When the Rev. Absalom Jones, the Episcopal Church’s first African American priest, died on Feb. 13, 1818, in Philadelphia, he could scarcely have imagined that 171 years later – on Feb. 11, 1989 – the Rev. Barbara Clementine Harris would be consecrated in Boston as Anglicanism’s first woman bishop.
But the same-week proximity of these dates – both recognized as “feasts” on the Episcopal Church’s Liturgical Calendar – offer a “double opportunity” to remember their legacies and re-commit to uprooting racism in the church and wider society, said the Rev. Guy Leemhuis in his sermon during a Feb. 15 diocesan Eucharist commemorating the two pioneering church leaders.
Of the paired commemoration, “we will celebrate them every year” going forward, said Leemhuis, president of the H. Belfield Hannibal Chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians and vicar of St. Luke’s of the Mountains Church in La Crescenta.
Leemhuis also called upon attendees to renew their memberships in the local and national UBE chapters, distributing sign-up forms and collecting checks. Leemhuis invites those wishing to make membership payments electronically to phone him at 323.286.2770 for further information.
Recounting Jones’s resilience as a formerly enslaved American who purchased his wife’s freedom before his own, Leemhuis traced the history by which Jones and his friend Richard Allen, a fellow lay preacher at St. George’s Methodist Church in Philadelphia, led a walk-out in 1787 after white parishioners attempted to implement a segregated seating plan. Jones went on to be ordained in the Episcopal Church in 1802, and Allen to found the congregation that became known as Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church.
Ecumenically, Episcopalians today “need to do more in partnership with the A.M.E. Church,” Leemhuis told the 80 attendees at the diocesan liturgy, hosted by Holy Faith Episcopal Church in Inglewood. Its rector, the Rev. Joseph Oloimooja, a Kenya-born educator and community organizer, was celebrant for the Eucharist with music led by the Episcopal Chorale under the direction of Canon Dr. Chas Cheatham.
Leemhuis said both Jones and Harris – who prior to ordination was a high-ranking public relations executive with Sun Oil Company – repeatedly demonstrated grace and resilience in countering opponents to their respective ministries, Leemhuis emphasized. Harris was a tireless advocate for marriage equality and full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people and ministries in the church.
The Eucharist was co-sponsored by the diocesan Program Group on Black Ministry, chaired by Canon Suzanne Edwards-Acton. In recent years, the program group and local UBE chapter have collaborated on a series of liturgical gatherings commemorating historic African-American leaders and movements in the Episcopal Church. Among upcoming observances will be a liturgy for the Juneteenth federal holiday marking the official end of slavery in the United States after the Civil War.