February 24

José Matias Delgado, Ettie Rout, and Daniel Alexander Payne

Author

David Barnhart
February 24, 2025

Sunflower and bee, 2023. Own photo.

Today is the birthday of Father José Matías Delgado in 1767, a leader of Central America’s independence from the Spanish Empire. He is a reminder of the long tradition of liberation theology in Latin America. 

Today is also the birthday of Daniel Alexander Payne, in 1811, a bishop and educator in the African Methodist Episcopal Church who was of African, European, and Native American descent. He promoted education to increase the effectiveness of clergy and eventually became co-founder and president of Wilberforce University. 

This is also the birthday of Ettie Rout, in Tasmania, in 1877, who became a powerful voice for sex education and the prevention of sexually-transmitted infections. She was decades ahead of her time in advocating, first, for the sexual health of soldiers, then for the well-being of sex workers in brothels. For a time, even publishing her name in New Zealand was punishable by a fine. 

Reflection: 

Ettie Rout wrote this stinging critique in 1911: 

At present marriage is easily the most dangerous of all our social institutions. This is partly due to the colossal ignorance of the public in regard to sex, and partly due to the fact that marriage is mainly controlled by lawyers and priests instead of by women and doctors. …The law pays no heed to the suitability of the partners, and the Church takes no regard for their health.

Daniel Payne wrote of his conversion experience and his call to higher education ministry: 

Several weeks after this event, between twelve and one o'clock one day, I was in my humble chamber, pouring out my prayers into the listening ears of the Saviour, when I felt as if the hands of a man were pressing my two shoulders and a voice speaking within my soul saying: "I have set thee apart to educate thyself in order that thou mayest be an educator to thy people." The impression was irresistible and divine; it gave a new direction to my thoughts and efforts.

Daniel Payne was an outspoken opponent of charismatic dancing and clapping in worship which, in my opinion, may have had an element of internalized anti-Blackness to it. But his emphasis on education affected generations of people. He was concerned that people would be converted to faith not just by formulaic worship intended to gin up strong emotions, but by a genuine movement of the Holy Spirit.

I am glad that today’s roster of saints gives us an example of one saint who was a revolutionary, one saint that rejected propriety, and one saint that promoted it. Both Ettie Rout and Daniel Payne were driven by a belief in the power of education to change people’s lives for the better. They would probably never get along if they were to meet in real life, but I look up to all three as example of divine work among humans struggling to be free.

Prayer: God who is beyond human wisdom, give us teachers so driven by the love of truth that they will risk social scorn from any direction in order to bring more light to more people. Amen.