Theologian's Almanac for Week of January 17, 2021

Welcome to SALT’s “Theologian’s Almanac,” a weekly selection of important birthdays, holidays, and other upcoming milestones worth marking — specially created for a) writing sermons and prayers, b) creating content for social media channels, and c) enriching your devotional life.

For the week of Sunday, January 17:

January 18 is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, observed annually on the third Monday of January, honoring the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The day became a national holiday in 1986, and is often observed with service projects, a public concert, and/or a prayer breakfast. Here’s SALT’s free film honoring the occasion this year (just click the “Download” button underneath the film on Vimeo); it’s especially powerful now, in the wake of last week’s horrific events at the United States Capitol.

January 20 is Inauguration Day for the 46th president of the United States, Joseph R. Biden Jr. — a good day to pray for peace, justice, and reconciliation. Biden is the nation’s second Roman Catholic president, and will take the oath of office with his hand on a mammoth heirloom Bible — five inches thick, with a Celtic Cross on its cover — that has been in his family since 1893.

January 21 is the birthday of American blues singer and songwriter Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter (sometimes his birthday is noted as January 20 or 29), born in Mooringsport, Louisiana, in 1889. Lead Belly, best known today for such songs as “Goodnight Irene,” “Midnight Special,” and “Rock Island Line,” played the 12-string guitar, harmonica, violin, piano, and accordion. While incarcerated in Texas, he entertained fellow prisoners, guards, and other guests — including the governor of Texas. Lead Belly wrote a song for the governor, comparing his own situation to Paul and Silas in the Bible, particularly the part of the story when an earthquake set them free. The governor returned repeatedly to hear Lead Belly sing and play, and eventually issued him a pardon.

January 21 is also the day in 1525 that a group of Swiss Protestants, later known as Mennonites, first gathered into a formal congregation. After they came under the leadership of a Dutch minister, Menno Simons, they were dubbed “Mennonites.” They faced persecution for their resistance to certain forms of civil authority, which eventually led some of them to emigrate to North America — first settling in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1683. Today, the United States has the largest Mennonite population in the world.

January 22 is the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. The plaintiff was “Jane Roe,” a woman living in Texas (where at the time abortion was illegal) who couldn’t afford to travel to a neighboring state where abortion was legal. The defendant, Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade, argued that human life begins at conception, and that the state had a compelling interest in protecting that life.

Not many today think of the Court’s 7-2 decision as in any way theological — but in fact, the justices called on theology at key moments in the official opinion. First, they pointed out that for the vast majority of Western Christian history, abortion was not considered homicide in the first phase of pregnancy, prior to “quickening” (the time when a pregnant woman can sense the fetus’ movement inside her womb). Augustine and Aquinas, for example, held this view.

And second, the Court referred explicitly to theology with respect to the crucial question underlying the case: “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.” Thus the Court argued that each woman has the right to answer this question for herself, applying her own medical, philosophical, and theological values, judgment, and discernment, and, in consultation with her doctor, acting accordingly. With all of this in mind, the Court ruled that the State has no right to outlaw abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy.

January 22 is also the day Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town” premiered at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1938. “Our Town” is about ordinary life in the fictional town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. The play was revolutionary for its time, primarily because of its spare, minimalist staging; Wilder wanted to tell a universal story, akin to the Greek tragedies — and so he stripped down the production of scenery and props, and had a group of characters who had died in Grovers Corners comment on the action, like a Greek chorus.

One of the play’s signature moments is when the Stage Manager says: “We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars... everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.”

And another is when Emily says, “Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it — every, every minute?”

“Our Town” opened to mixed reviews, but eventually became a beloved American classic. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1938, and is today staged so frequently that it’s said that, on average, it’s performed at least once every night somewhere on earth.

January 23 is the birthday of the Caribbean Nobel-Prize-winning poet and playwright Derek Walcott, born in Castries, Saint Lucia, in 1930. His family was Methodist, and much of his work was inspired and informed by his faith: “I think I still have a very simple, straightforward foursquare Methodism in me,” he said. “I admire the quiet, pragmatic reason that is there in a faith like Methodism, which is a very practical thing of conduct. I’m not talking about a fanatical fundamentalism. I suppose the best word for it is decency… There’s also a very strong sense of carpentry in Protestantism, in making things simply and in a utilitarian way. At this period of my life and work, I think of myself in a way as a carpenter, as one making frames, simply and well.”

In his 1992 Nobel acceptance speech, Walcott said: “For every poet it is always morning in the world… because the fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world, in spite of History.”