Welcome to the Round of the Saintly Sixteen! After 16 bruising battles, we have cut the field from 32 saints to 16. We've already seen our fair share of hotly contested match-ups, blow-outs, and Cinderellas and we're only half-way through the bracket. Lent Madness, like Lent, is part endurance race and we encourage those who have come thus far to buckle down for the duration. As Saint Paul (who was upset by Emma of Hawaii last year) says, "Run with perseverance the race that is set before you."
In this round, we move past basic biographies and delve into what we like to call "Quirks and Quotes." We'll learn some unusual facts about our saints and hear about them, either in their own words or in words uttered or written about them. Some of our holy men and women are quirkier than others and some are more quotable. As always, remember these match-ups are neither fair nor for the faint of heart. If you want a bland Lenten devotion you've come to the wrong place.
The Saintly Sixteen action begins with two modern-day martyrs, Jonathan Daniels and Janani Luwum. In the first round, Daniels defeated Macrina the Younger and Luwum swept past Thomas Tallis. With all of the subsequent rounds you can click on the Bracket 2013 tab and scroll down to find links to the previous match-ups. This is particularly helpful if you need a quick refresher bio when making your decision. Thanks to our unsung Bracket Czar, Adam Thomas, for making this happen!
Yesterday, the final match-up of the second round was set as Dorothy Day slipped past Edward Thomas Demby and will next face Benedict of Nursia. The other Saintly Sixteen pairings are Oscar Romero vs. Lucy, Martin Luther King, Jr. vs. Frances Perkins, Martha of Bethany vs. Harriet Tubman, Luke vs. John Donne, Gregory the Great vs. Florence Li-Tim Oi, and Hilda of Whitby vs. Ignatius of Antioch.
Jonathan Myrick Daniels
Jonathan Myrick Daniels, a 26-year-old seminarian and Civil Rights worker, was killed by a shotgun blast in 1965 when he pulled a 16-year-old African American girl out of the line of fire.
A native of Keene, New Hampshire, Jonathan Daniels attended the Virginia Military Institute. Though as his yearbook page attests, “The presence of a New Hampshire Yankee in a southern military college has for four years roused the curiosity of his Dixie colleagues,” he was voted Valedictorian of the class of 1961.
After graduation, Daniels began a graduate program in English at Harvard, but the death of his father two years earlier had left him battling depression and a loss of faith. Attending the Church of the Advent on Easter Sunday 1962, he experienced a profound religious experience, inspiring him to leave graduate school and pursue Holy Orders.
Daniels had a similar sense of calling through worship when he decided to go to Selma. After reluctantly deciding “that the idea [of going to Selma] was impractical, and with a faintly tarnished feeling, I tucked in an envelope my contribution to the proposed ‘Selma Fund.’
“I had come to Evening Prayer as usual that evening, and as usual I was singing the Magnificat with the special love and reverence I have always had for Mary’s glad song. ‘He hath showed strength with his arm…' As the lovely hymn of the God-bearer continued, I found myself peculiarly alert, suddenly straining toward the decisive, luminous, Spirit-filled ‘moment’ that would, in retrospect, remind me of others – particularly of one at Easter three years ago. Then it came. ‘He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things…’ I knew then that I must go to Selma.”
This phrase from the Magnificat is included in the collect for the feast of Jonathan Daniels.
From his work in Alabama, Daniels gained a deep understanding of the prejudice that held the whole country in thrall. After speaking to a church group in his hometown, “a militant liberal expressed the wish that I would stop calling the parishioners of St. Paul’s [Selma] ‘Christians’ – ‘churchmen’ would make her happier. Instinctively, I felt defensive for the people of my adopted ‘parish family,’ recalling the painful ambivalence and anguished perplexity some of them were beginning…to feel.” And after being teargassed in Camden, Alabama, “I saw that the men who came at me were themselves not free. Even though they were white and hateful and my enemy, they were human beings too. I began to discover a new freedom in the cross: freedom to love the enemy, and in that freedom, to will and to try to set him free.”
Archbishop Luwum with Idi Amin
Janani Luwum
As a young boy, Janani Luwum (1922-1977) tended goats. As a young man, soon after his conversion to Christianity, he climbed a tree to preach a sermon to children in the courtyard of a school. As a newly ordained priest, he served twenty-four congregations with only a bicycle on which to get around. So it seems that Archbishop Luwum was only a little quirky.
