February 24, 2013 Bulletin St Stephen’s Episcopal Church Celebrates Black History Month 2013 James Theodore Holly (1829 - 1911) The Right Reverend James Theodore Holly was born in Washington, D.C. on October 3, 1829. He would become the first African-American Bishop in the Episcopal Church and serve as Bishop of Haiti from 1874 until his death in 1911. James Theodore Holly was descended from freed slaves as well as slave-owners. His great- great-grandfather was a Scotsman who freed several of his slaves in 1772, including his son (who would later become Bishop Holly’s great-grandfather). James was well-educated in both public and private schools as well as by tutors. As a youth in Washington, DC and Brooklyn, Holly connected with Frederick Douglas and other prominent abolitionists. Although Holly was baptized and raised in the Roman Catholic Church, but due to a dispute over the ordination of black clergy, he left the Roman Catholic Church and joined the Episcopal Church in 1851 (at age 21). He married Charlotte Holly and they moved to Windsor, Canada, where a young Holly helped former slave Henry Bibb, edit his newspaper, Voice of the Fugitive. In 1856 Holly was ordained a priest in New Haven, Connecticut. That same year he co-founded the Protestant Episcopal Society for Promoting the Extension of the Church Among Colored People, which challenged the Church to take a position at General Convention against slavery. Holly served as rector at St Luke’s Church in New Haven, Connecticut until 1861. Work in Haiti Even as he continued his religious activities, Reverend Holly was increasingly drawn toward emigration, believing that African Americans had no future in the United States. While still in his 20s, Holly was selected as Commissioner for the newly formed National Emigration Board. In that role, he traveled to Haiti in order to negotiate an emigration treaty. During that first visit to Haiti, he explored the possibility of establishing a mission for the Episcopal Church. After returning to Connecticut, Reverend Holly requested that he be sent to Haiti to serve as a missionary, but the request was denied by the Board of Missions of the Episcopal Church. However, Holly maintained his interest in Haiti, the on- ly country where slaves had led a successful revolt to overthrow European forces. He viewed Haiti as an opportunity for blacks to bind together and establish a black nation in the Western hemisphere. Reverend Holly believed that bringing Anglicanism to Haiti would help to stabilize and develop the country more expeditiously. After resigning as Rector at St. Luke’s in 1861, Reverend Holly led a group of 110 people to Haiti. Many in the group were congregants of St. Luke’s who subscribed to Holly’s vision for Haiti. Tragically, the settlers were devastated by disease during their first year. In total, forty-three members of the Holly party died of yellow fever and malaria, including Holly’s mother, wife and two of his children, leaving only two sons, ages 3 and 5 years old. In his memoir (published in 1897) “Facts About the Church’s Mission in Haiti,” Holly wrote of this tragedy: “But amidst this terrible chastisement, God remembered me in mercy, by sanctifying His fatherly correction to me, in enduing my soul with patience under my affliction, and with resignation to His blessed will. He comforted me with a sense of His goodness; lifted up the light of His countenance upon me; and gave me peace by bringing to my spiritual apprehension that, as the last surviving apostle of Jesus was "in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ," on [9/10] the forlorn isle of Patmos, so, by His Divine Providence, He had brought this tribulation upon me for a similar end in this isle in the Caribbean Sea. St. John had a mission to fulfill, by command of the Lord, in writing to churches that had fallen away from their pristine Gospel integrity. I had come to Haiti to bear a pure Gospel testimony to a nominally Christian people whose knowledge of Christianity had been received from a church which had also fallen away from its original purity.” Reverend Holly remained in Haiti with only the most dedicated followers and eventually established schools, a church (Holy Trinity in Port-au-Prince), and programs in pastoral training and medicine. In 1865, following several denied requests, he finally received lim- ited sponsorship from the Board of Missions for his work in Haiti. After serving as consul for Liberia at Port-au-Prince from 1864 to1874, Holly was consecrated Missionary Bishop to Haiti at Grace Episcopal Church in New York City, becoming the first African American bishop in the Episcopal