John Chrysostom — September 14

Asia, Forerunners (33-1226)

Bible connection

Through him you have confidence in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere love of the brethren, love one another earnestly from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for

“All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers, and the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord abides for ever.”

That word is the good news which was preached to you. —1 Peter 1:21-25

All about John Chrysostom (c. 349 – 407)

John of Antioch was nicknamed Χρυσόστομος (Chrysostomos, anglicized as Chrysostom), which means “golden-mouthed” in Greek, because he was famous for being eloquent. He not only preached frequently, he was also among the most prolific authors in the early Church. He is known as one of the “church fathers.” As Archbishop of Constantinople (seat of the Roman Empire at the time) he was known for his denunciation of abuse of authority by both church and political leaders, as well as his emphasis on worship and prayer.  

John was raised in Antioch, a leading intellectual center of his day, by his widowed mother, Anthusa. She was a devoted Jesus follower. His tutor, Libanius, was not a Jesus follower but was a famous rhetorician who had taught in both Athens and Constantinople.

After his education, like many devout men of his day, the spidery John (he was short, thin, and long-limbed) entered monastic seclusion. His ascetic practice was so strenuous, he damaged his health. He was forced to return to public life. He quickly went from lector to deacon to priest at the church in Antioch.

In Antioch, Chrysostom’s preaching began to be noticed, especially after what has been called the “Affair of the Statues.” In the spring of 388, a rebellion erupted in Antioch over the announcement of increased taxes. Statues of the emperor and his family were desecrated. Imperial officials responded by punishing city leaders, killing several. Archbishop Flavian rushed to Constantinople, over 800 miles away, to beg the emperor for mercy. In Flavian’s absence, John preached to the terrified city: “Improve yourselves now truly, not as when during one of the numerous earthquakes or in famine or drought or in similar visitations you leave off your sinning for three or four days and then begin the old life again.”

When Flavian returned eight weeks later with the good news of the emperor’s pardon, John’s reputation soared. From then on, he was in demand as a preacher. He preached through many books of the Bible, though he had his favorites: “I like all the saints, but St. Paul the most of all—that vessel of election, the trumpet of heaven.” In his sermons, he denounced abortion, prostitution, gluttony, the theater, and swearing. About the love of horse racing, he complained,

“My sermons are applauded merely from custom, then everyone runs off to [horse racing] again and gives much more applause to the jockeys, showing indeed unrestrained passion for them! There they put their heads together with great attention, and say with mutual rivalry, ‘This horse did not run well, this one stumbled,’ and one holds to this jockey and another to that. No one thinks any more of my sermons, nor of the holy and awesome mysteries that are accomplished here.”

His large bald head, deeply set eyes, and sunken cheeks reminded people of Elisha the prophet. Though his sermons (which lasted between 30 minutes and two hours) were well attended, he sometimes became discouraged:

“My work is like that of a man who is trying to clean a piece of ground into which a muddy stream is constantly flowing.” At the same time, he said, “Preaching improves me. When I begin to speak, weariness disappears; when I begin to teach, fatigue too disappears.”

In early 398, John was seized by soldiers and taken to the capital, where he was forcibly consecrated as archbishop of Constantinople. His kidnapping was arranged by a government official who wanted to adorn the church in the capital city with the Church’s best orator. Rather than rebelling against the injustice, John accepted it as God’s providence. And rather than soften his words for his new and prestigious audience—which now included many from the imperial household—John continued themes he preached in Antioch. He railed against abuses of wealth and power. Even his lifestyle itself was a scandal: he lived an ascetic life, using his considerable household budget to care for the poor and build hospitals.

He continued preaching against the great public sins. In a sermon against the theater, for example, he said,

“Long after the theater is closed and everyone is gone away, those images [of ‘shameful women’ actresses] still float before your soul, their words, their conduct, their glances, their walk, their positions, their excitation, their unchaste limbs … And there within you she kindles the Babylonian furnace in which the peace of your home, the purity of your heart, the happiness of your marriage will be burnt up!”

His lack of tact and political skill made him many enemies, both in the imperial family and among fellow bishops. For complex reasons, Theophilus, the archbishop of Alexandria, was able to call a council outside of Constantinople and trump up charges of heresy against John. He was deposed and sent into exile by Empress Eudoxia and Emperor Arcadius. He was taken across the plains of what is now Turkey in the heat of summer, and almost immediately his health began to fail. He was visited by loyal followers, and wrote letters of encouragement to others:

“When you see the church scattered, suffering the most terrible trials, her most illustrious members persecuted and flogged, her leader carried away into exile, don’t only consider these events, but also the things that have resulted: the rewards, the recompense, the awards for the athlete who wins in the games and the prizes won in the contest.”

On the eastern shore of the Black Sea, at the edges of the empire, his body gave out and he died.

Thirty-four years later, after John’s chief enemies had died, his relics were brought back in triumph to the capital. Emperor Theodosius II, son of Arcadius and Eudoxia, publicly asked forgiveness for the sins of his parents. He was later given the title “Doctor of the Church” because of the value of his writings (600 sermons and 200 letters survive).

Quotes:

  • “It is foolishness and a public madness to fill the cupboards with clothing and allow men who are created in God’s image and likeness to stand naked and trembling with cold, so that they can hardly hold themselves upright.
    Yes, you say, he is cheating and he is only pretending to be weak and trembling. What! Do you not fear that lightning from Heaven will fall on you for this word? Indeed, forgive me, but I almost burst from anger.
    Only see, you are large and fat, you hold drinking parties until late at night, and sleep in a warm, soft bed. And do you not think of how you must give an account of your misuse of the gifts of God?” — 21st homily on 1 Corinthians
  • A comprehended god is no God.
  • Hell is paved with priests’ skulls.
  • Slander is worse than cannibalism.
  • You received your fortune by inheritance; so be it! Therefore, you have not sinned personally, but how know you that you may not be enjoying the fruits of theft and crime committed before you?—Epist. i. ad Tim., 12
  • Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness. Let no one lament their poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed. Let no one mourn their transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Savior’s death has set us free.
  • As it is not to be imagined that the fornicator and the blasphemer can partake of the sacred Table, so it is impossible that he who has an enemy, and bears malice, can enjoy the holy Communion. I forewarn, and testify, and proclaim this with a voice that all may hear! ‘Let no one who hath an enemy draw near the sacred Table, or receive the Lord’s Body! Let no one who draws near have an enemy! Do you have an enemy? Draw not near! Do you wish to draw near? Be reconciled, and then draw near, and touch the Holy Thing!’…We are commanded to have only one enemy, the devil. With him never be reconciled! But with a brother, never be at enmity in thy heart. —Homilies on the Statues, Homily XX

More

Bio and recitation of “The Resurrection” in this video

One of his famous works: Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom

Works online [link]

John is very controversial for some of his teaching that goes against modern sensibilities:

What do we do with this?

