SAINT MAGDALENA OF CANOSSA, FOUNDER OF THE DAUGHTERS OF CHARITY AND THE SONS OF CHARITY

THE FEAST OF SAINT PETER OF TARENTAISE, ROMAN CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP

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For Additional Reading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/us/12luper.html

http://newsok.com/civil-rights-leader-clara-luper-has-died/article/3575634

http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/L/LU005.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/09/clara-luper-died_n_874244.html

http://city-sentinel.com/?p=1325

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Holy and righteous God, you created us in your image.

Grant us grace to contend fearlessly against evil and to make no peace with opression.

Help us, like your servant Clara Luper,

to work for justice among people and nations,

to the glory of your name, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and forever.  Amen.

Hosea 2:18-23

Psalm 94:1-15

Romans 12:9-21

Luke 6:20-36

—Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), page 60

Above:  Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury

THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER (1549)

Effective on the Day of Pentecost, June 9, 1549, During the Reign of King Edward VI

The Episcopal Church specifies that one observes this feast properly on a weekday after the Day of Pentecost.

The 1549 Book of Common Prayer, which, along with many of its successors, is available at http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/, was mainly the product of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and poet extraordinaire.  He translated texts from various sources, ranging from Greek liturgies to German Lutheran rites to the Roman Catholic missal and the Liturgy of the Hours.  Along the way Cranmer quoted the Bible extensively.  Thus it is a common Anglican and Episcopal joke to say that the Bible quotes the Prayer Book.

My first encounter with the Book of Common Prayer was indirect, so indirect in fact that I was not aware of it.  I grew up United Methodist in the era of the 1966 Methodist Hymnal, which is far superior to the 1989 United Methodist Hymnal.  The ritual in the 1966 Hymnal was that of its 1935 and 1905 predecessors, that is, based on the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.   So, when I saw the 1979 Prayer Book and read Holy Eucharist Rite I, I recognized it immediately, down to the Prayer of Humble Access.

Now I an Episcopalian.  As someone told me early this year, I left the church that John Wesley made and joined the church that made John Wesley.  The rhythms of the 1979 Prayer Book have sunk into my synapses and my soul.  I also use A New Zealand Prayer Book (1989), of  The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, which breaks out from parts of tradition creatively and beautifully while standing within the Prayer Book tradition.

I have become a person of the Prayer Book, thankfully.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

AUGUST 24, 2011 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF SAINT BARTHOLOMEW, APOSTLE AND MARTYR

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Almighty and everliving God, whose servant Thomas Cranmer, with others, restored the language of the people in the prayers of your Church:  Make us always thankful for this heritage; and help us to pray in the Spirit and with the understanding, that we may worthily magnify your holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

1 Kings 8:54-61

Psalm 33:1-5, 20-21

Acts 2:38-42

John 4:21-24

—Holy Women, Holy Men:  Celebrating the Saints (2010)

Honeysuckles

Image in the Public Domain

1 (Justin Martyr, Christian Apologist and Martyr, 166/167)

• David Abeel, U.S. Dutch Reformed Minister and Missionary to Asia
• Pamphilus of Caesarea, Bible Scholar and Translator; and His Companions, Martyrs, 309
• Samuel Stennett, English Seventh-Day Baptist Minister and Hymn Writer; and John Howard, English Humanitarian
• Simeon of Syracuse, Roman Catholic Monk
• William Robinson, Marmaduke Stephenson, and Mary Dyer, British Quaker Martyrs in Boston, Massachusetts, 1659 and 1660

2 (Blandina and Her Companions, the Martyrs of Lyons, 177)

• Anders Christensen Arrebo, “The Father of Danish Poetry”
• Christoph Homburg, German Lutheran Hymn Writer
• John Lancaster Spalding, Roman Catholic Bishop of Peoria then Titular Bishop of Seythopolis
• Margaret Elizabeth Sangster, Hymn Writer, Novelist, and Devotional Writer
• Stephen of Sweden, Roman Catholic Missionary, Bishop, and Martyr, Circa 1075

3 (John XXIII, Bishop of Rome)

