Presiding bishop honors Absalom Jones at Philadelphia’s historic Church of St. Thomas

[Episcopal News Service] To celebrate the Feast of Absalom Jones, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe traveled to the spiritual home of the first Black Episcopal priest: The African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded in 1792, with Jones as its first rector.

“We have all heard the many wonderful stories of Absalom Jones,” Rowe said in his Feb. 9 sermon. “He transformed the church, transformed the world around him… he changed lives by his mild manner,” and built a church of 500 people in only a year.

Rowe began by quoting from the Gospel of John, where Jesus said, “I am the vine, and you are the branches,” a metaphor the presiding bishop returned to several times.

“Absalom Jones built a community, and didn’t build it because he himself was a great man,” Rowe said. “He built it because he himself knew that he was to be connected to the vine, and from where his power came, and from where the glory of God would go forth through him in that place.”

Jones and other African Americans founded St. Thomas after staging a historic walkout from St. George’s Methodist Church, where they faced discrimination despite having been allowed to worship. The story is captured in “Blessed Absalom,” the opening hymn, which calls out the church by name:

Founded he Saint Thomas’ Church
For Afric’s sons and daughters blest
Full-fledged members of Christ’s body,
They no longer were oppressed.
Blessed Abs’lom, pray that we
May be the church at Christ’s behest.

(Hymn 44, Lift Every Voice and Sing)

A bulletin insert about the church’s history read, “The parish’s Eucharist-centered liturgy has evolved over the years from a traditional Anglican/Episcopal high church worship experience to one that is enriched with an evangelical Afrocentric focus.”

The two-hour service included music from St. Thomas’ Music Ministry and visiting choirs from the Bishop John T. Walker School for Boys in Washington, D.C., Church Farm School in Exton, Pennsylvania, and St. James School in Philadelphia, a liturgical dance performance, and praise music accompanied by percussion and trumpet.

“Absalom Jones knew something that I wish more of us could take to heart,” Rowe said, “and that is that it is being connected to the vine – it is following the heart of God – that leads to transformation of the world around us.”

Rowe was introduced by the Very Rev. Martini Shaw, rector of St. Thomas, who noted that it was the presiding bishop’s first church visitation since his ceremonial seating at Washington National Cathedral the previous Sunday.

The presiding bishop was accompanied by the Rev. Molly James, interim executive officer and secretary of the General Convention, and the Rev. Lester Mackenzie, the church’s chief of mission program, in visiting St. Thomas.

Many parishioners heeded the church’s Facebook invitation to wear Philadelphia Eagles merchandise to the service, as the Eagles would face the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl later in the day.

Absalom Jones was born into slavery in 1746 and released from bondage in 1784 in the wake of the American Revolution. He is listed on the Episcopal calendar of saints and remembered liturgically on the date of his death, Feb. 13. He died in 1818 at the age of 71.

His life and ministry have been celebrated for more than two centuries. He believed in the transformative power of education, and the church’s Absalom Jones Fund is currently soliciting donations in support of two historically Black Episcopal universities: Saint Augustine’s University in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Voorhees University in Denmark, South Carolina.

— Kirk Petersen is a freelancer who has written extensively about The Episcopal Church.