Prayer and praise
By The Rt Rev’d Jennifer A. Reddall, sixth bishop of Arizona
This Saturday at 11:00am our annual service in honor of Blessed Absalom Jones will take place at Saint Philip’s in the Hills in Tucson. I am very grateful to the leaders of the Union of Black Episcopalians for their work in organizing the service, and the leaders of Saint Philip’s for their hospitality and accommodation.
If you are not familiar with the story of Absalom Jones, the first Black priest ordained in the Episcopal Church, I encourage you to look him up online or in Lesser Feasts and Fasts.
Lesser Feasts and Fasts is the “Calendar of Saints” for the Episcopal Church—recognizing both long-recognized, historic saints and more recent lives that have inspired and shaped our devotion.
What edition of Lesser Feasts and Fasts you have will affect the stories you read, and comparing the 2009 edition of Holy Women, Holy Men (a one-time, interim version of Lesser Feasts and Fasts) to the 2022 Lesser Feasts and Fasts teaches us quite a bit.
The biography of Absalom Jones in Holy Women, Holy Men from 2009 is one page long; the biography in the 2022 version of LFF is two pages long. Facts about Blessed Absalom that were incorporated in the new version but were omitted in the original include that Absalom Jones was enslaved by Abraham Wynkoop, a wealthy Anglican planter.
In the 2009 version, we wanted to know he was born a slave, but we didn’t want to take responsibility for the fact that we were a church that had no problem having members who were enslaving others. The 2009 version didn’t describe that Abraham Wynkoop sold Absalom Jones’ mother, sister, and five brothers when he was 16. It didn’t say that Absalom Jones and his wife needed the permission of those who enslaved them to get married. It didn’t say that he repeatedly asked the man who enslaved him to grant him his freedom and that it took almost 20 years after he purchased his wife’s freedom for him to finally be able to buy his own.
Both editions tell a story about Absalom Jones, but the first one leaves out many of the details that implicate us. And I’m sure many more details could be added that would implicate us further.
How much truth we tell about Episcopal participation in, and benefit from, slavery is important. We ought not skip stories we need to hear, or the details of stories we need to hear. Stories that bind us all together in complicity in the injustice of the institutions we inherit, attend, and lead; stories that guide us forward into a future marked by repentance, restoration, and reparation.
I invite you to join us at 11:00am on Saturday for prayer and praise.