• Christian Gottfried Geisler and Johann Christian Geisler, Silesian Moravian Organists and Composers; and Johannes Herbst, German-American Organist, Composer, and Bishop
• Frances Ridley Havergal, English Hymn Writer and Composer
• Ole T. (Sanden) Arneson, U.S. Norwegian Lutheran Hymn Translator
• Will Campbell, Agent of Reconciliation

4 (Stanislaw Kostka Starowieyski, Roman Catholic Martyr, 1941)

• Francis Caracciolo, Co-Founder of the Minor Clerks Regular
• Maurice Blondel, French Roman Catholic Philosopher and Forerunner of the Second Vatican Council
• Petroc, Welsh Prince, Abbot, and Missionary
• Thomas Raymond Kelly, U.S. Quaker Mystic and Professor of Philosophy

5 (Dorotheus of Tyre, Bishop of Tyre, and Martyr, Circa 362)

• Elias Benjamin Sanford, U.S. Methodist then Congregationalist Minister and Ecumenist
• Orlando Gibbons, Anglican Organist and Composer; the “English Palestrina”

6 (Franklin Clark Fry, President of The United Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church in America)

• Claude of Besançon, Roman Catholic Priest, Monk, Abbot, and Bishop

• Henry James Buckoll, Author and Translator of Hymns
• Ini Kopuria, Founder of the Melanesian Brotherhood
• Johann Friedrich Hertzog, German Lutheran Hymn Writer
• William Kethe, Presbyterian Hymn Writer

7 (Matthew Talbot, Recovering Alcoholic in Dublin, Ireland)

• Anthony Mary Gianelli, Founder of the Missionaries of Saint Alphonsus Liguori and the Sisters of Mary dell’Orto
• Frederick Lucian Hosmer, U.S. Unitarian Hymn Writer
• Hubert Lafayette Sone and his wife, Katie Helen Jackson Sone, U.S. Methodist Missionaries and Humanitarians in China, Singapore, and Malaysia
• Seattle, First Nations Chief, War Leader, and Diplomat

8 (Clara Luper, Witness for Civil Rights)

• Bliss Wiant, U.S. Methodist Minister, Missionary, Musician, Music Educator, and Hymn Translator, Arranger, and Harmonizer; and his wife, Mildred Artz Wiant, U.S. Methodist Missionary, Musician, Music Educator, and Hymn Translator
• Charles Augustus Briggs, U.S. Presbyterian Minister, Episcopal Priest, Biblical Scholar, and Alleged Heretic; and his daughter, Emilie Grace Briggs, Biblical Scholar and “Heretic’s Daughter”
• Gerard Manley Hopkins, English Roman Catholic Poet and Jesuit Priest
• Henry Downton, Anglican Priest, Hymn Writer, and Hymn Translator
• Roland Allen, Anglican Priest, Missionary, and Mission Strategist

9 (Columba of Iona, Celtic Missionary and Abbot)

• Giovanni Maria Boccardo, Founder of the Poor Sisters of Saint Cajetan/Gaetano; and his brother, Luigi Boccardo, Apostle of Merciful Love
• José de Anchieta, Apostle of Brazil and Father of Brazilian National Literature
• Thomas Joseph Potter, Roman Catholic Priest, Poet, and Hymn Writer
• Will Herzfeld, U.S. Lutheran Ecumenist, Presiding Bishop of the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, and Civil Rights Activist

10 (James of Nisibis, Bishop; and Ephrem of Edessa, “The Harp of the Holy Spirit”)

• Frank Laubach, U.S. Congregationalist Minister and Missionary
• Frederick C. Grant, Episcopal Priest and New Testament Scholar; and his son, Robert M. Grant, Episcopal Priest and Patristics Scholar
• Getulius, Amantius, Caeraelis, and Primitivus, Martyrs at Tivoli, 120; and Symphorosa of Tivoli, Martyr, 120
• Landericus of Paris, Roman Catholic Bishop
• Thor Martin Johnson, U.S. Moravian Conductor and Music Director

11 (BARNABAS THE APOSTLE, CO-WORKER OF SAINT PAUL THE APOSTLE)

12 (Edwin Paxton Hood, English Congregationalist Minister, Philanthropist, and Hymn Writer)