Church in 1874. Bishop Holly served as a delegate to the Lambeth Conference in England, and received a doctoral degree from Howard Uni- versity as well as an honorary law degree from Liberia College, Monrovia. He contributed to the Church the Church Eclectic, and the African Methodist Church reviews. The Rt. Rev. Holly continued to live and work in Haiti, returning rarely to the United States, until his death in Port-au-Prince in 1911. John Melville Burgess (1909 – 2003) The Right Reverend John Melville Burgess was born March 11, 1909 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He would become the first African American diocesan bishop in the United States. Raised in Michigan, Reverend Burgess was the son of a railroad dining car waiter and a kindergarten teacher. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from the University of Michigan (1930, 1931). In 1934, he earned his Divinity Degree from the Episcopal The- ological School and went on to become an ordained dea- con and priest, ministering to working class parishes in Michigan and Ohio during the Great Depression and WWII. In 1945, he married Canadian native Esther J. Taylor, whom he’d met at a church conference in North Carolina. From 1946-1956, Rev. Burgess served as a Chaplain at Howard University. He was named the first black canon at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. in 1951. Five years later Burgess returned to Boston as archdeacon of the city’s missions and parishes and superintendent of the Boston City Mission. He reorganized the Mission into an agent of change and worked to develop an urban mission strategy at the parish level. Rev. Burgess’s life work was to bring the church's focus onto social issues and progressive causes. Episcopal Times writer Tracy Sukraw quoted him as saying, "I just wanted to prove that the Episcopal Church could be relevant to the lives of the poor".. While working to improve urban ministry, Burgess was elected to the position of bishop suffragan of the Diocese of Massachusetts in 1962. Eight years later, he became the first African American to oversee white congregations as Bishop Coadjutor. As Bishop, Burgess was well known for his work to empower minorities in the Church and make the Episcopal Church at large, more socially conscious. After he retiring from ministry in 1975, Bishop Burgess taught pastoral theology at Yale University's Divinity School, and edited a 1982 collection of sermons delivered by black priests dating back nearly two centuries entitled, “Black Gospel, White Church”. He received honorary degrees from the University of Michigan, Boston College, Assumption College, the University of Massachusetts, Trinity College, and St. Augustine's College in North Carolina. In 1989, he and his wife Esther (also a longtime civil rights activist) moved to a modest home on Martha’s Vineyard and continued to worship at Grace Continued next page -> Church in New, where Bishop Burgess had served many times as a summer minister. On the occasion of Burgess's 90th birthday, a stained glass window was installed at Grace Church in his honor. The window features his likeness as well as that of his role model, Absalom Jones, the former slave and Philadelphia minister who was the first black to serve as a priest in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Burgess died on Martha's Vineyard at age 94. Contributed by Heather Whitson, MD Sources: James Theodore Holly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Theodore_Holly http://satucket.com/lectionary/James_Holly.htm http://www.episcopalarchives.org/Afro-Anglican_history/exhibit/leadership/holly.php http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/theodore-james-holly-1829-1911 http://anglicanhistory.org/usa/jtholly/facts1897.html John Melville Burgess http://www.answers.com/topic/burgess-john-william http://www.episcopalarchives.org/Afro-Anglican_history/exhibit/leadership/burgess.php DID YOU KNOW??? James Theodore Holly was taught the shoe-making trade by his father, and opened a boot-making shop with his brother Joseph in 1850. James Holly first became a member of the Episcopal Church in Detroit , MI and was ordained deacon at St. Paul’s Church in 1855. John Melville Burgess followed his neighbor, future President Gerald Ford to the University of Michigan John Burgess was ordained a priest at St. Phillip Episcopal Church, in Grand Rapids, MI, in 1934. This was his childhood church where he had formerly served as an altar boy. Rev. Burgess’ wife and mother were both kindergarten teachers. Bishop Burgess served as President of the Union of Black Episcopalians from 1979 to 1981. .