COMMEMORATING AFRICAN AMERICAN EPISCOPALIANS’ FAITHFUL RESISTANCE: FIGHTING CHRISTIAN FASCISM
Bishop Michael B. Curry, the Episcopal Church’s first African American presiding bishop, called for the cultivation of “Beloved Community” in understanding Americans’ heritage of racism, prejudice, and discrimination. (1) Healing and reconciliation would be impossible without a study of the rise of Christian nationalism’s “threat to American democracy that has continued to grow since the insurrection of January 6, 2021.” (2)
Members of the Episcopal Church, a Mainline Protestant tradition, have traditionally been white middle- to upper-class Americans. African Americans worshiped in segregated missionary churches. (3) Although the church has become more integrated, many dioceses and parishes remain overwhelmingly white. (4) Nonetheless, African American Episcopalians’ have had a long history of faithful resistance in fighting Christian fascism.
The Episcopal Church Standing Committee on Liturgy and Music explained in the liturgical supplement, Lesser Feasts and Fasts:
Christians have since ancient times honored people whose lives represent heroic commitment to Christ and who have borne witness to their faith. Such witnesses, by the grace of God, live in every age. What we celebrate in the lives of the saints is the presence of Christ expressing itself in and through particular lives lived in the midst of specific historical circumstances. (5)
Those who are interested in conceptualizing strategies for fighting Christian fascism might draw upon Lesser Feasts and Fasts for historical examples of African American Episcopalians’ struggles against white supremacy in American society and in the church.
Some might read about these saints on their own, especially since they aren’t always commemorated throughout the wider church. There ought to be more public commemorations, however. These people’s lives are not just stories about the Episcopal Church and its history. They explain the black church experience through American history and culture. They also shed light on American history through African Americans’ Christian faith and traditions.
African American Christian identity holds within itself a paradox that African Americans have long grappled with. How can they be members of a tradition that supported white supremacy? Some might argue that conundrum alone should lead African Americans to jettison Christianity altogether. But the important point that many forget is that people of color have always taken the Christian message they were given and shaped it into something that they could use to fight their oppression. They found strength, resilience, and courage in difficult times to persevere. African American Christians have remained ever thankful that each day of their survival is a testimony to God’s blessings and grace.
African American Episcopalians commemorate their church history in February, Black History month, (6) in recognition of Absalom Jones, the first African American Episcopal priest. Born into slavery in the English colony of Delaware in 1746, he died in 1818, and the anniversary of his death is February 13, the date of his commemoration in Lesser Feasts and Fasts. In churches and dioceses with many African American communicants, a Eucharist might be held the week of the feast day, and especially in the cathedrals. These provide opportunities for building community with African American clergy and lay people, for example, members of the Union of Black Episcopalians and scholarship recipients. (7)
More than a century after Absalom Jones’ death, the late Barbara C. Harris was elected Bishop Suffragan in the Diocese of Massachusetts. Her election took place in September of 1988. She was the first female bishop in the Anglican Communion and had served as an acolyte at the ordinations of the Philadelphia 11. (8) Ordained a deacon in 1979 and a priest in 1980, her consecration took place on February 11, 1989. This is the date of her commemoration. Anna Julia Cooper, a nineteenth century black feminist, Episcopalian, and educator born into slavery in 1858, died in February of 1964 at the age of 105. She is remembered on February 28.
Other African American Episcopalians are memorialized later in the year. They include Alexander Crummell and Anna Ellison Butler Alexander, both of whom are commemorated in September. Crummell was born in New York City in 1819, a year after Absalom Jones’ death. He was raised in an abolitionist family and became an Episcopalian. The Diocese of New York would not permit him to enter the ordination process and attend General Theological Seminary. The Diocese of Massachusetts ordained him but would not let him sit at the diocesan convention. (9) Crummell then went to England and pursued studies there. A pan-Africanist, he persisted in his support for abolition and African Americans’ immigration to Liberia. After serving there as a missionary for almost twenty years, he returned to the United States and “concentrated his efforts in establishing a strong urban presence of independent Black congregations that would be centers of worship, education, and social service.” (10) He is remembered on the anniversary of his death, September 10.
