New York, USA - Episcopalians from a church where the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall worshipped are asking their denomination to name him a saint.
Marshall, who died in 1993, was a towering figure in the civil rights movement and the first black justice to sit on the nation's highest court.
Members of St. Augustine's Church in Washington, D.C., will seek initial approval for the honor Friday from delegates to the convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.
Two consecutive meetings of the denomination's national legislature — which gathers every three years — will then consider the proposal.
"His Christian faith was deep inside his being and it was this faith which was the foundation and source of his energetic pursuit of justice," said the Rev. Thomas Smith, retired rector of St. Augustine's.
If approved, Marshall's name would be added to the Book of Lesser Feasts and Fasts, a primary worship book for the New York-based denomination. A feast day in his honor would be celebrated May 17, the anniversary of his victory in Brown v. Board of Education.
In the landmark 1954 case, attorney Marshall argued that the high court should overturn racial segregation in public schools. He was named a Supreme Court justice in 1967.
Criteria for Episcopal sainthood include whether the nominee was an "extraordinary or even heroic" servant of God and whether the person served humanity on behalf of Christ, according to the worship book.
Among other contemporary Episcopal saints are the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Florence Nightingale.