Stories from the First Cathedral 36

I believe Bishop Henry Whipple should have a place in the book Holy Men and Holy Women and in its replacement book, Surrounded by a Great Cloud of Witnesses. The book Lesser Feasts and Fasts was the first of these daily devotionals that remember the Saints of the church. What is a Saint? The best definition can be found in Hymn 293 which is one of my top five favorite hymns in the Hymnal! I know many people feel Bishop Whipple should not be in these books for various reasons, but being a Whipple loyalist I would like to see his name entered into the book of Saints in the near future, and here is why:

"Whipple acted as a one-man movement, seeking respect and protection for American Indians to replace the monstrous fraud and injustice to which he saw them subjected. It took me little time to find in the story a contemporary resonance. I had recently had occasion to reread one of the most powerful Christian documents of my lifetime, Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." It seemed to speak to Whipple's best work as a dedicated social reformer laboring on behalf of abused people amidst a time of great violence." (from Lincoln's Bishop by Gustav Niebuhr, 2014).

Niebuhr's book tells the story of Henry Whipple traveling to Washington DC in September of 1862 to plead the case of the 303 Dakota warriors sitting in jail after US-Dakota war waiting to be executed. Ex-governor and MN reserve general Henry Hastings Sibley created this list after unethical and very short trials of these convicted men. Bishop Henry Whiplle was able to get an audience with a preoccupied President Lincoln in the middle of the Civil War and pleaded for the lives of these Dakota men. Whipple's visit was able to move Lincoln's conscience to review each one of these Dakota warrior's records.

I will discuss the results of this instrumental visit Whipple courageously completed in September 1862. The bishop was only in his 3rd year of his episcopate, but this action marked the turning point of a bishop who was bold, compassionate and driven for justice.