This is an adapted excerpt from the Jan. 19 episode of “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
Jonathan Daniels grew up in Keene, New Hampshire. He was valedictorian of his class at the Virginia Military Institute and went on to Harvard University.
Daniels planned to be an English literature major but changed his mind when he was called to the priesthood. So he left Harvard and enrolled in the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass.
Martin Luther King Jr. called what Daniels did that day “one of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry.”
While enrolled at the seminary, he got permission to complete some of his classwork remotely from Alabama.
In the roiling summer of 1965, Daniels was in Lowndes County, Alabama, serving the poor. He tutored kids, helped people access financial programs, registered people to vote and helped integrate a whites-only Episcopal Church in the county.
On Aug. 14, Daniels, then 26, took part in a peaceful picket of segregated whites-only businesses in Fort Deposit, Alabama. Local police arrested every person taking part in the picket.
They were put in a garbage truck and driven to the county jail in Hayneville, where they were held for six days. At the end of those six days, in the stinking heat of that hot August, they were let out — just dumped outside.
After they were released, Daniels, along with a white Catholic priest about his age, both dressed in their clerical collars, decided to cross the street and go to a local store to get something to drink. They were joined by 19-year-old Joyce Bailey and 17-year-old Ruby Sales, two young Black women who were also arrested at the protest.
As they walked up to the store, a white man with a shotgun swore at them and told them, “Get off this property,” threatening to “blow” their “heads off.”
Daniels saw the man level his shotgun at Sales and pushed her out of the way, throwing himself in front of the gun. He took the full blast from the shotgun to his chest and was killed.
The other priest, 27-year-old Richard Morrisroe, grabbed Bailey and ran. But the man at the store fired again, shooting the Catholic priest in the back and leaving him for dead.
Bailey and Sales survived. Morrisroe was shot in the spine and spent months in the hospital recovering.
Daniels’ killer claimed he acted in self-defense against those two young priests and two teenage girls, all of them unarmed. He was put on trial and later acquitted by an all-white jury.
The next year, he did an interview with CBS News in which he proclaimed that he had no regrets. He said, “I would shoot them both tomorrow.”
Sales went on to become a seminarian in her own right and an important civil rights activist. Daniels went on to become a saint: The Episcopal Church, decades later, named him a Christian martyr. His feast day in the Episcopal Church is Aug. 14, not the day he was killed but the day he was arrested for peacefully protesting.
Martin Luther King Jr. called Daniels’ actions “one of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry.”
Decades later, Daniels’ bravery is still remembered.
Robert Hirschfeld, the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, said he had Daniels in mind when he gave new advice to the priests he oversees in Concord, New Hampshire. At a Jan. 9 vigil for Renee Nicole Good, who was shot and killed in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, Hirschfeld said he had asked his clergy to prepare “for a new era of martyrdom.” “I have told the clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire that we may be entering into that same witness,” he said at the gathering in Concord. “And I’ve asked them to get their affairs in order, to make sure they have their wills written, because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.” “Not everyone can be a Jonathan Daniels,” Hirschfeld continued, but “we’re increasingly called to go into places that feel dangerous.” In an interview with NPR on Sunday, Hirschfeld explained what he meant. He said, “What I said to the clergy (was) ‘I’m just asking you to live your life without fear of death. Be prepared. I’m not asking you to go look for that bullet … I’m simply saying be ready, have your affairs in order, have your soul ready, in case you find yourself in trouble.’ “Not everyone can be a Jonathan Daniels,” Hirschfeld continued, but “we’re increasingly called to go into places that feel dangerous.” During an interview with the BBC, also on Sunday, Catholic Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who serves the U.S. armed forces for the Catholic Church, was asked about the prospect that Donald Trump may order the military to invade Greenland and seize it. “It would be very difficult for a soldier or Marine or a sailor to, by himself, to disobey an order such as that, but strictly speaking … he or she would be within the realm of their own conscience — it would be morally acceptable to disobey that order,” Broglio said. So, we have the Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire explaining that his clergy need to have their wills written and their affairs in order because they may be called to stand up against tyranny in the United States, right now, to the point of dangerousness — to the point where he is talking about martyrdom. On the same day, the Catholic archbishop for the armed services said it would be morally acceptable for U.S. service members to refuse orders from this president to invade a country he is currently threatening. Then, on Monday, the three highest-ranking Catholic clerics in the United States — the cardinals who oversee Washington, D.C., Chicago and Newark — all released a joint statement lambasting the foreign policy adventurism of the U.S. government, saying it calls into question the moral role of our country. Whether or not you’re a religious person — and even if you are, whether or not these developments are in your faith tradition — all of these recent actions make one thing very clear: There’s something going on when big, mainline religious leaders start talking in terms this stark and start trying to bring their moral force to bear against the actions of a U.S. president and the U.S. government. Allison Detzel contributed.
Rachel Maddow
Rachel Maddow is host of the Emmy Award-winning “The Rachel Maddow Show” Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on MS NOW. “The Rachel Maddow Show” features Maddow’s take on the biggest stories of the day, political and otherwise, including in-depth analysis and stories no other shows in cable news will cover.
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