Today we (well, if I had woken up for morning prayer) commemorate Absalom Jones, who was the first African-American priest ordained by the Episcopal Church (in 1804). He was born into slavery in Delaware but then was moved to Philadelphia. There, he worked extra hours in a shop and managed to save money to buy his wife’s freedom and then his own. He bought himself one house and would later build two others for rental income.
Absalom Jones and his friend Richard Allen were involved in the interracial Methodist congregation of St. George’s and were two of the first Blacks to be licensed to preach in the Methodist church. Together they founded the Free African Society, providing social services that freedmen often found themselves without.
Both ended up splitting from St. George’s because they felt that the leadership was giving Blacks second-class status in the congregation. Absalom established a congregation in 1792; in 1794 it became the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas with a mission “to arise out of the dust and shake ourselves, and throw off that servile fear, that the habit of oppression and bondage trained us up in.” Absalom was ordained a deacon in 1795 and then a priest in 1804. ((Richard Allen went on to found the AME.)) His priesthood was marked by his work to serve the people of his community through direct service and through political advocacy. On this day (Feb. 13) in 1818, he went to his reward.
May we all be freed from fear and complacency, which are the food and fruit of oppression, and may we, like Absalom Jones, have the steadfast courage to see what the world lacks and create a presence in those voids.
