wfn.org | Episcopal News Service Briefs

[ENS@ecunet.org]

2001-213

Civil rights martyr Daniels remembered in annual pilgrimage
(photos available at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/ens/2001-213.html)

     Over 200 Episcopalians and other Christians gathered August 12 in 
Hayneville, Alabama, for an annual pilgrimage to the place of martyrdom of 
Jonathan Myrick Daniels, Episcopal seminarian and civil rights worker, who was 
murdered August 20, 1965 in Hayneville.

     The feast day of Daniels' death is remembered in the Episcopal Church each 
year on August 14.

     The 2001 pilgrimage was led by Bishop Philip Duncan of the Diocese of the 
Central Gulf Coast, and Bishop Onell Soto, assistant bishop of the Diocese of 
Alabama, in front of the site of the grocery store where Daniels was shot. Ruby 
Sales preached the sermon for the commemoration in the county courtroom where 
Daniels' accused assailant, Lowndes County deputy sheriff Thomas Coleman, was 
acquitted of the murder. In 1965, Sales was a 16-year-old student from Tuskegee, 
Alabama, and a civil rights worker. She was pulled aside by Daniels as he took 
the shotgun blast intended for her.

     There are plans to turn the old Lowndes County jail, which closed when a new 
facility opened in 1999, into a museum to honor Daniels and other civil rights 
workers.

Going 'scent-free' means that all can savor worship, churches told

     (ENI) Attending worship where incense is used or where worshipers use 
liberal amounts of perfumed scents can make liturgy "life threatening" for 
parishioners who suffer from lung problems, according to Canadian campaigners for 
"scent-free" zones in churches.

     One in five Canadians suffers from a lung problem, according to Canada's 
Lung Association. 

     "Liturgy is supposed to be life giving, not life threatening," Chris 
Ambidge, a Toronto parishioner told an Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) reporter 
recently. 

     "I have problems with people deliberately choosing to make worship space 
unfriendly and life threatening to people with lung problems," Ambidge said. 

     The ACC reporter, Leanne Larmondin, tells of Michelle Murdoch, a Sunday 
school teacher at St. Mark's Church in St. John's, Newfoundland, who in her 
thirties suddenly developed sensitivity to chemicals. Subsequent treatment for 
allergies and asthma sapped her energy. She was bound to a wheelchair and could 
not go to work or church.

     Her situation led the congregation to establish itself as a "scent-free" 
church, where signs are now posted stating: "St. Mark's strives to be a scent-
free church so that services and events may be enjoyed comfortably by everyone."

     Many of the provincial branches of the Canadian Lung Association offer 
advice to churches wishing to become scent-free. The association's branch on 
Prince Edward Island reported last year that in response to a mailing, several 
churches had gone scent-free, while others had published awareness messages in 
their weekly bulletins. And in Nova Scotia, many churches are said to have become 
scent-free or have scent-free sections. 

     Where the use of incense is a common practice, advance notice is frequently 
given to parishioners. In bigger church buildings, it is sometimes possible for a 
worshiper to find a back pew where they can avoid the smell. 

     Chris Ambidge said that he wanted to lower barriers "for the whole people of 
God" to participate in worship. Substantial investment was often required to 
provide wheelchair access and provision for the hearing impaired. But "there's no 
capital cost," he said, to going scent-free.