Jones and Schweitzer (Sep 4th),
is a day in which advocates for peace are featured on both Episcopal and
Lutheran calendars.
Paul Jones entered the world
in a rectory in 1880 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. His first call upon
graduation from seminary was to serve a mission in Logan, Utah. In 1914, the
year the first World War began, he was elected Bishop of Utah. As Bishop, he
spoke openly of his opposition to war. Once at a meeting in Los Angeles in 1917,
he went so far as to declare that “war is unchristian.” As a result, he was
attacked in the Utah press. Eventually, under pressure from the House of
Bishops, Jones resigned in the spring of 1918. He continued to be a voice for
peace and conscience within the Church until his death on September 4, 1941.
Albert Schweitzer, the son of a Lutheran pastor, was born in Kaysersberg, Upper
Alsace (now France) in 1875. He was ordained in 1900. Schweitzer was a
theologian, philosopher, organist, authority on Bach, physician and missionary.
A book he authored on Bach was published in 1905. His Quest of the Historical
Jesus (1906) established him as a leading theologian. In 1913, he and his wife
(a scholar and nurse) moved to Africa and built a hospital. Schweitzer’s
two-volume Philosophy of Civilization (1923) espoused “reverence for life” as a
necessity for the survival of civilization. He won the Nobel Prize for Peace in
1952. In 1958 from Oslo, he broadcast three appeals titled Peace or Atomic War?
Following his death on September 4, 1965, he was buried beside his wife at the
hospital they had founded.
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