Maybe John was writing for posterity, but that is doubtful. Most of us would not want all our writings collected and then dissected by later generations. What we said in our 20’s might not match what we said in our 40’s! Had John lived, he might have changed some of his views.

Most of what you think and say is probably worth hearing, however. You may not have a golden tongue, but you should probably speak up with what you’ve got. John’s fearlessness made him influential for Jesus.

Johnny Cash — September 12

North America, This century (1937-2024)
Johnny Cash Pondering — Michelle Dick

Bible connection

The Spirit of God came on Azariah son of Oded. He went out to meet Asa and said to him, “Listen to me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you. For a long time Israel was without the true God, without a priest to teach and without the law. But in their distress they turned to the Lord, the God of Israel, and sought him, and he was found by them. In those days it was not safe to travel about, for all the inhabitants of the lands were in great turmoil. One nation was being crushed by another and one city by another, because God was troubling them with every kind of distress. But as for you, be strong and do not give up, for your work will be rewarded.” — 2 Chronicles 15:1-7

All about Johnny Cash (1932-2003)

John R. “Johnny” Cash born February 26, 1932. He is widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century and is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 90 million records worldwide. Although primarily remembered as a country music icon, his genre-spanning songs and sound embraced rock and roll, rockabilly, blues, folk, and gospel. This crossover appeal won Cash the rare honor of multiple inductions in the Country Music, Rock and Roll, and Gospel Music Halls of Fame.

Cash was known for his deep, calm bass-baritone voice, a rebelliousness coupled with an increasingly somber and humble demeanor, free prison concerts, and his trademark attire, which earned him the nickname “The Man in Black.” He traditionally began his concerts with the simple “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash,” followed by his signature Folsom Prison Blues.

Much of Cash’s music echoed themes of sorrow, moral tribulation and redemption, especially in later life. During the last stage of his career, Cash covered songs by several late 20th century rock artists, most notably Hurt by Nine Inch Nails (video below).

Cash was raised by his parents as a Southern Baptist. He was baptized in 1944 in the Tyronza River as a member of the Central Baptist Church of Dyess, Arkansas.

A troubled but devout Christian, Cash has been characterized as a “lens through which to view American contradictions and challenges.” He wrote a Christian novel, Man in White, which showcases his theological studies. It is is a portrait of six pivotal years in the life of the apostle, Paul. In the introduction Cash writes about a reporter who, once tried to paint him into a corner, baiting him to acknowledge a single denominational persuasion at the center of his heart. Finally, Cash laid down the law: “I—as a believer that Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew, the Christ of the Greeks, was the Anointed One of God (born of the seed of David, upon faith as Abraham has faith, and it was accounted to him for righteousness)—am grafted onto the true vine, and am one of the heirs of God’s covenant with Israel….I’m a Christian. Don’t put me in another box.”

He made a spoken word recording of the entire New King James Version of the New Testament. Cash declared he was “the biggest sinner of them all”, and viewed himself overall as a complicated and contradictory man. Accordingly, Cash is said to have “contained multitudes,” and has been deemed “the philosopher-prince of American country music.”

Cash’s daughter, singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash, once pointed out that “My father was raised a Baptist, but he has the soul of a mystic. He’s a profoundly spiritual man, but he readily admits to a continual attraction for all seven deadly sins.”

“There’s nothing hypocritical about it,” Johnny Cash told Rolling Stone author Anthony DeCurtis. “There is a spiritual side to me that goes real deep, but I confess right up front that I’m the biggest sinner of them all.” To Cash, even his near deadly bout with drug addiction contained a crucial spiritual element. “I used drugs to escape, and they worked pretty well when I was younger. But they devastated me physically and emotionally—and spiritually … [they put me] in such a low state that I couldn’t communicate with God. There’s no lonelier place to be. I was separated from God, and I wasn’t even trying to call on him. I knew that there was no line of communication. But he came back. And I came back.”

“Being a Christian isn’t for sissies,” Cash said once. “It takes a real man to live for God—a lot more man than to live for the devil, you know? If you really want to live right these days, you gotta be tough.”

What’s more, he was intimately aware of the hard truths about living God’s way: “If you’re going to be a Christian, you’re going to change. You’re going to lose some old friends, not because you want to, but because you need to.”

”I’m thrilled to death with life,” he told Larry King during an interview. “Life is—the way God has given it to me—was just a platter. A golden platter of life laid out there for me. It’s been beautiful.”

“I don’t give up … and it’s not out of frustration and desperation that I say ‘I don’t give up.’ I don’t give up because I don’t give up. I don’t believe in it.”

What do we do with this?

Johnny Cash was a celebrity, which usually equals trouble. He had plenty of trouble. But he also had plenty of conviction that lasted his whole life. In many ways he is an “everyman” who stubbornly tried to do his best, often standing with the downtrodden. Notably, he risked his career early on to speak out on behalf of Native Americans. He used his capabilities and his notoriety for more than his own pleasure and profit.

Cash sang these words in one of his last songs, “Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down,” recorded in 2003 in the final months of his life and released posthumously in 2010: “When I hear that trumpet sound, I’m gonna rise right out of the ground. Ain’t no grave can hold my body down. … Well, meet me, Jesus, meet me. Meet me in the middle of the air. And if these wings don’t fail me, I will meet You anywhere.”

