In a bracing sermon at St. Paul’s Commons, Echo Park today, as we marked the feast day of Absalom Jones, the first African-American ordained in The Episcopal Church, the Very Rev. Paul Anthony Daniels, dean of Bloy House, offered a timely reminder of the durability of the germ of anti-Blackness.Paul noted that Republicans in the United States Senate had just confirmed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Among his other extreme beliefs, Kennedy believes that people of African descent should be on a separate vaccination schedule since they have a better immune system than others in the population. Millions of Americans are understandably alarmed that one who holds such views is now in charge of our public health system.
The dean traced this primitive thinking to Jones’s own time. In 1793, as a yellow fever epidemic raged in Philadelphia, where Jones lived, physician and abolitionist Benjamin Rush successfully persuaded Jones, AME Church founder Richard Allen, and members of their congregations to volunteer alongside doctors treating those who were ill. Yellow fever, Rush said erroneously, “passes by persons of your color.” Equally susceptible, of course, both Allen and Rush contracted the disease and nearly died.
When such myths so long endure, Paul said, he was tempted to think it will take a miracle for society to be cured. Short of that, he called for a renewed commitment to Christian comradeship, with its increasingly countercultural value of putting the other’s interests ahead of oneself.
Because of the rains today, we were a small congregation for our 11:30 a.m. service, where all are welcome each Thursday: Canon Bob Williams, Julie Kelly, Dean Paul, the Rev. Susan Stanton, and I.