Jonathan Myrick Daniels

Today's is Jonathan Daniels day, at least on the official calendar of the Episcopal Church. But I'm struck that in some parts of the country, especially his home state of New Hampshire, and here in Massachusetts, and most certainly among many in Selma, Alabama, Jon is one of those saints who seems a whole lot more connected to us, certainly more than many of the "saints" listed in the pages of Holy Women, Holy Men.

His story goes back to the mid-1960s. A seminarian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Jonathan Daniels joined others in responding to Martin Luther King's appeal to help ensure access to voting booths for African Americans. He ended up taking a leave from seminary to live in Selma to continue the work there. The "outside agitator" (the phrase some locals used to describe freedom riders) died from a gunshot wound on 20 August 1965. The bullet was not intended for him, but rather for a 16 year old girl, Ruby Sales, but Jon stood in front of her, saving her life and giving up his own. Years later Ruby Sales herself attended the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge.

In Jonathan's own words, found in his letters and papers after his death:

“The doctrine of the creeds, the enacted faith of the sacraments, were the essential preconditions of the experience itself. The faith with which I went to Selma has not changed: it has grown. . . . I began to know in my bones and sinews that I had been truly baptized into the Lord’s death and resurrection. . . with them, the black men and white men, with all life, in him whose Name is above all the names that the races and nations shout. . . .We are indelibly and unspeakably one.”

May his soul rest in peace and rise in glory.