November 30

Today is a feast day, in the Eastern Orthodox Church, for Saint Frumentius, credited with the widespread adoption of Chrisitanity in Ethiopia (the Kingdom of Aksum) and a translator of the Bible in the Ge’ez. Though there was a Christian presence in Ethiopia since the time of the apostles (see Acts 8:26-40), Frumentius managed to convert the king and unite Christians into a unified church. 

Today is also the feast day of Andrew the Apostle who, in the Gospel of John, is one of the first disciples of Jesus. He goes on to introduce Jesus to his brother, Simon Peter, and other disciples. For this reason, Andrew is often called one of the first evangelists. 

Today is the birthday, in 1924, of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress and the first woman to run for the Democratic nomination for president, in 1972. 

Reflection: 

Shirley Chisholm said: 

and

Shirley Chisholm ran for president the year before I was born, and I’ve lived to see two women candidates for president. While I do not think that “being elected president” is the best benchmark for the progress of gender equality, the opposite is certainly the case: the fact that we have had no women presidents in my lifetime is a sign that progress toward gender equality has stalled. 

I’m also mindful of the fact that both of the women who have run for president recently were not running against a male candidate who, in any previous generation, would have been viable. They were running against an authoritarian rapist con artist whose innumerable lies, scandals, and demonstrations of incompetence would have rendered any previous candidacy dead on arrival. 

Many people take this as evidence of how impossible it is to elect a woman as U.S. president. If such qualified women could not win against such a loser, how much harder would it be for them to win against a decent male candidate? They attribute these losses either to the “unlikeability” of the women candidates or entrenched patriarchy. 

I see it differently. I think the stark contract between competence and incompetence, between qualified and unqualified, highlights the last, dying breath of business as usual. I believe that the forces of coercive power and domination, of patriarchy, capitalism, and white Chrisitan nationalism are fighting back like a mortally wounded animal, and the result is that these forces are unmasked as the nakedly selfish, corrupt powers that they are. It is, in the classic sense, an “apocalypse” — an unveiling or unmasking. 

Shirley Chisholm, among many others, got this revolution in gender and racial political power started. It’s up to us to finish it. 

Prayer: God of revelation, you have held up a mirror to our worldly powers. Help us take the next steps to make the world more just. Amen.