Lent Madness: Battling Bishops

 In yesterday's matchup, Zita handily disposed of her fellow Italian saint, Rita.    I confess that I didn't have much enthusiasm for that particular faceoff, but I'm still hoping for the sitcom.

Today the mitres are mixing it up and the croziers are clubbing as two Victorian bishops of the US Episcopal  church put up their pious dukes.  I think this is the first matchup of the year featuring two bona fide Anglicans in the ring.

In this corner, Bishop Henry (The Whip) Whipple.

Like his Canadian contemporaries such as Bishops Moutain and Strachan, he was not only a church builder, he was a diocese builder.   He spent most of his adult life (42 yrs) as the first bishop of Minnesota, and was a fearless advocate for the indigenous people that most American settlers and politicians saw as a nuisance at best, and as inhuman at worst.   For that, he deserves the church's gratitude and memory.  Fun fact, there is a massive government structure, the Henry Whipple Federal Building, in Minnesota.

When I was a divinity student at Wycliffe College, we used to hear about Isaac Stringer, the Archbishop of Rupert's Land, also known as "the Bishop who ate his boots" because once, trapped in a cave during a blizzard, he boiled and ate his deerskin boots.    Jackson Kemper was a bishop of that ilk.  Not sure what he ate during his long travels through the largely unsettled Northwest US, but he seems tireless.     

Fun fact, both contestants had a role in ordaining Enmegahbowh, the first American indigenous Episcopal priest and a contestant in Lent Madness 2023 who made it to the Saintly Sixteen.  Kemper ordained him a deacon, and Whipple ordained Enmegahbowh a priest.

For that, don't they both deserve a vote?

Vote here.