Can you sing that?

If you can’t be held down, what can you do?

Madeleine L’Engle — September 6

North America, This century (1937-2024)

Image result for madeleine l'engle

Bible connection

Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
    nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—

these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual. — 1 Corinthians 2:6-13

All about Madeleine L’Engle (1918 – 2007)

“If we are willing to live by Scripture, we must be willing to live by paradox and contradiction and surprise.” Madeleine L’Engle said it, and she certainly lived by it.

Formidable in personality and far-ranging in accomplishments, L’Engle wrote more than 60 books, including novels, poetry, memoir, essays, sermons, commentaries, and creative nonfiction. She is best known for A Wrinkle in Time, the first novel in the Time Quintet, but she may be best loved for Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, her breathtaking opus on the creative process. In it, she writes, “We live by revelation, as Christians, as artists, which means we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions.”

L’Engle refused to be “forced into either/or.” Her life and work reflect her determination: Icon and Iconoclast, Sacred and Secular, Truth and Story, Faith and Science, Religion and Art, Fact and Fiction. She showed a clear preference for risk over certainty, narrative over affirmation, and questions over answers.

L’Engle’s refusal to be pigeonholed had a tumultuous effect on her life and career. The mixed reception of A Wrinkle in Time is one example. Wrinkle is clearly, unequivocally Christian, enough to make non-religious readers squirm. Lois Lowry, a celebrated children’s author, has expressed doubt that the book would even be published today. “In the world of literature, Christianity is no longer respectable,” wrote L’Engle. “When I am referred to in an article or a review as a ‘practicing Christian,’ it is seldom meant as a compliment.”

But censorship of her work from Christian critics has been just as ferocious. A Wrinkle in Time has been labeled “spiritual poison” and banned by believers who accuse her of promoting witchcraft, goddess worship, divination, and a host of similar heresies. Similar criticism was aimed at C. S. Lewis. Both have been denounced by people of faith, scorned by the literati, and banned from libraries. Both worked as lay evangelists and apologists. Both reclaimed myth and championed the arts. Both wrote in multiple genres, and both remain notoriously difficult to categorize. One more comparison worth sharing: Both Lewis and L’Engle wrote in reaction to the prevailing assumptions of modernism. Biographer Sarah Arthur observes:

To combat [modernist assumptions], Lewis mined back into the riches of tradition—the ancient myth of Cupid and Psyche for his novel Till We Have Faces, for instance, or from Plato and Aristotle’s universal moral law in The Abolition of Man—in order to glean insights about God and human nature that had been dismissed or forgotten. L’Engle, by contrast, pressed forward into the mysteries of scientific discovery. …She engaged science to show just how small, how relative, how limited our view of God has been in light of the wonders of an astonishing universe.

Although she once considered herself an atheist, after L’Engle became a Christian she had a daily practice of reading the Bible and praying. Her granddaughter said L’Engle’s coming to her faith was slower “acceptance of what she had always known to be true,” rather than a sudden conversion moment. “She was a Christian because she was deeply rooted in its traditions and language, and she was moved by and trusted in its stories,” Although L’Engle did not like denominational labels, she mostly attended Episcopal churches, serving for four decades as a librarian and writer-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.

Quotes:

  • Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.
  • The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.
  • You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.
  • Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.
  • Some things have to be believed to be seen.
  • I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.

More

Interesting PBS show on L’Engle [link]

A video (one of a set) on L’Engle talking about faith and doubt. [link]

Hollywood made sure there was little God and certainly no Jesus in the movie:

What do we do with this?

L’Engle loved the childlike qualities, still resident in all of us, that could be called upon to meet the wonder of being creatures of a loving God. Our church often quoted her during Advent, even making art from the quote: This is the irrational season, when love blooms bright and wild. / Had Mary been filled with reason, there’d have been no room for the child.

As you explore her work, even the little snippets on this page, let yourself be full of the child, both child and Child. She spent her life meditating for us and provides a wonderful resource for our own deeper journey. Slow down with her and let yourself go deeper.

Teresa of Kolkata — September 5

Asia, Europe, This century (1937-2024),

Teresa of Kolkata

Bible connection

Read Matthew 25:31-46

Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?”

The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

All about Mother Teresa

Teresa of Kolkata introduced herself by saying, ”By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus.” She was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910 in Skopje, which was then part the Ottoman Empire (now capital of the Republic of North Macedonia). She took her first religious vows in 1931, her solemn vows in 1937 while teaching in Calcutta (the now-corrected anglicization is Kolkata).

In 1936, while traveling through India, Sister Teresa received her call to help the poor while living among them. She began a new work in 1948. She had already learned Bengali, but she went further. She made her ”habit” a white sari with blue trim and became an Indian citizen while getting some basic medical training. In 1950, she began an order that became the Missionaries of Charity with 13 nuns (now over 5,000 worldwide). In 1952, she converted an old Hindu temple into the first Home for the Dying, a site for free hospice care. She died of heart problems in 1997 after being a prolific fund raiser, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, missionary, author, and advocate for the global poor.

“In the West we have a tendency to be profit-oriented, where everything is measured according to the results and we get caught up in being more and more active to generate results. In the East—especially in India—I find that people are more content to just be, to just sit around under a banyan tree for half a day chatting to each other. We Westerners would probably call that wasting time. But there is value to it. Being with someone, listening without a clock and without anticipation of results, teaches us about love. The success of love is in the loving—it is not in the result of loving. ”—from A Simple Path: Mother Teresa

More

Video at Nobel Prize.org [link]

Interview with Malcolm Muggeridge and Mother Teresa. Muggeridge’s book Something Beautiful for God and film made Teresa famous. [link]

An article about the letters that reveal her “dark night:” Mother Teresa: A Saint Who Conquered Darkness

Video from Kenyan TV upon her sainthood ceremony. [link]

What do we do with this?

It is amazing how Mother Teresa, a small, simple woman from India, managed all the media attention devoted to her. She spoke to powerful people with an undiluted gospel message of love. Literally millions of people were enriched.

