In yesterday's Faithful Four matchup, Maria Skobtsova defeated Esther 73% to 27% to make it to the Championship Round. Who will compete with Maria to vie for the Golden Halo? That's the question to be decided over the next 24 hours as Anna Alexander, the Georgia Deaconess, faces Richard Hooker, the Anglican theologian.
To get this deep into the Saintly Smackdown, Anna defeated Peter Claver, Edith Cavell, and Eglantyne Jebb, while Richard got past Mary of Egypt, Margaret of Scotland, and Phocas the Gardener.
Anna continues to be shepherded through the bracket by her namesake Anna Fitch Courie. Richard's advocate is Marcus Halley, who...shares a last name initial with Mr. Hooker.
Finally, did you watch the final in-season episode of Monday Madness? Of course you did. But here's the link nonetheless. You know, to share with your friends and family and Facebook friends you've never actually met.
Anna Alexander
Anna sighed as she began her walk between Darian and Brunswick. The day was already stifling hot and the sun had not yet reached its peak. The mosquitoes were already out in full force and the dust from the road was turning her habit from black to brown. She prayed for a breeze to cut the air that was so thick you could swim through it. Although the day was already shaping into a typical southern day, Anna couldn’t help but smile as she heard the sweet chirping of cicadas in the trees. The birds were greeting her with their morning chatter and the magnolias were in bloom. There were signs of God everywhere on her daily journey and these comforted her with her mission ahead.
With each step, Anna prayed for each of her students by name and prayed God would bless them with skills to change the world. She worried that the world would never see her children as equal in God’s sight. She worried that they didn’t see themselves as equal either. Anna’s shoulders dipped with the weight of worry and love she felt for these boys and girls. She worried that she had the skills to show them why reading, writing, learning, and God were so important. She wanted them to know the Bible tells us that God made all men and women in God’s image. Anna wanted her students to know that the most important lesson is that we love each other.
Mostly, Anna prayed that her students would learn that even when the world tells them otherwise, that Jesus tells us to treat each other the way
we want to be treated. Maybe if Anna’s students treat others the way they wanted to be treated that soon the world would treat them that way as well. Anna knew that following God was far more important than the noise of the world. After all, she had been told for years that she couldn’t make a difference being black and a woman. She hoped that with her firm persistence, following the love of Jesus, and the passage of time that she was showing that each of us makes a difference in our own way just because we are children of God.
As Anna neared her destination, she gave thanks to God for this time in prayer on her journey. Each step was a prayer that reaffirmed her faith and relationship with God. She felt strengthened by this time to serve her community. Her walks each day gave her that time to pray and reflect on where she was called to go. As she headed off to deliver the clothes, food, and books she gathered for her flock, she smiled. Today was going to be a good day.
Richard Hooker
Dr. James Cone, father of Black Liberation Theology, suggests that “theology is loving God with the mind.” It is easy to dismiss Richard Hooker’s theologizing as aloof, ivory-tower naval-gazing; but, it is important to note that loving God with our hearts, souls, and minds is a command straight out of the Gospels. The practice of theological scholarship is important to the life of the Church and, while its importance can be taken to the extreme (as with all things), it provides the necessary framework to wrestle with incredibly challenging questions. His commitment to the field of theology impressed King James (of the King James Bible fame), who said of Hooker, “I observe there is in Mr. Hooker no affected language; but a grave, comprehensive, clear manifestation of reason, and that backed with the authority of the Scriptures, the fathers and schoolmen, and with all law both sacred and civil.”
Richard Hooker did Anglican theology in a time of fierce religious division. Using the scriptures and Christian tradition, Hooker was able to weave together a system of faith that graciously navigated the Via Media between the excesses of Roman Catholicism and the austerity of continental Reformation Christianity. He allowed the Sacraments, the Church Mothers and Fathers, and Christian tradition to speak to a new age of Christians who were asking incredibly deep questions about how their age-old faith was going to interact with a world exploding in knowledge and size and scope. His Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie has a reach beyond Anglicanism into the field of English prose and political theory. Here is a real, flesh-and-blood man dedicated to a theology that improves the world.