The strength of his faith is reflected in his words.
Quote from the day he embraced Christianity:
“Today I have become a leader in Christ's army. I am prepared to die in the army of Jesus. As Jesus shed his blood for the people, if it is God's will, I do the same.”
Quote about that conversion:
"When I was converted, after realizing that my sins were forgiven and the implications of Jesus' death and resurrection, I was overwhelmed by a sense of joy and peace.…The reality of Jesus overwhelmed me – and it still does."
Quote from his epilogue to a centennial history of Ugandan Christianity:
“What will happen in the next hundred years or so?…we have seen that the Church is founded on the belief in the sure foundation who is Jesus Christ, the Saviour. He is the sure Rock of our Salvation and therefore we will not fear any evil.”
Quote explaining why his participation in those centennial celebrations would be limited:
"I do not want to be the Archbishop of a dead church, but of a live one."
Quote in response to criticism of his willingness to meet repeatedly with Idi Amin:
"I do not know for how long I shall be occupying this chair. I live as though there will be no tomorrow. I face daily being picked up by the soldiers. While the opportunity is there, I preach the gospel with all my might, and my conscience is clear before God that I have not sided with the present government, which is utterly self-seeking. I have been threatened many times. Whenever I have the opportunity I have told the President the things the churches disapprove of. God is my witness."
Quote whispered to fellow Anglican bishop Festo Kivengere as Archbishop Luwum, like Jesus, was mocked by the soldiers of a dictator before he was executed:
"They are going to kill me. I am not afraid."
Quote spoken to a young lawyer named John Sentamu, who decided to become a priest on the day that Archbishop Luwum was martyred and who now serves as the Archbishop of York:
"We must be Christ to these people: be our advocate and take up their cases. The local prison is filled to capacity with innocent people suspected of opposing the government."
Vote!
[poll id="59"]
111 comments on “Jonathan Daniels vs. Janani Luwum”
This becomes very difficult as we enter the Saintly Sixteen! Although I am a New Englander, I voted for Luwum today.
As parishoner in the diocese of Alabama, I have a very special place in my heart for Jonathan Daniels and have attended the pilgrimate several times. After his arrest, the bishop of Alabama, Bishop Carpenter, sent Father Frances Walters to bail Jonathan out. Jonathan refused until bail was raised for everyone. Suddenly, the authorities released everyone. A visit to the jail and seeing the cells where they were held (all the men in one cell and all the women in another), walking to the general store (where the shooting occurred), and attending the eucharist in the courtroom (where the defendent was found not guilty) is an amazing experience.
As a current seminarian from St. James' in Keene, and only the second since Jonathan, I've had a strange opportunity to experience his legacy. It is amazing to see him held in the community as both a childhood friend and a martyr of wide significance. Three weeks after I moved to Keene, before I was considering ordained ministry, I was asked to play Jonathan in one of the vignettes of St. James' 150th anniversary celebration. Meditating on his life and death in order to step into that role was a terrifying, wonderful, profound experience of standing on sacred ground. I still find myself convicted each time I think on his decision to say "yes" to that same call of Jesus which I hear spoken so often. For myself, and I think for many, his example is eerily familiar.
Thanks for sharing your story and answering Christ's call.
As a resident of the home of the US Bicycling Hall of Fame, I vote for the Archbishop on the bicycle. (I can't think of any other way to choose. Even the potential kitsch seems to me fairly equal.)
I can imagine finding the strength to do what Jonathan Daniels did, but there is no way I can comprehend how Bishop Luwum stood up to the Amin regime and still held fast to his faith and convictions. I would buckle, and he did not, and for that reason he absolutely had my vote.
My contemplations on these martyrs reminds me of an epiphany moment while I was an arrogant undergrad and reading an early bishop's encouragement to catechumens. It dawned upon me that if choosing Christian baptism was tantamount to a death sentence by the civil authorities (Rome then), perhaps there was more to "this Christianity business" than I knew, having been comfortably raised as a cradle RC in suburbia USA. Today we read of two men who exeprienced spiritual conversions, two who accepted calls to witness for the peace (no peace without justice) of Christ in the clear face of danger. Two who had profound rippling effects upon those who knew them or knew of them. Two emminently worthy saints by any standard. As I had not encountered Archbishop Luwum's story before Lent Madness but had heard a little of Jonathan Daniels's, I cast a vote for the archbishop in praise and thanksgiving for the gift from God that Lent Madness surely is.