Consider her example. Do you think you need to be respected by famous people to be successful? Or are you content to pick up the dying and do what you can do? Rest in Christ for a minute and be simple—nothing more or less than who you are, dependent on Jesus, embraced by love.

Aidan of Lindisfarne — August 31

Europe, Forerunners (33-1226),
Statue of Aidan on Lindisfarne, the Holy Island, with the castle in the background

Bible connection

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. —1 Peter 2:21

All about Aidan of Lindisfarne (ca. 600-651 ) 

“He cultivated peace and love, purity and humility; he was above anger and greed, and despised pride and conceit; he set himself to keep and teach the laws of God, and was diligent in study and in prayer…I greatly admire all these things about Aidan.” —the monk, The Venerable Bede, writing in his masterwork: “Ecclesiastical History of the English People” (3:17)

Aidan was an Irish, Celtic monk on the Island of Iona (around 630 A.D.), where The Book of Kells was made. Iona was founded by Columba, who was the missionary instrumental in converting the Picts of northwestern Scotland to Christianity. So Aidan’s faith was nurtured in a deep, missional community.

The apostolic work in what are now called the “British Isles” took an organic path. Many Britons followed Jesus long before the church took root in Ireland because Britain was part of the Roman Empire, unlike Ireland. Christianity first followed the trade routes of the Empire. Some of the missionaries who first took the faith to Ireland were British: Patrick (who became the “patron saint” of Ireland) was the most famous but not the only one. When the power of Rome declined, a Germanic tribe called the Angles began to infiltrate Britain and gradually turned it into England (the word “English” comes from “Angle-ish”). These incoming English were pagans.

The kingdom of Northumbria was largely created by the English warrior-leader Aethelfrith. When he was killed in battle (in 616) his children fled into exile. Some of these children found their way to what is now southwest Scotland. Here they met the Irish monks of Iona and joined in their Christian faith. Oswald, the second son of Aethelfrith, grew up determined to regain the throne of Northumbria and to let the pagans among his people hear about Jesus. In 633 he fought a successful battle and established himself as king, choosing Bamburgh, a natural outcrop of rock on the North-East coast, as his main fortress. He then invited the monks of Iona to send a missionary.

In 635 they sent Aidan with 12 other monks. They chose to settle on the island of Lindisfarne (Holy Island), just north of Bamburgh. An earlier missionary monk named Corman had given up on the Northumbrians, saying the people were too uncivilized and stubborn to be Christianized.

The monastery Aidan founded was said to be moderate — at least by the severe Irish standards of aceticism! From their magical island, which was inaccessible by land when the tide came in, the community went out on mission. Learning English as they went,  they used Aidan’s only method as a missionary. He walked the lanes, talked to all the people he met, got to know them and their needs, and interested them in the faith if he could. The monks became part of the community and soon faith became part of it, too. Before long, the seeds they sowed became local Christian churches.

Aidan became known for refusing to ride a horse. Rightly so, he thought riding a horse made him look rich, since only the rich could afford a horse. It was easier and more effective to talk to people when you were on their level. One time King Oswin of the Angles gave Aidan an expensive horse, as befit the respect he had for him. Aidan had not ridden very far before he gave the horse away to a poor person. The king was angry with Aidan for doing this. Aidan asked him if a horse was more important to him than one for whom Christ had died. Oswin, who was a Christian, repented and asked his forgiveness.

Aidan freeing slaves
Aidan freeing slaves

Strongly opposed to slavery, Aidan spent much time and effort in ransoming slaves and sending them home.

Aidan did not want his efforts to die with him and the monks from Iona. English leadership was needed for the English church. So he started a school. First his students learned to read Latin —the language in which all the books they could obtain were written. Once the essentials of literacy had been grasped, the expansion of mental horizons was amazing. Books bridged the natural restrictions of time and space!

School began with the 150 Psalms and then went on to the four Gospels. After these essentials, the students could master as much as their library offered and their minds could hold. In Aidan’s time, this kind of education was only available in monastic schools for the general population. Aidan began with 12 boys, who learned the practical work of being monks, priests and missionaries by observing and working with the older monks. Their system had a powerful impact.

The monastery on the Holy Island was for men and boys only. This was not true everywhere. As the Christian faith spread in England, double monasteries were established. Under the rule of one leader, monks and nuns, girls and boys, lived and worked in the same establishment. But Lindisfarne was different in that it had been founded specifically to be the center for mission. Nuns did not walk the lanes and speak to people. Aidan made sure that it was possible in Northumbria for women to become nuns if they so wished. He discipled a woman who was to become the most famous abbess of her day named Hild. She became the abbess of double monasteries at Hartlepool and Whitby. Her contribution to the church was great; at least five of her students became bishops.

After sixteen years as bishop, Aidan died at Bamburgh in 651. We do not know his age. What he had achieved may not have been clear to him at his death but history showed the strong foundations he laid led to hundreds of successful years of church building, beginning with the first missionaries trained in his school, who succeeded in planting the Church in most of Anglo-Saxon England.

More

Beginners guide to Celtic Christianity from the Northumbria Community. [link]

Video: Footsteps of St. Aidan

Prayer of St. Aidan (written in his honor)

Leave me alone with God as much as may be.
As the tide draws the waters close in upon the shore,
Make me an island, set apart,
alone with you, God, holy to you.

Then with the turning of the tide
prepare me to carry your presence to the busy world beyond,
the world that rushes in on me
till the waters come again and fold me back to you.

What do we do with this?

Aidan was a humble, dogged evangelist. His style was incarnational. His radical monks built their community among the people. They did not refuse the aid of powerful people, but they also put them in their place. Their approach was face-to-face and on foot, not from above but alongside. He was also strategic, handing down his leadership to people he prepared to exercise it. Lindisfarne deepened the whole area of Northumbria for centuries as a center of learning and faith.

Your church may have many similarities to Lindisfarne. From your “holy island” where you live you humbly present the truth of Jesus. May you have the strength to go back again and again, exercising your gentle influence, being integral friends in the community. What is your personal part in it all? Pray for strength and for the vision to be a community in mission.

