The Battle of Canterbury brought the drama as the Malice at Lambeth Palace is still recovering. In the end, Richard Hooker pulled up his three legged stool, and told Thomas Cranmer to grab his prayer book and take a nice little walk down the middle way. Final score Hooker 66.88% to 33.12%. The stool stays undefeated 🪑👑

But we’re just getting started, because today it’s Amy Carmichael vs Edith Stein. The Missionary powerhouse vs Carmelite philosopher 🔥 Both lived fearless faith. Both changed lives. Both make this vote VERY unfair 😅

Only one can advance so it is up to you. Vote now and keep sharing with us how you’re living into Lent Madness!!! 🙌

Amy Carmichael

Amy Carmichael was an Anglican missionary to India throughout the early 20th century.

Born in Ireland in 1867, Amy Carmichael was raised in a very devout Anglican family. Her father moved the family to Belfast when she was 16, but sadly died two years later. However, Amy and her family were already hard at work spreading the Gospel. In Belfast, they started a Sunday School for the girls who worked at the nearby shawl factory. The school grew so quickly that it soon ran out of room. Amy saw an advertisement for a parish hall that could be ordered and assembled out of iron. She raised the money and set it up, calling it the Welcome Hall, in 1887. In 1889, she moved to Manchester to work with the factory girls there.

Meanwhile, she was dreaming of going overseas to do more missionary work. She had attended one of the first Keswick Conventions (gathering of evangelical Anglicans in Keswick, England) and was moved by stories about missionaries traveling overseas to spread the gospel and alleviate suffering. However, when she tried to apply to join the China Inland Mission, she was told that her health was too poor, and she had to postpone her departure.

Amy joined the Church Missionary Society and went to Japan, but stayed only about 15 months. She traveled to Bangalore, India, hoping that the warmer climate would help her health, and just decided to stay and work there. She was commissioned with the Church of England Zenana Mission.

In India, she was stationed in Tamil Nadu and began working with girls who had been abandoned to the local temples. In many cases, this amounted to forced prostitution for the girls. Amy began to take in the girls, slowly creating a whole orphanage for them, complete with a school, a farm, and a whole village to support them. She insisted her fellow workers give the children Indian names, and dress in the Indian ways, so as to better acculturate. She continued at Dohnavur for 59 years, until her death in 1951. The sanctuary she founded continues today, providing a source of healing, education, and nourishment for the whole community.

— Megan Castellan

Collect for Amy Carmichael

Almighty God, whose will it is to be glorified in your saints, and who raised up your servant Amy Carmichael to be a light in the world: Shine, we pray, in our hearts, that we also in our generation may show forth your praise, who called us out of darkness into your marvelous light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Edith Stein

Edith Stein did not set out to become a saint. In fact, for much of her early life, she was unconvinced that God had anything to do with reality at all and dismissed the notion of the divine. A philosopher by training, Edith’s path to holiness ran through rigorous thinking, deep suffering, and a hard-earned faith.

Edith was born in 1891 into a Jewish family in Breslau, which at the time was part of Germany and now is in modern-day Poland. As a young woman, Edith identified as an atheist, convinced that reason alone could answer life’s deepest questions. She was exceptionally bright, and she pursued higher education at a time when few women did, eventually earning a doctorate in philosophy. Her studies eventually led her to mentorship under Edmund Husserl, one of the founders of phenomenology.

World War I disrupted everything. Edith served as a nurse, tending wounded soldiers and encountering suffering on an intimate scale. The experience sharpened her philosophical inquiry and quietly prepared her for a change she could not yet name. That turning point came in 1921, when she read the autobiography of Teresa of Ávila, reportedly in a single night! Her conversion to Christianity was launched right off the pages of that book. Soon after, she was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church.

Edith did not abandon her intellect when she embraced faith, though it must have been tempting to do so. Instead, she brought her formidable mind into conversation with theology, writing and lecturing on the relationship between philosophy, empathy, and the human person. Her Jewish heritage, her Christian faith, and her academic vocation were never separate compartments. Instead, she carried them as strands of a single, holistic life in pursuit of truth and meaning.

As the Nazi regime rose to power, Edith’s career options narrowed. Anti-Jewish laws stripped her of her teaching position, and in 1933, she followed a path that had been closed to her previously. She entered the Carmelite convent, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, following the invitation of her faith to use her gifts to serve God and God’s people through her devotion.

In 1942, after being moved to the Netherlands where it was deemed safer for them, Edith and her sister Rosa were arrested by the Gestapo in retaliation for the public condemnation of Nazi antisemitism by the Dutch Catholic bishops. Many non-Aryan Roman Catholics were deported to Auschwitz, including Edith and Rosa, and were killed shortly after their arrival.

Canonized in 1998, Edith Stein stands as a witness to the unity of faith and reason, and to a holiness that refuses simplification. She reminds us that seeking truth with integrity can be a sacred act, and that discipleship may demand not certainty, but courage, clarity, and a willingness to carry the cross where it leads. What might she teach us today about the intersection of faith and reason?

— Samantha Smith

Collect for Edith Stein

Pour out your grace upon thy church, O God; that, like your servant Edith Stein, we may always seek what is true, defend what is right, reprove what is evil, and forgive those who sin against us, even as your Son commanded; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit be all honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.