• Christian David Jaeschke, German Moravian Organist and Composer; and his grandson, Henri Marc Hermann Voldemar Voullaire, Moravian Composer and Minister
• Enmegahbowh, Episcopal Priest and Missionary to the Ojibwa Nation
• Joseph Dacre Carlyle, Anglican Priest and Hymn Writer
• Milton Smith Littlefield, Jr., U.S. Presbyterian and Congregationalist Minister, Hymn Writer, and Hymnal Editor
• William Cullen Bryant, U.S. Poet, Journalist, and Hymn Writer

13 (Spyridon of Cyprus, Bishop of Tremithus, Cyprus; and his convert, Tryphillius of Leucosia, Bishop of Leucosia, Cyprus; Opponents of Arianism)

• Brevard S. Childs, U.S. Presbyterian Biblical Scholar
• Sigismund von Birken, German Lutheran Hymn Writer

14 (Methodius I of Constantinople, Defender of Icons and Ecumenical Patriarch of Constaninople; and Joseph the Hymnographer, Defender of Icons and the “Sweet-Voiced Nightingale of the Church”)

• David Low Dodge, U.S. Presbyterian Businessman and Pacifist

15 (John Ellerton, Anglican Priest and Hymn Writer and Translator)

• Carl Heinrich von Bogatsky, Hungarian-German Lutheran Hymn Writer
• Dorothy Frances Blomfield Gurney, English Poet and Hymn Writer
• Evelyn Underhill, Anglican Mystic and Theologian
• Landelinus of Vaux, Roman Catholic Abbot; Aubert of Cambrai, Roman Catholic Bishop; Ursmar of Lobbes, Roman Catholic Abbot and Missionary Bishop; and Domitian, Hadelin, and Dodo of Lobbes, Roman Catholic Monks

16 (George Berkeley, Irish Anglican Bishop and Philosopher; and Joseph Butler, Anglican Bishop and Theologian)

• Francis J. Uplegger, German-American Lutheran Minister and Missionary; “Old Man Missionary”
• John Francis Regis, Roman Catholic Priest
• Norman Macleod, Scottish Presbyterian Minister and Hymn Writer; and his cousin, John Macleod, Scottish Presbyterian Minister, Liturgist, and Hymn Writer
• Rufus Jones, U.S. Quaker Theologian and Co-Founder of the American Friends Service Committee
• William Hiram Foulkes, U.S. Presbyterian Minister and Hymn Writer

17 (Samuel Barnett, Anglican Canon of Westminster, and Social Reformer; and his wife, Henrietta Barnett, Social Reformer)

• Edith Boyle MacAlister, English Novelist and Hymn Writer
• Emily de Vialar, Founder of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Apparition
• Jane Cross Bell Simpson, Scottish Presbyterian Poet and Hymn Writer
• Mark Hopkins, U.S. Congregationalist Minister, Theologian, Educator, and Physician
• Teresa and Mafalda of Portugal, Princesses, Queens, and Nuns; and Sanchia of Portugal, Princess and Nun

18 (William Bingham Tappan, U.S. Congregationalist Minister, Poet, and Hymn Writer)

• Adolphus Nelson, Swedish-American Lutheran Minister and Hymn Writer
• Bernard Mizeki, Anglican Catechist and Convert in Southern Rhodesia, 1896
• Johann Franck, Heinrich Held, and Simon Dach, German Lutheran Hymn Writers
• Richard Massie, Hymn Translator
• Vernard Eller, U.S. Church of the Brethren Minister and Theologian

19 (John Dalberg Acton, English Roman Catholic Historian, Philosopher, and Social Critic)

• Adelaide Teague Case, Episcopal Professor of Christian Education, and Advocate for Peace
• Michel-Richard Delalande, French Roman Catholic Composer
• William Pierson Merrill, U.S. Presbyterian Minister, Social Reformer, and Hymn Writer

20 (Joseph Augustus Seiss, U.S. Lutheran Minister, Liturgist, Hymn Writer, and Hymn Translator)

• Alfred Ramsey, U.S. Lutheran Minister and Hymn Translator
• Bernard Adam Grube, German-American Minister, Missionary, Composer, and Musician
• Charles Coffin, Roman Catholic Priest and Hymn Writer
• Hans Adolf Brorson, Danish Lutheran Bishop, Hymn Writer, and Hymn Translator
• William John Sparrow-Simpson, Anglican Priest, Hymn Writer, and Patristics Scholar