Lilias Trotter — August 28

Africa, Europe, The Modern Era (1227-1936)

Image result for lilias trotter

Bible connection

…unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. —Matthew 5:20

All about Lilias Trotter (1853-1928)

Lilias Trotter has been recently reintroduced to our century through the documentary, Many Beautiful Things, which depicts her life and vision.

Trotter was born in England in 1853 to an upper-middle-class family. She was a gifted artist and was told she could be England’s greatest living artist, but in order to do so, she would have to give herself totally to her art. At the same time, Lilias had a growing faith which encouraged her not only in her personal spiritual growth, but also in service to others.

Trotter felt the call from God to go to North Africa and serve the Lord there. She thought she had to choose between pursuing her career as an artist and answering the call God had placed on her heart. She chose to follow God. As a single woman who was denied support from a mission agency because of health issues and who didn’t know the language or culture, going to Africa was a radical decision.

Here’s a peek at her life story. Lilias Trotter’s father died when she was twelve. She was devastated. Fortunately, the family’s financial circumstances were only comparatively diminished by his loss. When the family moved to 40 Montagu Square, their next-door neighbor was writer Anthony Trollope.

In her early twenties, Trotter and her mother were greatly influenced by the Higher Life Movement, and Lilias joined the volunteer force that counseled inquirers during the London campaign meetings of American evangelist Dwight L. Moody.

Trotter’s mother thought her self-taught daughter was an exceptional artistic talent. In 1876, she sent some of Lilias’ drawings to art critic and social philosopher John Ruskin while all three were staying in Venice—the latter while recovering from the early death of Rose La Touche, a young pupil to whom he had proposed marriage. Ruskin praised Trotter’s artistic skill, and she became an informal student and a good friend despite the disparity in their ages. Ruskin told Trotter that if she would devote herself to her art “she would be the greatest living painter and do things that would be Immortal.”

Although Trotter was drawn to the prospect of a life in art, in May 1879, she decided that she could not give herself “to painting and continue still to ‘seek first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness.’” Trotter became active in the Welbeck Street YWCA and served as secretary, “a voluntary position usually filled by women like herself from wealthy families.” She did a considerable amount of teaching and (unusually for respectable young women of the period) fearlessly canvassed the streets alone at night near Victoria Station for prostitutes who might be persuaded to train for an employable skill or to simply spend a night in a hostel. In 1884, suffering from physical and emotional exhaustion, she underwent surgery which, though “slight in nature…left her very ill.” Apparently her heart was permanently damaged in the process.

During the next few years, Trotter felt an impulse toward missionary work in non-Christian lands, even telling one of her friends that “whenever she prayed, the words ‘North Africa’ sounded in her soul as though a voice were calling her.” In May 1887, when a missionary to North Africa asked at a religious meeting if God was calling anyone to North Africa, Trotter rose and said, “He is calling me.” On her thirty-fourth birthday, she applied as a candidate to the North African Mission—which then rejected her because she was unable to pass its health examination. However, because she had the resources to be self-supporting, the Mission decided that she might “work in harmony” with the society without being an official member.

Nine months later, Trotter and two other financially independent women—including Blanche Haworth, who for more than thirty years played “Martha” to Trotter’s “Mary,” arrived in Algiers. Trotter recalled, “Three of us stood there, looking at our battle-field, none of us fit to pass a doctor for any society, not knowing a soul in the place, or a sentence of Arabic or a clue for beginning work on untouched ground; we only knew we had to come. Truly if God needed weakness, He had it!”

The women moved into the French quarter and diligently studied Arabic through French study materials and eventually through a professional tutor. They also learned how do domestic work, all of them previously having had their needs met by servants.

Later Trotter said that the early years were like “knocking our heads against stone walls,” but the women were indefatigable, trying one technique after another in an attempt to make inroads into the Algerian culture and all the while improving their Arabic. Eventually Trotter was able to gain access to the heavily secluded women by first befriending their children. The outreach to women, she believed, was a “great line of cleavage in the rock face of Islam.”

Converts were banished, beaten, even (Trotter believed) poisoned with “mind drugs” that were to be administered in food or drink and would produce “a paralysis of mind and will.” Many converts died, and Trotter “came to rejoice in their loss. ‘We were glad to let them go….One draws a breath of relief when they get safe home [to heaven].’”

Trotter’s health was so seriously impaired that she regularly spent extended periods of convalescence in Great Britain or on the continent. Adding to the difficulties of the English missionaries was French colonial suspicion of their activities. The local government bought a house across the street and for three years lured potential converts away with competing classes. Spies and gendarmes even followed the women into the southern desert and threatened fines and imprisonment for any who went near them or accepted their literature.

Lessons from a Hero: What Lilias Trotter Can Teach Us Today
An illustration from Trotter’s Parables of the Cross.

By 1906, with warming relations between England and France, Trotter experienced less governmental antagonism and more freedom for her missionary work. In 1907 five new workers joined the “Algiers Mission Band.” By 1920, there were thirty full-time workers and fifteen preaching stations. Trotter became the reluctant, but unchallenged, leader of the group. Trotter was sensitive to the contemporary difficulty of a woman exerting authority over a man, but as the staff included more men, she shrewdly refined “the organizational system to capitalize on their leadership.” Trotter never solicited funds because she said God’s wealth was boundless.

Trotter was also a pioneer in attempting to adapt Christian missionary endeavor to the Algerian culture. Referring to evangelistic meetings as a “European idea,” she proposed evangelizing with “a native cafe on a Christian footing,” readings of the Bible in a “rhythmical recitative” accompanied by a drum, a craft house that would teach little girls embroidery, and a Christian retreat for women to “take the place of the outings to shrines which are their only chance of fresh air.” Trotter designed cards that had biblical passages drawn by an Arab scribe because “no one but a native can give the subtle lines & curves of the writing as they should be.” The mission society even published a series of cards with a sentence from the Koran followed by verses from the Old Testament.

