July 9

Alice Paul, James Farmer, and Ann Weems

Author

David Barnhart
July 09, 2025

Hibiscus, 2025. Own photo.

Today in 1609, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II reluctantly signed an act of religious tolerance for both Protestants and Catholics for the lands of Bohemia (in the modern-day Czech Republic) and Silesia (in modern-day Poland). 

On this day in 1868, the 14th Amendment was ratified, which explicitly granted African Americans full citizenship and guaranteed due process. It should be noted, however, that the 13th Amendment still allows human slavery as punishment for crime, and that law is still exploited by governments and for-profit prison companies. 

Today also marks the death, in 1977, of Alice Paul, a Quaker activist for women’s rights. She spent time in England learning tactics from suffragists, and returned to help spearhead efforts to pass the Nineteenth Amendment. 

Today marks the death, in 1999, of James Farmer, civil rights activist who organized the Freedom Rides and co-founded CORE, the Congress for Racial Equality. 

Today marks the birth, in 1931, of Ann Weems, called the “Presbyterian poet laureate.”

Reflection:

Some words of Alice Paul: 

“It is incredible to me that any woman should consider the fight for full equality won. It has just begun. There is hardly a field, economic or political, in which the natural and unaccustomed policy is not to ignore women.”

—-

"This world crisis came about without women having anything to do with it. If the women of the world had not been excluded from world affairs, things today might have been different." 

One of my favorite poems by Ann Weems, “I No Longer Pray for Peace”: 

On the edge of war, one foot already in,

I no longer pray for peace:
I pray for miracles.

I pray that stone hearts will turn
to tenderheartedness,
and evil intentions will turn
to mercifulness,
and all the soldiers already deployed
will be snatched out of harm’s way,
and the whole world will be
astounded onto its knees.

I pray that all the “God talk”
will take bones,
and stand up and shed
its cloak of faithlessness,
and walk again in its powerful truth.

I pray that the whole world might
sit down together and share
its bread and its wine.

Some say there is no hope,
but then I’ve always applauded the holy fools
who never seem to give up on
the scandalousness of our faith:
that we are loved by God...
that we can truly love one another.

I no longer pray for peace:
I pray for miracles.

Prayer: God, we pray for many miracles: to end war, to stop the heedless ravaging of the Earth, and to reverse our country’s slide towards a white supremacist police state. Amen.