Trying to live the Gospel - Remembering Jonathan Myrick Daniels

August 16, 2015

Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Death of Jonathan Daniels 

Last month the bishop of our diocese, Shannon Johnston, wrote an email to all the clergy of the Diocese of Virginia asking us to designate today as a commemoration of Jonathan Myrick Daniels. 

If you aren’t familiar with him, Jonathan Daniels was a student at the Episcopal seminary at Harvard in 1965 when Martin Luther King, Jr. called for volunteers from the north to come south and join the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery.  Jonathan had not previously been engaged in the civil rights movement, but when he heard King’s call, he took it to heart.  He wrote that he was inspired by the prophet Isaiah to respond “Here am I; send me.”  And so he flew south and joined the march.  He returned to seminary, but then realized he wanted to go back to the south and the ongoing fight for equality.  And so he ended up returning to Alabama, living with an African American family that he came to consider his second family, and helping to register African American voters.  After a while, he chose to do work in what was considered to be the most dangerous county in Alabama for civil rights workers - Lowndes County.  After one demonstration, he and dozens of others spent 6 days in jail.  After their release, part of the group went to a local store to buy cold drinks as they waited for their transportation.  As the group approached the door of the store, Tom Coleman, an unpaid sheriff’s deputy, burst out.  Coleman, carrying a shot gun, began threatening them.  Suddenly he pointed his shot gun at a 17 year old African American student named Ruby Sales.  Jonathan pushed Ruby aside and was hit by the shotgun blast and killed.  Coleman was later completely acquitted of any crime by an all-white jury.

Interestingly, there is a bit of a St. Aidan’s connection to Jonathan Daniels.  I’ve often heard long-time parishioners talk about St. Aidan’s involvement in the Civil Rights movement.  According to Barbara Schnorrenberg’s History of St. Aidan’s Parish, unlike in other churches in Virginia, “there was no opposition to support of the civil rights movement” at St. Aidan’s.  St. Aidan’s housed and fed a busload of people from Mississippi who came north for the March on Washington.  And our parishioners took food and supplies to people affected by violence in D.C. following the riots after King’s assassination.  Then-rector Embry Rucker preached multiple sermons about the need for civil rights legislation and integration in all areas of life.  And on October 3, 1965, Embry Rucker preached a sermon called “Who is my neighbor?” after the man who killed Jonathan Daniels was acquitted.

Since 1991, Jonathan Daniels has been commemorated as a saint in the Episcopal Church.  Bishop Johnston explained in his letter that he chose this Sunday to commemorate Jonathan because the 50th anniversary of his death is August 20th.  The Bishop asked us to send him a copy of today’s Sunday bulletin that he will then send to Jonathan’s home congregation in New Hampshire.  So he will be checking our homework.  

In my memory, we have never gotten a request from a Bishop to veer from our lectionary readings to commemorate another occasion, so the letter came as a surprise.  And I have to say that my first (and probably second, and third) reactions to the letter were fairly cynical.  Why is it the white guy that we’re choosing to hold up as a role model for the civil rights struggle?  

Certainly Jonathan Daniels was an inspiring person and we can learn a lot from his spiritual life, from his willingness to sacrifice for others, and from his commitment to equality for all.  There is no question that Jonathan Daniels is a great role model who did amazing work to advance the struggle for civil rights; there is no question that he knowingly and heroically risked, and finally gave, his life for others.

But it feels funny to me to hold up only the white hero when it comes to civil rights, especially in the midst of all the racial tension our country has experienced over the last few years.  Ferguson and Baltimore.  The shooting at the AME Church in Charleston.  The burning of multiple African American churches.  The need for #blacklivesmatter.

As much as we like to think that we are past the racial divides of old and that we are a nation blind to color, clearly we aren’t.  We have a lot of work left to do in the United States to ensure that no person feels unsafe, discounted, or discriminated against based on the color of their skin. 

And so it seemed strange and uncomfortable to me that the person we are changing our liturgy to uphold today, as worthy a person and as certainly a saint as he may be, is a white person.  Somehow it’s sort of like taking the word “black” out of #blacklivesmatter.  It isn’t that what remains isn’t true, it just isn’t enough.