Image result for lilias trotter

While Lilias turned her back on fame, she did not turn her back on her art. In addition to art found in her journals, she used her art in the pamphlets she created to share the gospel with the people in Algeria. Trotter was a “prodigious writer,” filling a journal page nearly every day for forty years and illustrating the world around her with sketches and watercolors. From these efforts came several books of somewhat flowery and mystical prose, including Parables of the Cross and Parables of the Christ-life. Though she considered orthodox Islam “dry as the dune, hard as the gravel,” she responded to the “sincere hunger for things of the spirit” in the Sufi mystics and wrote for them The Way of the Sevenfold Secret as a devotional guide based on the seven “I am” statements found in the Gospel of John.

Confined to bed during her last years, Trotter devoted herself to prayer, writing, and sketching while continuing to manage the affairs of the Algiers Mission Band as best she could. As her body failed, her mind remained clear, even at the end asking prayer for the strength to dictate a letter to Amy Carmichael of India, with whom she had regular correspondence. As she was dying, while attendants sang a hymn, she exclaimed, “A chariot and six horses.” “You are seeing beautiful things,” someone asked. “Yes,” she said, “many, many beautiful things.”

More

The documentary: Many Beautiful Things

The original biography.

Parables of the Cross online

What do we do with this?

Trotter was inspired by the higher life of notable Christians. Perhaps you will be inspired by her.

Trotter loved those who were marginalized. She ministered among the prostitutes in London and lived among the poor of Algiers, ministering with women and children. One Algerian woman shared this about her: “No one loved us like she did.” Lilias writes in her journal, “I have been thinking lately what a work for God it is just loving people.” In our current cultural climate of hatred for the ‘other’, we have an opportunity to be people of love, not hate. To overcome evil with good. 

She had courage to take risks, following where God was leading her. Her choices were radical, defying concern from friends and societal expectations. She served the Lord alone.

She was willing to turn her back on everything she knew and what was familiar and comfortable to follow God. She was willing to leave behind comforts, friends, culture, language, and fame. This is no different for people today who choose to follow Christ. It costs them everything. 

She recognized that her gift as an artist was from God; it wasn’t her own doing. While we might think we are where we are today because of our own abilities, in reality it is God who decided which time period, family, country, and gifts were given to us. We are simply stewards of all that we have and are to use our gifts for God’s glory and to further His kingdom.

She engaged in cross-cultural ministry by listening and learning from the people. She respected their culture. She did not come to the people with a paternalistic mindset; rather, she came as a fellow traveler in life and as a learner. She met physical needs as well as spiritual needs. She was driven to share the love of Christ with whomever she met.

William Booth — August 20

Europe, The Modern Era (1227-1936)

William-Booth-c1900.jpg

Bible connection

Share in suffering like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving in the army gets entangled in everyday affairs; the soldier’s aim is to please the enlisting officer. – 2 Timothy 2:3-4

All about William Booth (1878-1912)

William Booth, “The Prophet of the Poor,” was an English Methodist preacher who, along with his wife, Catherine, founded The Salvation Army and became its first General (1878–1912). The Christian Mission he started in 1865 later acquired a quasi-military structure and government and spread to many parts of the world where it is now known for being one of the largest distributors of humanitarian aid.

After Booth died, 150,000 people filed by his casket, and 40,000 people, including Queen Mary (yes that Queen Mary), attended his funeral. It was a remarkable end for a man born into poverty and who worked in the midst of poverty his whole life.

Booth was born near Nottingham, England. His parents were not religious and lower middle class at best, with little education. His father, “a Grab, a Get,” according to Booth definition, died when he was 14. By that time, William was helping to earn the family income as a pawnbroker’s apprentice.

Sometime during his fifteenth year, Booth was invited by a couple to attend a Wesleyan chapel, where he decided to follow Jesus. He wrote in his diary, “God shall have all there is of William Booth.” Then came another life-changing experience: he heard Charles Finney (see Aug. 16) speak in a Nottingham church. The crowd led Booth to see that “soul-saving results may be calculated upon when proper means are used for their accomplishment.” Booth went on to make a lifelong commitment to Finney’s methods.

Booth and a group of friends set out to evangelize the poor. They made nightly open-air speeches, after which they invited people to meetings in homes. Their use of lively songs, short exhortations calling for a decision for Christ, and visitation of the sick and their converts (whose names and addresses they recorded) anticipated methods Booth would write into Salvation Army Orders and Regulations 30 years later. When he was criticized for using secular tunes to attract crowds, he replied, “Secular music, do you say, belongs to the devil? Does it? Well, if it did I would plunder him for it, for he has no right to a single note of the whole seven.”

When his pastor proposed that he prepare for ordained ministry, Booth accepted. The disorganized church to which he was called repelled him. During this period, he met Catherine Mumford. Beginning with their second meeting on Good Friday 1852, they entered one of the most remarkable relationships in Christian history. They married in June of 1855.

By 1861 Booth decided “settled ministry” did not suit him, and he resigned. He and Catherine became itinerant evangelists in Wales, Cornwall, and the Midlands, Britain’s “burned-over” districts. The Booths preached in lantern-lit tents on unused burial grounds, in haylofts, in rooms behind a pigeon shop—anywhere to fulfill his famous words, “Go for souls and go for the worst!”

An invitation for Catherine to preach in London in 1865 led him to accept temporary leadership of a mission in East London. That area in the 1860’s was a crowded, squalid, maze of hovels, 290 people to the acre. It was said that every fifth house was a gin shop, and most of them had special steps to help even the tiniest children reach the counter. After seeing some of East London’s gin palaces, he told Catherine, “I seemed to hear a voice sounding in my ears, ‘Where can you go and find such heathen as these, and where is there so great a need for your labors?’”

Booth soon organized his own East London Christian Mission. In 1878, he energized it by giving it the name “Salvation Army,” with himself as the General. Military trappings were added over the next couple of years. The idea caught the imagination, and within ten years, the Salvation Army was established in the United States, Canada, and Europe as well.

