Absalom Jones: the first Black priest of the Episcopal Church in America
Absalom Jones taught himself to read from the New Testament while enslaved. He later bought his wife’s freedom and then his own, and became one of the most respected leaders of Philadelphia’s free Black community. Alongside Richard Allen, he walked out of St. George’s Methodist Church in protest at discrimination. While Allen went on to found the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Jones led his congregation into the Episcopal Church and became its first Black priest.
Freedom and St. Thomas
Jones was born into slavery in Delaware in 1746. He was taken to Philadelphia as a teenager and worked in a shop. He saved money to buy his wife’s freedom first, so their children would be born free, and later gained his own freedom. When Black worshippers were told to move during prayer at St. George’s Church, Jones and Richard Allen led them out.
Jones and Allen founded the Free African Society in 1787, a mutual aid group supporting the Black community. Jones founded the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, which opened in 1794 and joined the Episcopal Church.
Ordination and the fight against slavery
He was ordained a deacon in 1795 and a priest in 1804, the first African American priest in the Episcopal Church. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, Jones and Allen organised Black volunteers to care for the sick and bury the dead. Jones petitioned Congress against slavery and the slave trade. He died in 1818. The Episcopal Church remembers him with a feast day, and St. Thomas Church continues today.
He is honoured as a pioneer of Black leadership in American churches. Though they founded different churches, Jones and Allen remained partners in serving their community.
His sermons and mutual aid
In 1808, when the United States ended the transatlantic slave trade, Jones preached a famous sermon of thanksgiving, calling the day a cause for celebration while urging continued struggle against slavery. The sermon was published and is still studied as an early example of Black preaching in America. The African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas still serves a congregation in Philadelphia, more than two centuries after its founding.
The Free African Society he helped found supported widows, orphans and the sick, and it laid foundations for later Black institutions. Absalom Jones taught himself to read from the Gospels. He ended his life as a priest, leading a congregation that still worships in Philadelphia.