But when I delved into Jonathan Daniels’ work in Alabama I discovered a piece of his story that I hadn’t heard before.  A piece I am not surprised by but still wish weren’t true.  And it is a piece of the puzzle that helps me to feel better about singling out Jonathan Daniels to commemorate today.  Because it is a piece that is an important reminder to the Episcopal Church about the danger of complacency and comfort with the status quo.  And an important reminder to all of us who don’t face discrimination, who aren’t fearful of police, who can walk down the street wearing a hoodie in safety.  An important reminder even here at St. Aidan’s, where we are proud of our history of being on the right side of the Civil Rights movement.

In his letter, Bishop Johnston wrote that Jonathan Daniels is one of his personal heroes.  It turns out that the Bishop began his ordained ministry in Selma at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, where, writes Bishop Johnston, “courageous people… hosted and facilitated Jonathan’s activities for the Civil Rights Movement.”  That cheered my heart, and so I began looking deeper into the role St. Paul’s played during the Civil Rights Movement in Selma. 

But from what I read, I think the Bishop’s description might have been a little too rosy.  Maybe not inaccurate, but certainly not complete.  When Jonathan Daniels returned to the south, part of his personal mission was to help integrate the Episcopal Church.  And so he came with an interracial delegation to St. Paul’s on Palm Sunday, 1965.  To say he was not received enthusiastically is a wild understatement.  St. Paul’s Episcopal Church literally shut its doors to the group and refused to let them enter.  Now it’s true (and a relief) that about 25 members of the church walked out in support of the group, and joined them in the Eucharist outside the doors.  But the sad fact of the matter is that clergy and the vast majority of parishioners of St. Paul’s were comfortable with the racist status quo that day.  The next week, on Easter morning, Daniels came back with a smaller group.  And he kept persisting, returning again and again to the church until finally his group was seated, though definitely not welcomed by most of the church.  The vestry had voted to open the church’s doors to African Americans, but required them to sit in the back and be the last to receive communion to ensure that their lips would be the last to touch the chalice.  The rector and the Bishop of Alabama claimed to support the idea of integration but not the in-your-face methods of the demonstrators.  And as far as I could tell in my research, they had no problem with the separate-and-definitely-not-equal treatment of African Americans in church.

Although the national Episcopal Church was an early supporter of civil rights and passed many inspiring resolutions against segregation, the depressing truth is that in most of the south and in many places in the north, the local churches were apathetic at best towards the struggle of African Americans for their civil rights.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Selma in some ways came full circle this year when on Palm Sunday it marked the 50th anniversary of the first visit of Jonathan Daniels and his group to the church with a prayer service.  They stopped at the steps where the delegation had been blocked from worship to “name and recognize that we are all responsible for the systems of injustice and hate in our world.”

Maybe in some way we come full circle this morning at St. Aidan’s, as we again remember Jonathan Daniels.  And as we again lament how far we still have to go in the United States towards treating all people as children of God; how far we still have to go toward upholding our baptismal promise of respecting the dignity of every human being; how far we still have to go toward integrating the Church, our neighborhoods, our schools, our businesses and our government.  I wonder what role the people of St. Aidan’s might have to play in the continuing quest for equality and justice. 

We all have work to do.  As they prayed at St. Paul’s, we would all be well served by naming and recognizing that we are responsible in some way for the systems of injustice and hate in our world.  And while I still think Bishop Johnston would have sent a stronger and more inclusive message by including African American civil rights saints in today’s commemoration, my cynicism has dissipated somewhat.  We can learn a lot from Jonathan Daniels in particular as we think about what comes next for each one of us individually, for St. Aidan’s, and for the broader Church.

When Jonathan Daniels met with the clergy and vestry of St. Paul’s in the midst of his attempts to integrate the church, they accused him of trying to “disrupt and ruin” the parish.  He responded that he was just “trying to live the Gospel.”

And before his death, in April 1965, Jonathan Daniels wrote this: “We are groping our way to the realization that above all else, we are called to be saints.  That is the mission of the Church everywhere.  And in this Selma, Alabama is like all the world: it needs the life and witness of militant saints.”

Indeed, it is the mission of the Church everywhere to be saints.  Each one of us here at St. Aidan’s is called to be a saint.  To live our lives in witness to the radical love, inclusion and forgiveness of God.  To try to live the Gospel.  To have the courage to say, “Here we are; send us.”  And for this we need the life and witness of the saints who have come before, including - but not limited to - Jonathan Myrick Daniels.  Amen.