Over the years, he and Catherine created an elaborate social relief system because he believed charity would speed the work of evangelism. In 1890, he published the best-selling In Darkest England and the Way Out to explain his social relief scheme.

At the time of his death, the Salvation Army had become a family-run Christian empire, with seven of the Booths’ eight children taking leadership positions. Today, following the pattern established by the first general, the Salvation Army marches on with over 25,000 officers in 91 countries.

Quotes:

“While women weep, as they do now, I’ll fight; while little children go hungry, I’ll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I’ll fight—while there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, where there remains one dark soul without the light of God—I’ll fight! I’ll fight to the very end!”

“The chief danger that confronts the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, heaven without hell.”

“God loves with a great love the man whose heart is bursting with a passion for the impossible.”

More

Get his story from the Salvation Army.

Hear William Booth in his own voice

Watch a dramatization of a vision if William Booth. [Try an artistic one with an English accent!]

Joan Kroc’s bequest of McDonald’s money to the Salvation Army changed things.

This video is a 1978 revision of materials discovered in 1953:

What do we do with this?

Booth’s passion caused some major relationship issues and division. At the same time it caused a lot of healing and drew people into relationship with Jesus who would never have gotten there through a more traditional church. Does anything move you, in particular these days? Are you movable? Booth would ask you, “What are you waiting for? Jesus did not hesitate to rescue you.”

Nicholas Black Elk — August 19

North America, This century (1937-2024)
Black Elk teaching a student to pray the Rosary.

Bible Connection

Read Acts 15:5-11

Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.”

The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”

All about Black Elk (1863-1950)

On this day in 1950, Oglala Lakota medicine man Black Elk (Hehaka Sapa) died. He was 87. He lived, along with his cousin Crazy Horse, during the last days of the U.S. Indian Wars. He participated, at about age 12, in the defeat of Custer at Little Big Horn in 1876. He was wounded during the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. Black Elk was part of the first generation of Lakotas to be confined to reservations.

Black Elk (L) and Elk of the Oglala Lakota in London in their grass dance regalia while touring with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, 1887

Extreme poverty and communal responsibility were factors that led him to both join Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in 1886, travel internationally, and to agree to be interviewed for the book for which he is best remembered, the much debated Black Elk Speaks by John Neihardt in 1930. One of the major controversies with the book is the exclusion of Black Elk’s faith in Jesus and mission—as well as the withholding of payment for participation in the work.

As a medicine man, Black Elk had prepared to visit a dying boy in the village, only to encounter a Jesuit priest praying there first. He encountered a power greater than his own, and accepted an invitation to spend time at the mission. He was baptized and took the name Nicholas shortly after. As a Catholic Catechist (an often downplayed aspect of his life), he was widely considered an apostle to the plains Indians. Thousands of people were brought to faith—both Indian and non-native, through his work and famous preaching.

His primary work was with new converts and as an evangelist alongside the priests—when priests were not available his duties included baptizing and burials. His passion for Christ as the Creator and fulfiller of things drove him to vigorous and passionate study. Nick thought that many of the Lakota spiritual traditions had come from God to teach them to live in a good way and that Christ made sense of all of it. Many experts agree that his practice of the Christian faith, life, and mission were well-integrated with his worldview and practice as a Lakota. Others say that when Black Elk provides the details of seven traditional rituals of the Oglala people in John Epes Brown’s, The Sacred Pipe, it shows that the tribal traditions concerning Wakan Tanka (The Great Spirit) were more important to him than his Catholicism.

John Neihardt’s interpretation of Black Elk put into a prayer:

One integration Black Elk accomplished is the change in the symbolism for the sun dance ceremony. Traditionally, it was a time of fasting, prayer, and suffering in order to attain personal power for victory in battle. It has become, and many credit Nicholas Black Elk for this shift, a ceremony of prayer and fasting on behalf of all the people—including enemies. For Black Elk, it was a ceremony to remind the people of the suffering and death of Christ for all of creation.

More

Black Elk: Colonialism and Lakota Catholicism by Damian Costello

Short Article on his life and faith by Pat McNamera

Black Elk, Woke — book review by Ann Neumann that explores meaning and integration.

Bio from Akta Lakota Center.

Bio from the Roman Catholics

What do we do with this?

Pray for all people. List the people you consider your enemies first, as you pray. Consider the depth of faith it took for Black Elk to be confined to a reservation prison and reorient the sun dance to intercession.

Consider again how you may benefit from the domination system, or how, in essence, your prayers may be mostly for power in battle, not strength in suffering love.

Black Elk’s faith was “indigenized,” it was enculturated into the ways of the Lakota. He saw how the wisdom of his people also led to faith in Jesus. The famous book about Black Elk’s wisdom left out his integration of traditional wisdom with his faith. Are you living by some wisdom that is not integrated or even at odds with your faith?

Umeko Tsuda — August 16

Asia, The Modern Era (1227-1936)

Bible Connection

“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

He also told them this parable: “Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a pit? The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher. — Luke 6:38-40 NIV

All about Umeko Tsuda (1864-1929)

Umeko Tsuda believed all women in Japan should have equal access to higher education and that only education could help improve women’s status in the country.

Tsuda Umeko was a Japanese educator who founded Tsuda University. She was the daughter of Tsuda Sen, an agricultural scientist. At the age of 7, she became Japan’s first female exchange student, traveling to the U.S. on the same ship as the Iwakura Mission, the government’s exploration tour of Western culture.

Tsuda was born in 1864 in Edo, present-day Tokyo. Four years later, the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate gave way to the Meiji period (1868–1912), when a new, young Japan sought to modernize its political, social, economic, cultural, and religious systems. In this era, Christian women came to play an important role in Japanese society.

While in the United States, Tsuda lived with Charles Lanman, the secretary of the Japanese legation, and his wife, Adeline, both of whom were committed Episcopalians. Inspired by their faith, Tsuda also embraced Christianity and was baptized.

When she turned 18, Tsuda returned to Japan and worked as a children’s tutor there. She soon returned to the United States to pursue an education at Bryn Mawr College, in a Philadelphia suburb, majoring in biology and education. During her second stay stateside, Tsuda became convinced that the only way to improve women’s status in Japan was to give them the same opportunity to enter higher education as men.