21 (Aloysius Gonzaga, Jesuit)

• Carl Bernhard Garve, German Moravian Minister, Liturgist, and Hymn Writer
• Charitie Lees Smith Bancroft de Chenez, Hymn Writer
• John Jones and John Rigby, Roman Catholic Martyrs, 1598 and 1600

22 (Alban, First British Martyr, Circa 209 or 305)

• Desiderius Erasmus, Dutch Roman Catholic Priest, Biblical and Classical Scholar, and Controversialist; John Fisher, English Roman Catholic Classical Scholar, Bishop of Rochester, Cardinal, and Martyr, 1535; and Thomas More, English Roman Catholic Classical Scholar, Jurist, Theologian, Controversialist, and Martyr, 1535
• Gerhard Gieschen, U.S. Lutheran Minister and Hymn Translator
• James Arthur MacKinnon, Canadian Roman Catholic Priest and Martyr in the Dominican Republic, 1965
• Nicetas of Remesiana, Roman Catholic Bishop
• Paulinus of Nola, Roman Catholic Bishop of Nola

23 (John Gerard, English Jesuit Priest; and Mary Ward, Founder of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary)

• Heinrich Gottlob Gutter, German-American Instrument Maker, Repairman, and Merchant
• John Johns, English Presbyterian Minister and Hymn Writer
• Vincent Lebbe, Belgian-Chinese Roman Catholic Priest and Missionary; Founder of the Little Brothers of Saint John the Baptist
• Wilhelm Heinrich Wauer, German Moravian Composer and Musician

24 (NATIVITY OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST)

25 (William Henry Heard, African Methodist Episcopal Missionary and Bishop)

• Domingo Henares de Zafira Cubero, Roman Catholic Bishop of Phunhay, Vietnam, and Martyr, 1838; Phanxicô Đo Van Chieu, Vietnamese Roman Catholic Catechist and Martyr, 1838; and Clemente Ignacio Delgado Cebrián, Roman Catholic Bishop and Martyr in Vietnam, 1838
• William of Vercelli, Roman Catholic Hermit; and John of Matera, Roman Catholic Abbot

26 (Isabel Florence Hapgood, U.S. Journalist, Translator, and Ecumenist)

• Andrea Giacinto Longhin, Roman Catholic Bishop of Treviso
• Pearl S. Buck, U.S. Presbyterian Missionary, Novelist, and Social Activist
• Philip Doddridge, English Congregationalist Minister and Hymn Writer
• Theodore H. Robinson, British Baptist Orientalist and Biblical Scholar
• Virgil Michel, U.S. Roman Catholic Monk, Academic, and Pioneer of Liturgical Renewal

27 (Cornelius Hill, Oneida Chief and Episcopal Priest)

• Arialdus of Milan, Italian Roman Catholic Deacon and Martyr, 1066
• Hugh Thomson Kerr, Sr., U.S. Presbyterian Minister and Liturgist; and his son, Hugh Thomson Kerr, Jr., U.S. Presbyterian Minister, Scholar, and Theologian
• James Moffatt, Scottish Presbyterian Minister, Scholar, and Bible Translator
• John the Georgian, Abbot; and Euthymius of Athos and George of the Black Mountain, Abbots and Translators

28 (Teresa Maria Mastena, Founder of the Institute of the Sisters of the Holy Face)

• Clara Louise Maass, U.S. Lutheran Nurse and Martyr, 1901
• Plutarch, Marcella, Potanominaena, and Basilides of Alexandria, Martyrs, 202
• William Mundy and John Mundy, English Composers and Musicians

29 (PETER AND PAUL, APOSTLES AND MARTYRS)

30 (Johann Olaf Wallin, Archbishop of Uppsala, and Hymn Writer)

• Gennaro Maria Sarnelli, Italian Roman Catholic Priest and Missionary to the Vulnerable and Exploited People of Naples
• Heinrich Lonas, German Moravian Organist, Composer, and Liturgist
• Paul Hanly Furfey, U.S. Roman Catholic Priest, Sociologist, and Social Radical
• Philip Powel, English Roman Catholic Priest and Martyr, 1646

Floating

• First Book of Common Prayer, 1549

 

Lowercase boldface on a date with two or more commemorations indicates a primary feast.