Beloved of God

 The late John Lewis, for many years a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the state of Georgia, has been my hero since I was about 13, which is when I first started paying attention to civil rights (as opposed to being vaguely aware).

And Jon Meacham is a historian I like and admire, having already read American Lion, his biography of Andrew Jackson. So it was what one might call a no-brainer that I would preorder the book when His Truth is Marching On was advertised: a biography of John Lewis by Jon Meacham, with the subtitle John Lewis and the Power of Hope. Preorders being what they are, when I bought the book, six or eight months before its publication, John Lewis was still alive, still showing up at nonviolent gatherings, still telling us never to quit hoping, always to keep marching on.

The book, in due course, got published, and I selected it as an unabridged audiobook. And so I've been listening. But only in measured sections, because it's so hard to hear what is being recounted sometimes. 

And when the narrative took me to the city of Birmingham, Ala., in 1961, with the Freedom Riders on the bus, another character entered the scene and was introduced by his entire name. I've known him for years as "Bull" Connor, the police commissioner of Birmingham. I might even have known that his actual name was Eugene. 

 It turns out that Eugene Connor went by his middle name, as I have for more than 30 years. His first name? Theophilus. 

Born in 1897, Connor received a first name from the New Testament, a common practice in those days. And there's no way of knowing whether it was his choice or his family's to have him go by Eugene instead. But it serves as a powerful reminder, one that made me stop the book and sit and ponder that new information.

Theophilus. It means "beloved of God." It's not even a name, exactly, when it shows up in the Bible. The author of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts addresses those books to "Theophilus," who might have been a real person, but who would have had a different name, because "Theophilus" is clearly a title. 

Confirmation students, one year early in my ministry, all received T-shirts printed with a "Hello, my name is" stickers, with Theophilus printed on the line. It was a reminder that whatever other names they bore, or nicknames, Theophilus was also who they were.

Bull Connor behaved in ways that were unsurprising for his place and time and probably expected by many of the white citizens of Birmingham. His use of fire hoses, German shepherds, and other vicious techniques were unspeakably horrible - yet visual confirmation of these acts helped capture the nation's attention and force significant and long-overdue change.

And Bull Connor was beloved of God. From his birth in 1897 to his death in 1973, Theophilus Eugene Connor was beloved of God. My brother in Christ. That makes it difficult (impossible, really) for me to think of him only with dismissive contempt. I can grieve, and do, at his techniques, his words, his public life. But it does well for me to remember that he was, as are all of us, Theophilus.