“Oh, women have the hardest part of life to bear in more ways than one. … Poor, poor women, how I long to do something to better your position!” she wrote in a letter to Adeline Lanman.

Existing schools for Japanese girls and women aimed only to educate them to be submissive wives, sisters, and daughters at home, whereas education for boys and men was far more comprehensive. Tsuda soon established the American Scholarship for Japanese Women to provide financial aid to women studying in the United States who would return to Japan to lead in developing women’s education. Some of them became influential political and educational leaders in Japan during and after the Meiji period.

Such inequality in educational opportunities was also why she founded Joshi Eigaku Juku, the Women’s Institute for English Studies, in 1900. The Tokyo-based school afforded women equal opportunities to pursue higher education in the liberal arts. After World War II, the Women’s Institute became Tsuda University, which is now one of the most prestigious institutes of higher education for women in Japan. Tsuda also became the first president of the Japanese branch of the World Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) in 1905.

For all her accomplishments, Tsuda was not immune to discouragement:

“There is a great work to be done, but the laborers are indeed few. God bless the cause, and bless and keep us all. I wonder if I can ever do any good. … It is tiresome work, and I am not used to it all yet, and I don’t know how to work best for the Master’s cause,” she confessed in another letter to Adeline.

Tsuda’s legacy remains strong today. She was ranked one of the top 20 most prominent Japanese women in a 2019 survey by national magazine Tokyo Weekender, and her face will appear on the ¥5,000 bill starting in 2024.

As Tsuda wrote, “Somehow God seems to be opening the future [in] some way, and he has given me such a strange, wonderful, uncommon-place life, thus far, that it seems as if the future could not be merely useless.”

More

Bio from Japan Society of Boston  [link]

What do we do with this?

Can you imagine who you would be if your family had sent you to a new country when you were seven years old?

Tsuda might have married an American and settled into a nice, wealthy life in the Philadelphia suburbs. Instead, she went back to Japan and threw herself against the limits of her traditional society. She broke down many barriers. No doubt her faith encouraged her, like Jesus, to give what she had been given for the lives of others.

Charles Finney — August 16

North America, The Modern Era (1227-1936)

Bible connection

Read 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.

All about Charles Finney (1792-1875)

One time someone brought a shotgun to one of Charles Finney’s revival meetings, intending to kill him. May you cause that kind of trouble as you defy the powers!

Some people might not think Finney fits into the “cloud of witnesses” that make up our respected spiritual ancestors. He was the “father of modern revivalism.” He was the forerunner of Billy Graham in the sense that he popularized the “altar call” and other tactics many find a bit too coercive or manipulative. But his demands for living a truly Christian life, his determination to get something going, and his presumption that people could live up to their radical calling, is right up our alley. He was also among the first to have women and African Americans participating in his meetings as equals with white men. One story is that the altar call’s original purpose was to come forward to sign petitions to abolish slavery.

The zenith of Finney’s evangelistic career was in the 1830′s during the Second Great Awakening. In Rochester, New York, he preached 98 sermons that caused a ruckus.  Shopkeepers closed their businesses, posting notices urging people to attend Finney’s meetings. Reportedly, the population of the town increased by two-thirds during the revival, and crime dropped by two-thirds over the same period. In 1900 church historian Susan Hayes Ward wrote “The hearer at the time felt that Mr. Finney was talking to him personally rather than preaching before an audience…He did not speak about sinners in the abstract, but he talked to the individual sinners before him.”

In 1832 he began an almost continuous revival in New York City as minister of the Second Free Presbyterian Church, organized especially for him. In the middle of his installation service he became ill with cholera. Others who caught the disease that day died. Finney almost died, as well, and it was months before he could take up his full duties.

From its inception the church embraced Finney’s passionate anti-slavery stance.  Black worshipers were welcomed (albeit in a separated section) –- a policy which, coupled with Finney’s outspoken abolitionist sermons, did not sit well with many outsiders and newspapers.  During the riots of 1833, a mob broke into the church and attacked black members.  On July 8 the Courier and Enquirer spat “Another of those disgraceful negro-outrages &c., occurred last night at that common focus of pollution, Chatham Street Chapel” (Susan Hayes Ward).

In 1834 after further anti-abolitionist riots, Finney moved into the huge Broadway Tabernacle his followers built for him. He stayed there for only a year, leaving to pastor Oberlin Congregational Church in Ohio, and to teach theology at Oberlin College. In 1851, he was appointed president of the college, which gave him a new forum to advocate the social reforms he championed, especially the abolition of slavery. Oberlin College, under his leadership, was the first college to admit woman and black/brown people to be educated with white men.

Finney married evangelism to social reform, New Testament evangelism with Old Testament prophecy, piety with radicalism, and conversion with action. He got people talking and acting. He was not content with them simply receiving or consuming. His commitment to Jesus meant taking care of the poor and the needy, and his deep commitment to social reform was seen in the radicalism of Oberlin College and in his major push to end slavery. Those he inspired continued to take risks in order to relate to each other and change the world.

Finney quotes:

Nothing tends more to cement the hearts of Christians than praying together. Never do they love one another so well as when they witness the outpouring of each other’s hearts in prayer.

No government is lawful or innocent that does not recognize the moral law as the only universal law, and God as the Supreme Lawgiver and Judge, to whom nations in their national capacity, as well as individuals, are amenable.

When there are dissensions, and jealousies, and evil speakings among professors of religion, then there is great need of a revival. These things show that Christians have got far from God, and it is time to think earnestly of a revival.

More

Oberlin College remembers Finney.

Questioning Finney’s legacy: Michael Horton, Christian History, PBS.

What do we do with this?

Don’t get yourself shot unless you have to, but how should you stir up enough trouble being a Christian that you arouse opposition? Ever think of doing that? Ever make a plan?

Pray for revival to break out. It would be great if people shut their business down (or turned off the TV) to come meet with Jesus followers and experience the presence of God!