Episcopalians are who we are, people who weave the richness of the Christian tradition into conversation with the real world around us, in no 
small part due to Richard Hooker. His system of scripture, tradition, and reason creates a framework of faith that is solid at its core and soft at its edges. Our faith is firm enough to affirm the ancient, Trinitarian faith, but soft enough to invite, include, celebrate, and be transformed by the presence of those of us formally closed out of the life of the Church – people of color, women, queer, and trans people, native and immigrant people. While we may not have been on his mind, his system of faith provided the framework that allowed many of us to experience true freedom in Jesus Christ.
Richard Hooker might not be remembered for feeding and housing people on the margins, but his system of faith nourishes and provides spiritual shelter for many, with the potential to add many more, for there is “plenty good room” in the Kingdom.
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421 comments on “Anna Alexander vs. Richard Hooker”
Anna’s write-up this morning was beautiful. I could almost feel the humid, oppressive heat and hear the (annoying) cicadas. She was an amazing woman, and she changed hundreds of lives.
However, Richard Hooker has changed millions of lives over the centuries and made us who we all are today. “His system of scripture, tradition, and reason creates a framework of faith that is solid at its core and soft at its edges.” I love that! “...solid at its core and soft at its edges.”
With Hooker’s theological brilliance, one church can look as austere as a New England Protestant church with a plain white exterior and an absence of stained glass windows and interior decoration, and where a less formal approach to Holy Communion is observed, while a grey stone church with elaborate stained glass windows, paintings and/or statuary, Stations of the Cross, votive candles, elaborate clerical vestments, and a formal Eucharist celebration complete with incense...and both churches are equally Episcopalian! Richard Hooker’s theological brilliance has allowed those with strong Protestant-leaning beliefs to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those who hold very Catholic-leaning beliefs. Yet we’re all Episcopalians! As my priest likes to say, “We’re all standing under the same umbrella.”
Without Hooker’s “three-legged stool” of Scripture, tradition and reason, would we have female priests and bishops? Would we embrace such a variety of people and beliefs? In a world where the tendency is to look at people as “Us versus Them,” the Episcopal church sees “Them as Us,” in other words, we are ALL equal, and we are ALL loved equally by God.
In a world of diversity and dissension, Richard Hooker helps to guide us to a more loving unity. Surely that is worthy of the Golden Halo!
Obviously, my vote goes to Richard Hooker.
And mine.
And mine. From Salem, Oregon.
Columbia Missouri.
Anna truly walked and lived Jesus where she was placed - she lived bringing God's "kingdom on earth". Come on people vote Anna in 4 years of Lent madness this is my first comment!
Anna, Anna & Anna (how's that for pep rally material)!
Speak!
Anna!
And if the Final is Anna vs Maria I will flip a coin. We should definitely have a Silver Halo this year.
Good Morning from the rainy PNW! Coffee black, no flavoring, please. I stand with the teacher, with her students, with education, with the strong faith of Anna.
Amen to Anna.
Anna inspires. Richard’s ideas, and the language he finds to convey them, are peerless. We wouldn’t have our spiritual home in our wonderfuI church without him, so I’m for Richard in this matchup. A shout-out to our theologians!
I’m from Seattle.
Anna is surely a saint and I'm so glad to have learned about her life. However, I have to vote for Hooker. I'm a recent transplant to Philadelphia from Boston. I believe that Hooker's ideas influenced many early residents of Philadelphia, and therefore the framers of the Constitution. Hurray for freedom of religion and separation of Church and State. In the park where I hike, there is a statue of a man dressed like William Penn and labeled simply Toleration. Hooker would agree.
Via media and reason and Richard did it for me today.
Virginia Beach, VA where we do a lot of naval gazing.
While I greatly appreciate Richard Hooker's contributions to the faith of my church and how to understand it, in these days I need to hold up Anna's practice of being "God with skin" for each other, as I believe we are all called to do.
Born in Chattanooga, Tn, nurtured by wonderful Episcopal churches in Dallas, St Louis, Bronxville NY, Amarillo TX, now back at Transfiguration in Dallas...as a 3 stool Anglican I’m in such a quandary today. Wish it could be a tie and Scott and Tim would do a “rock, paper, scissors” decision! Thank you, Lent Madness. You’ve become an integral part of our family’s Lenten observance again in 2018!
