Where I grew up, Milwaukee, there was quite a trade in figurines of Catholic saints, medals, etc. A friend of mine tells me the purpose of such is as a reminder, but most seemed to think they were a talisman which would bring luck. (You wouldn't want to start on your road trip without St. Christopher standing proudly atop your dashboard!) Or objects of supplication. These saints were always depicted in the holiest of poses, with radiant faces, broad arm sweeps, and sometimes halos.

As a tongue-in-cheek homage to this tradition, I've always thought it would be fun to create a "modern saints" figurine series, honoring those who in modern times who have promoted the Christian faith. Ideally, I'd like them to depicted in as politically incorrect a manner as possible, though I wouldn't have to work hard, as most of them were anyway.

A few candidates:

Gilbert K. Chesterton, novelist, apologist, dear friend and gadfly to many of the "intellectual elites" of his times...

This man who composed such profound and perfect lines as "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried," stood 6'4" and weighed about 300 pounds, usually had a cigar in his mouth, and walked around wearing a cape and a crumpled hat, tiny glasses pinched to the end of his nose, swordstick in hand, laughter blowing through his moustache. And usually had no idea where or when his next appointment was. He did much of his writing in train stations, since he usually missed the train he was supposed to catch. In one famous anecdote, he wired his wife, saying, "Am at Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?" [source]

How could you not want to own such a statuette? Of course, he should be depicted huffing on a cigar, and probably peering quizzically at a map held in his hands. He should also be clearly obese. I nominate him as patron saint of the disorganized.

Then we have the famous apologist and fantasy author C.S. Lewis, who should be depicted, I should hope, hunched over a manuscript at his desk, smoking a pipe or perhaps, to maximize political incorrectness, with a snifter of brandy. I nominate him as the patron saint of writers and university faculty members.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who helped smuggle Jews out of Germany and participated in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Pale and bespectacled, he could be depicted holding a symbolic stick of dynamite in one hand, and a bible in another. Perhaps with a young (Jewish) child clinging to his legs.

He was executed there by hanging at dawn on April 9, 1945, just three weeks before the Soviet capture of Berlin and a month before the capitulation of Nazi Germany. Like other executions associated with the July 20 Plot, the execution was particularly brutal. Bonhoeffer was stripped of his clothing and led naked into the execution yard, where he was hanged with thin wire for strangulation....

The camp doctor who witnessed the execution wrote: "I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer ... kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God."

Needless to say, I nominate him as the patron saint of political activists.

In a similar vein, I could add Corrie Ten Boom, depicted with a suitcase and a deck of playing cards (frowned on by some sects), playing solitaire to pass the time on the train, on her way to the concentration camps where she would lose her family for the crime of hiding Jews in their basement. After her release she was traveled the world encouraging others in their faith.

A friend of mine nominates Saint Gabriel Possenti...

The St. Gabriel Possenti Society promotes the public recognition of St. Gabriel Possenti, including his Vatican designation as Patron Saint of Handgunners. St. Gabriel Possenti was a Catholic seminarian whose marksmanship and proficiency with handguns single-handedly saved the village of Isola, Italy from a band of 20 terrorists in 1860.

I guess the stereotypical brown monkish attire would have to do — although deftly wielding a pistol at unseen attackers.

And, most recently, musician and songwriter Rich Mullins, whose music and life has been an inspiration to many — depicted standing on an exit ramp, thumb extended, wearing dirty clothes and with a symbolic guitar slung over his back.

I wrote [Here in America], probably around 1976 or so... It was just, I think it was after having been eaten by red ants and sleeping in a culvert that I really realized what a cool country this really was. [source]

"In the industry, he was considered by many to be the greatest writer of our time," said Mullins' manager and friend, Jim Dunning Jr. "I believe that. But if Rich had his preference, I think he'd prefer not to be remembered. Rich would prefer that the God he believed in be remembered." [source]

I've seen them by the highways, on a million exit ramps,
Two-legged memorials, to the laws of happenstance
Waiting for four-wheeled messiahs, to take them home again,
But I am home anywhere, if You are where I am.

And if you listen to my songs I hope you hear the water falling
I hope you feel the oceans crashing on the coast of north New England
I wish I could be there just to see them... two summers past I was
And the Holy King of Israel loves me here... in America

More?

What a lovely series they would make: a cigar, a pipe, a glass of booze, a stick of dynamite, a deck of playing cards, a guitar, a thumb, and a gun. Obese, myopic, coughing, crumpled, badly-dressed, confused, depressed, dirty and tired — and doing their job to alter history.

God bless 'em.