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Early Sermons from the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, Philadelphia
by William Douglass, The Library The Library of Anglican Theology, Absalom Jones
2021·136 pages·en
by William Douglass, The Library The Library of Anglican Theology, Absalom Jones
'It has pleased God to appear in behalf of oppressed and distressed nations.' --Absalom Jones This volume brings together the sermons of Absalom Jones and William Douglass, the first two rectors of the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia, a community originally established in 1792 as the African Church. From its inception, the church was led by and for persons of African descent in order to foster freedom and self-determination. These values reverberate throughout "A Thanksgiving Sermon" by Absalom Jones. In that sermon, Jones not only thanks God for coming down to end the transatlantic slave trade. He also proclaims that this liberating God will always intervene on behalf of the oppressed, thereby condemning "the author of their oppressions." William Douglass, too, asks what it means to fast and pray and sing in a land where white supremacy holds so many Black bodies in the bondage of violence. "Avarice, pride and ambition might be expatiated upon as sins of which this nation stands guilty before God," Douglass wrote, "but the great master sin of the nation is, that of sanctioning that system of outrage, which allows man to hold property in his fellow-man, the system, that blots out the moral image traced upon the soul by the hand of God, and writes thereupon--'it is a thing.'" Throughout his sermons, Douglass's moral imagination shows itself to be saturated with Scripture and poetry, and he makes constant recourse to The Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the church's hymnography. Yet in addition to providing a rich portrait of Douglass's own mind, his sermons also reveal a community confronting the varied experiences of human life. Together, they face the horrendous losses brought about by a cholera pandemic, they celebrate those who create spaces for Black life to flourish, and, above all, they ask how they might redeem the time while living in an evil day. Included in this volume: "A Thanksgiving Sermon" (1808) by Absalom Jones and Sermons Preached in the African Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, Philadelphia (1854) by William Douglass. Seminary Street Press is donating all profits from this volume to the community which Jones and Douglass so faithfully served, the African Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Thomas. Absalom Jones (1746-1818) was the first rector of the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas and the first African-American priest in the Episcopal Church. William Douglass (1804-1862) began his ministry as a preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Maryland before being ordained as a deacon in the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1834--"the very first ordination of a colored man in the Episcopal Church on Southern soil," as George F. Bragg was to write. Douglass was recruited by the people of St. Thomas to serve as Jones's successor, and in 1836 he was ordained a priest. A speaker on the anti-slavery lecture circuit, Douglass worked against white supremacy in both church and society. About the Library of Anglican Theology Published by Seminary Street Press, the Library of Anglican Theology seeks to provide newly typeset editions of important works from the Anglican tradition for a wide array of contemporary readers--Christian laypeople, historians of the Church, seminary students, bishops, priests, deacons, catechists, and theologians. The Library will provide a rich foundation on which to build as Anglicans continue to theologically engage with the pressing questions of our time.
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