Anna Ellison Butler Alexander was a deaconess and teacher born in Georgia in 1865. Her parents were recently emancipated slaves and devout Episcopalians. She “dedicated herself to working for the education of African American children in poor communities,” drawing upon “the Book of Common Prayer and the Bible.” (11) She died on September 24, 1947, and is commemorated on the anniversary of her death.
Parishes and dioceses that are devoted to developing “Beloved Community” initiatives might form reading groups where participants study biographies from Lesser Feasts and Fasts, pray the collects, and read the psalms. The assigned texts from the Bible should be included. Parish liturgical committees can develop services that will draw the greatest number of attendees from their diocese, the public, and ecumenical faith partners. (12) They might include African American churches in the community interested in celebrating black Episcopalians, such as members of the National Baptist Convention, the largest and oldest African American religious tradition. (13) Their clergy and choirs might participate in the liturgy. Non-Eucharistic liturgies from the Daily Office might be used, for example, a Noon Day Prayer afternoon service with announcements, a sermon, and hymns from the African American hymnal Lift Every Voice and Sing or contemporary gospel tunes. These services can be led by deacons who might train the lay people in the Daily Office, thus empowering the diaconate and the people.
The Episcopal Church’s liturgical tradition is one of its greatest strengths, enabling flexibility in liturgies, and Lesser Feasts and Fasts is the most flexible of all. There’s no reason it couldn’t be drawn upon as an important resource as parishes study African American Episcopal church history and develop strategies to fight Christian fascism.
The Episcopal Church, Realizing Beloved Community, a report from the House of Bishops Theology Committee, edited by Allen K. Shin and Larry R. Benfield, https://www.episcopalchurch.org/ministries/racial-reconciliation/realizing-beloved-community/. See as well, the documents page: https://www.episcopalchurch.org/ministries/racial-reconciliation/becoming-beloved-community-documents/
Episcopal News Service, Episcopal leaders confront the urgent danger of Christian nationalism. (October 4, 2024), https://episcopalnewsservice.org/pressreleases/episcopal-leaders-confront-the-urgent-danger-of-christian-nationalism/ quoting from a Church Publishing press release announcing the publication of a report from the House of Bishops Theology Committee, Allen K. Shin and Larry R. Benfield, eds, The Crisis of Christian Nationalism (2024).
See ie., The Episcopal Church Archives, The Church Awakens: African Americans and the Struggle for Justice, https://episcopalarchives.org/church-awakens/timeline-church. See also, Gayle Fisher-Stewart, Black and Episcopalian: The Struggle for Inclusion (Church Publishing, Inc., 2022).
For example, a recent Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Study found that seventy-three percent of African American adults identify as Christian. Of those, six percent identify as Mainline Protestant, and forty-four percent as Historically Black Protestant, https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/racial-and-ethnic-composition/black/.
The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2024 (Church Publishing, 2024), vii.
See ie., Encyclopedia Virginia, Carter G. Woodson (Virginia Humanities), https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/woodson-carter-g-1875-1950/. Born of formerly enslaved African Americans in Virginia, Woodson was a scholar of African American history. He was the inspiration for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the Journal of African American History, and Black History Month. The Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia was named in his honor.
The Philadelphia 11 were eleven female Episcopal deacons who were irregularly ordained to the priesthood in 1974 prior to the change in the church canons in 1976. See ie., the 2023 documentary by Margo Guernsey and Nikki Bramley, The Philadelphia 11, https://www.philadelphiaelevenfilm.com/.
Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2024, 406.
Id.
Id., 432.
See ie., Stephen Burns, Pastoral Theology for Public Ministry (Seabury Books, 2015).
See ie., The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., https://nbcusainc.org/about-nbc. My inspiration for envisioning ecumenical services draws upon Diana Hochstedt Butler’s book, Standing Against the Whirlwind: Evangelical Episcopalians in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 1995). Prior to the Oxford Movement, Episcopalians in the evangelical party were interested in ecumenism among Protestant traditions that stressed their common interests and beliefs, in contrast to the high church Episcopal party, as per Robert Bruce Mullin, Episcopal Vision/American Reality: High Church Theology and Social Thought in Evangelical America (Yale University Press, 1986).