Tough, tough choice........can I vote for them both??
For me this was the most difficult match we have had this season. Both of these men are surely saints. But for me, who acutely remembers the times of JMD, I still had to go with JL. The reason, because Janani was a fully mature man who knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that death was not only a probablility, but very likely, if he continued to maintain his beliefs and direction. The fact that he did so, in the face of such a monster as we all know Idi Amin to have been, makes him a true martyr for his faith. I think JMD would support a vote for his brother in Christ.
This match-up brought a flood of memories: being in high school and college during the time that the civil rights was going strong and not really understanding why all this turmoil had to be. Many years later, being a Lay Eucharistic Minister and being called to take communion to an African Bishop (whose name I do not remember) in Arcadia who was recovering from open heart surgery and wondering how I, a lay person (and female to boot!), would be received. He was wonderful: very accepting of the Sacrement and me (his wife was a little more reserved) and when I left, I received hugs from both. These memories are so juxtaposed that I just closed my eyes, moved my mouse, opened them and voted for the one nearest the little arrow. I didn't even look to see which one it was: both men are deserving and both should be allowed to move on. However I can't vote twice.
Too too hard. Brave Christian men. May have to toss to decide
Keep up the madness
logging in each day gives me strength for the day thank you madness.
I sang in the Church of the Advent choir for years and was always moved by the glorious music. My vote goes to Daniels for hearing the voice of God in music, too.
I was all set to vote for Jonathan as I did during his first appearance. The quotes from Janani really affected me and I found myself wanting to hold him up.
So while I cast my vote for Janani, I esteem these two brave, selfless men who pursued their calling in the face of evil & violence, knowing the probability of their demise.
They seemed so likable as opposed to some of the saints who appear one dimensional to me.
The photo of the slender Bishop Luwuum and the not-slender Idi Amin helped make my decision. The larger man is smiling and appears to have a weapon on his belt. Sooner or later, he will crush the Bishop.
Amin did crush Luwuum.
He could not crush Christ out of Uganda.
Amin did crush Janani Luwum's body; but clearly did not crush his spirit.
Re: Jonathan Daniels. I could definitely ask for this guy's intercession. The last quote in the little essay above is the clincher.
My admiration and vote go to Janani Luwun. He knew his fate but kept doing what he had to do. His last words “They are going to kill me. I am not afraid.” do it for me. Johnathon Daniels is a true martyr but I don't think his scope and effect were as great as Archbishop Luwun's.
I'm shocked at the lopsided vote.
This was tough, especially since I'd voted for both men in the first round, so I guess I set myself up for this difficulty. But I stayed with my homeboy, Jonathan Daniels, and appreciated Laura Toepfer including many of the stories that I had learned about him, and how his spirit evolved as he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with those who were oppressed, and could see that the oppressor is also victimized by the need to keep others down.
Today's Martyr Madness leaves me wishing for multiple votes! These are two relatively contemporary saints, but their circumstances are really very different in so many ways. And then similar in so many ways. I'm thinking of closing my eyes and voting also, if I can summon the courage to do so. Otherwise, I'll probably just put it off until the last minute before bed, hoping for divine revelation (or, at least forgiveness in case I vote for the wrong one!). Thanks for a great contest, I think!
Having dedicated Christians from around the world helps me remember that our faith isn't based soley in North America. Nothing in "The noble army of martyrs praise thee..." says that they have to be from our continent alone! Janani Luwum gets my vote.
Lent Madness is there an App for that?
A very difficult choice but my vote goes to Janani Luwum for using his position to directly challenge Idi Amin and also for an older member of our church, a medical missionary in Uganda forced out by Idi Amin, but who still visits Uganda today.
I'm voting for Daniels because he went to VMI, from where many of my relatives have graduated; because his loss of faith following his father's death gives me hope that a friend with a similar experience will also find his faith again; and because of the lovely photo with a smiling (probably giggling) little girl.
Bishop Luwuum is admirable but the militant perspective revealed in one quote has so often been a shameful expression of Christianity & other religions.