I was so moved by Anna’s write up of Anna the Deaconess. Living in GA most of my life, I know exactly the heat, mosquitoes, dust, and humidity of the south. Having come from a Baptist household as a child, I was so moved in attending the Episcopal church that I could ask the sometimes heretical questions I had without fear, and have them answered by another way of thinking...the three legged stool idea, I settled into this church with its tradition, and firm Bibical foundation with reason intact, as well as a deepening faith. I would vote for both if I could, and will be happy for whichever winner, either way, but my vote today was for Richard Hooker, with thanks for leaving reason intact. Thanks, too, to Anna, who inspires.
As much as I love the Via Media and the Three-Legged Stool, Anna is who I want to be like when I 'grow up,' and that's what I think the saints are for. And thank you modern Anna for this absolutely beautiful writing this morning; if only I started my day with that spiritual posture every day, imagine what I could accomplish in the world!
Janet in Longmont, Colorado
As an Episcopalian, obviously, I owe a large part of my religious tradition to Richard Hooker. I'm so thankful for a faith that allows for difference of opinion and theology and that encourages participants to ask difficult questions and not just sweep them under the rug.
BUT, my vote went to Anna Alexander. She was a living embodiment of this thought regarding Hooker's theology of inclusivity: "Our faith is firm enough to affirm the ancient, Trinitarian faith, but soft enough to invite, include, celebrate, and be transformed by the presence of those of us formally closed out of the life of the Church – people of color, women, queer, and trans people, native and immigrant people. While we may not have been on his mind, his system of faith provided the framework that allowed many of us to experience true freedom in Jesus Christ."
When society told her that she was a lesser person, and even the structure of most church establishments echoed the same segregationist sentiments, the freedom found in her faith in Christ enabled her to extend that love and charity to other marginalized persons just like her. My vote goes to Anna today and I hope that she wins the Golden Halo as well :).
- Katie, from Little Rock, AR
Hello from beautiful Northern Michigan in Waters! I'd use my hand but you wouldn't be able to see it! Lol. We are about 4 hours north of Detroit. Voted for Richard Hooker. He explains my faith in the best way possible.
Good morning from Port Huron, MI (the Diocese of Eastern Michigan and the sunshine side of the Magical Mitten state)! While I admire Hooker, and I loved the earlier joke about how appropriate it was to have someone with that name in the Final Four, I had to stick with our Deaconess for her persistence. Go Anna!
If I were thinking strategically (here in Rochester, NY), I'd have voted for the saint that I thought was least likely to beat Maria, cause I'm a fan . . . but I don't know who that is.
There isn't a saint amongst the Faithful Four that I would be disappointed to see wearing The Golden Halo.
So, I voted for Richard Hooker because this particularly spoke to me today " . . . a framework of faith that is solid at its core and soft at its edges. Our faith is firm enough to affirm the ancient, Trinitarian faith, but soft enough to invite, include, celebrate, and be transformed by the presence of those of us formally closed out of the life of the Church – people of color, women, queer, and trans people, native and immigrant people."
I, too, appreciate tremendously the via media way. Here's the thing, though - women, and especially women of color, historically haven't been published, educated, listened to, or allowed to lead in the same way men have. Their ways of leading have been different, and are often unappreciated and seen as "less than". That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be whole-heartedly grateful for the contributions of men like Hooker, but it does mean that we need to be careful how we judge women's contributions. Anna was modeling for all of us how to live with Christ's hands and feet in the world. That type of leadership gets my vote. I'm very pleased that in this season of Lent Madness, so many women saints have been included. ( I am in Edmonds, Washington, USA.)
Anna, of course. I grew up in the segregated South. Her courage and determination were extraordinary.
I offer hearty congratulations to our celebrity bloggers and thanks to everyone who has made thoughtful comments today.
