Jonathan Daniels Pilgrimage

2025 Jonathan Daniels and the Martyrs of Alabama Pilgrimage
Saturday, August 9, 2025 • 11:00am - 2:00pm

Mark your calendar for Saturday, August 9 as we gather with Episcopalians from across the diocese for the 2025 Jonathan Daniels and the Martyrs of Alabama Pilgrimage. For more information, please contact Fr. Peter Helman (rector@standrewsbham.org).

To register to attend, click the link below. 

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About the Pilgrimage

Alabama has many sacred spaces, places that are often connected with the civil rights movement. For Episcopalians in Alabama, perhaps the most significant is at Hayneville in Lowndes County, where Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Daniels was martyred in August of 1965.

The Jonathan Daniels pilgrimage has become a fixture for many and a reminder that the equality for which he gave his life is a continuing sacrifice. There is something profoundly moving about going back to a sacred place and remembering that enables the pilgrim to resolve, to repent, and to carry on the work of building the beloved community. This year we will return again to Hayneville and remember Jonathan, one of only two American martyrs commemorated by a monument at Canterbury Cathedral in England. The other is Martin Luther King, Jr. We will gather in the courthouse square in Hayneville, Alabama, and begin our pilgrimage procession at 11:00am.

The procession will travel from the square to the old County Jail where Daniels was among those detained for a week after being arrested in Fort Deposit for picketing white-only businesses. The procession continues to the site of the old Varner’s Cash Store, where Daniels was killed. The procession ends in the Lowndes County Courthouse, where a service of Holy Communion will be celebrated in the courtroom where the man who shot Daniels had been tried and acquitted by an all-white jury.