I was one of the probably many people who nominated Richard Hooker as a competitor in Lent Madness this year. My experience has been that only clergy, EFM participants and a few other seekers know about Richard Hooker and his God-given gift of working out theology. It was my hope that more people would learn what a profound, positive influence he made on Anglicanism, paving the via media where for centuries, so many have found spiritual refuge. And how his theology is still impacting the larger Church, not just Anglicanism, today.
I am so very happy Marcus Halley's brilliant closing paragraphs accurately credit Hooker for infusing the current dimension of broad-mindedness into theology. I believe his profoundly simple method of adding reason io the theological stew has and continues to help propel the Church (again, not just the Anglican church) to open its doors ever wider, so that we may truly follow Christ's example of embracing ALL, yes ALL! of God's beloved creation.
I'm now stepping down from my soapbox - thanks for the chance to cheer Richard on - no one is more deserving, in my opinion.
Forgot to say I'm on Galveston Island, in the Gulf of Mexico where we like to say we're "close" to Texas!
This was a tough choice, as one who came to the Episcopal church from one less disposed toward Hooker's system of theology that creates a big, diverse tent. However, I am voting with Deaconess Anna today, as I live in the south (Auburn, AL), have been to the area in which Anna worked, and am in deacon formation myself. Thank you, Richard Hooker. Go, Anna!
From Ridgeland, Mississippi
A vote for Anna.
Good afternoon from Wales, UK! Tricky one today. Head says Hooker but heart says Anna, I find the saints who were famous for their acts of service tend to get my vote. Hooker almost seems too big already!
This is by far the hardest choice I've had to make this year. As much as I have loved voting for all those for whom the corporal works of Mercy have been paramount in their steadfast faith and witness, now that I am an Episcopalian, I wonder: "I am, because Richard was.". (sort of a personalized Ubuntu.)
So, I'm sorry, Anna. Today, I have to switch gears and vote for Richard.
(But if he's going up against Maria, he won't stand a chance with me tomorrow...).
Just sayin'.
As a deacon, I've been rooting for Anna all the way. Richard reminds me of Nicodemus...a great teacher and scribe, but disconnected from those that Jesus called us to minister to...the least of these, the marginalized. Anna gets it and she gets my vote. - Phoenix area
From Waynesville, NC, a vote for Anna, an impressive woman.
Ah, Joann, I spent many happy summers at Lake Junaluska when I was a Methodist!
Richard has been celebrated for generations. It's time to amplify the work and witness of unsung women. Go, Anna!
Pasadena, CA
If Lent Madness spanned back all those generations, I would agree. But if we begin voting against men simply because they've been celebrated already, in a community less than a decade old that was designed to celebrate all saints, I think we are badly distorting the stated purpose of Lent Madness.
I also think it's an injustice to the women contestants to regard them primarily for their gender/ sex rather than their individual accomplishments for the Kingdom. (And for the record, I'm for Maria Skobtsova to win it all.)
Yes, it is time to pay homage to the unsung heroes. My vote goes to Anna.I
From Onemo, VA
My vote is my thanks to Richard Hooker for allowing me the privilege of being part of this church. Lawrence Park, PA
Here in Seattle, WA, land of rain not dust, I vote for Anna. And I'm UCC so less attached to Hooker.
Good morning, Gail! Fancy meeting you here. So good to see one of my skin and bones friends here amongst my Lent Madness friends. I, too, voted for Anna...I had enough of Hooker in seminary!!
Anna Alexander has had my vote from the beginning and from Cleveland OH
Many Thanks.
Hooker all the way. He is the foundation of Anglican theology, and I admire the life of the mind. I am glad we have a big tent to include many. We comprise native and immigrant, and I would add indigenous people to that list as well. "All may, some should, none must." I think such an aphorism requires us to struggle, together, as to how we build an ethical beloved community on earth. There are no dead dogmas, only the living and loving discipline of working together to bring in the kingdom.
Nashville,TN-Diocese of TN-Province IV: (ANNA) I am an Episcopalian based on Hooker's foundations-CHRISTIAN and follower of Jesus Christ who undergoes the tortures that lead to the Cross this week and ultimate resurrection on behalf of sinners like me. It is Anna whose open heart to all who persecuted her because of her race and sex keeps me on the path of trying to be what God would have me be as her example does for us all.