By Sarah Louise Woodford, Canon for Communications & Media
“Set us free, heavenly Father, from every bond of prejudice and fear; that, honoring the steadfast courage of your servant Absalom Jones, we may show forth in our lives the reconciling love and true freedom of the children of God, which you have given us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”
This is the collect members of the Episcopal Church will say on February 13 to remember and honor the Reverend Absalom Jones, America’s first Black priest (1746-1818), whose life reflected steadfast courage and a ministry that was steeped in the reconciling love and true freedom of the children of God.
According to the Episcopal Archives, Jones was enslaved in Delaware from birth. At age 16, his master separated him from his mother and sisters and brought him to Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, Jones attended a night school operated by Quakers and upon attaining his freedom in 1784, he served as lay minister for the Black membership at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church with his friend, Richard Allen. He and Allen went on to establish the Free African Society, which aided in the emancipation of enslaved people and offered spiritual and material support to widows, orphans, and the poor. When the yellow fever epidemic hit Philadelphia in 1793, the society served both Black and White communities as nurses and aides while others fled the city.
In 1792, Jones led the establishment of what would become the first Black Episcopal Church in the United States. In its application to the Diocese of Pennsylvania, the church gave the diocese three requirements: they must be received as an organized body, they must have control in the running of their community, and they must have Jones licensed as lay-reader and if he qualified, ordained as their minister. Upon acceptance, the church was renamed the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas. Jones became a deacon the following year but was not ordained a priest until 1802. He became the first Black American priest at 56 years old.
During his lifetime, Jones also founded the Female Benevolent Society and the African Friendly Society. In late 1799/early 1800, he petitioned Congress to abolish the slave trade and to provide for gradual emancipation of existing slaves.
The Rev. Cn. D Littlepage, Canon for Advocacy, Racial Justice & Reconciliation says, “It’s important to continue to celebrate the Rev. Absalom Jones, not just as an historical first, but as a witness to the kind of persevering faith that continually seeks to live into the kingdom of God despite opposition from the world—and even the church!”
ECCT will celebrate and witness the persevering faith of the Rev. Absalom Jones on Sunday, February 16, at 4 PM with a special service of Holy Eucharist at St. Paul’s on the Green in Norwalk, CT. The Rev. Dr. Tommy Watson will be the preacher and the Rt. Rev. Jeff Mello will be the chief Celebrant. Following the service, all are welcome to gather for a festive reception, offering an opportunity to connect, share stories, and celebrate in community.
The Rev. Margie Baker & Canon Sarah Louise Woodford
Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of spending some time with the Rev. Margie Baker of St. John’s, West Hartford. We spoke about her first book, God, Gospel, and Gender: A Queer Bible Study for Teens, which was published June 2024. The following interview has been edited and condensed for publication.
Sarah: Margie, could you tell us about how God, Gospel, and Gender came to be?
Margie: I love the story of how this book came into existence, because it was very much an accident and not at all my plan. I was at Forma in 2023 and they were having a pre-conference worship service at Virginia Theological Seminary’s chapel. After the service, I saw Lisa Kimball, who is a professor at VTS. She’s a lay person and is all about life-long and life-wide formation. She said, “Oh, Margie, it’s so good to see you. Margie, this is Justin—Justin, Margie should write something for you.” And it turned out that Justin was one of the publishers at Church Publishing. And he turned to me and said, “Well, hi, Margie, what do you want to write?”
A few weeks before this meeting, I had been talking to a parent who is a trained catechist about how there’s not a good Bible study for children who have questions about LGBTQ issues. There are books that exist that are affirming but they’re not based in the Bible. And so, I told him that I would love to create something that was affirming and based in the Bible. He said, “Okay.”
I then created a plan for the book and ran it with my Monday night Bible study group. They were my guinea pigs over seven weeks. And that’s a group who ranges in age from 25 to 80. Over the next six months, I wrote it, and it was published in June 2024.
I did not mean to write this book. It was not my plan.
SW: How does your book specifically expand Bible studies through a queer lens?
MB: It’s a book for everybody. It’s for teens and tweens, but it’s also for allies. It’s for people who have questions, and it’s for queer and trans kids. What I found, and this resonates with my own experience growing up in the church, is that I always believed in the dignity and inherent worth of queer and trans folk, myself included, but I always assumed that was in spite of the Bible. I also came from a progressive Episcopal church, and so we didn’t necessarily spend a lot of time reading Scripture. I knew that there were some verses that were harsh, and I had never thought critically about what Scripture says big picture-wise for the dignity and belovedness of all God’s children. And so, when I fell in love with scripture in seminary, I was able to find that big-picture lens in Bible studies for adults or children.
I wanted to look at the first creation story through a queer affirming lens. I wanted to look at the way families come in all different shapes and sizes, and that Jesus—or that God—seems to bless the ones that don’t look traditional. What are we saying in our culture when we talk about traditional families and to just have a wider lens on what it means for God to create everything? What does it mean for God to change people’s names—what does it mean that God renames Jacob, Israel? And what does it say about the fact that we get to transform, and we get to change, over our lifetimes into something that’s closer to what God called us to be than maybe the way we were known at first.
SW: Margie, could you speak about the process of testing your book material out on your Monday night Bible study group? How did they help you create the book?
MB: I started off with, I think, six weeks of ideas. Then I would give our Zoom Bible study the Scripture through Google Slides, so we’re all reading the same thing. Some people brought their own favorite translation along. And they asked amazing questions and came up with other things that ended up being chapters. Like somebody, when we were talking about Genesis 1, was wondering: “Well, what could that say about the second creation story in Genesis 2?” Then we started playing with what happens if you know that Adam comes from the word for earth, and that it means earthling or muddling, and that it doesn’t have anything to do with sex. In fact, the word man doesn’t show up until after woman is created out of his side, not his rib. Then that became a chapter, because if it’s not about women being subordinate to men, then what is that story about? Maybe it’s about being made for community. Adam, the earthling, needs other stuff as well. And in fact, it’s not enough for the earthling to have God and to have other animals, but the earthling needs somebody of its own kind, and that we’re made for community. So maybe it’s not about a nuclear family and it’s not about marriage, but it is about being made for community and not being made to be alone. That’s an example of how we moved through questions together and how they helped me create new things.
SW: Was there a particular section you enjoyed writing?
MB: There’s one activity at the beginning of Chapter Three, which is about God and different types of families. Because this was initially designed for teens, the opening activity for Chapter Three is called “Bible or Teen Drama?” There are different scenarios and you have to say whether it’s from Scripture or whether it’s from YA (young adult) or adult fiction. So that was really fun to write, just with an eye toward humor.
SW: What do you hope your readers will gain from reading God, Gospel, and Gender?
MB: I hope that people know it’s not just for the LGBTQ community and that the vast majority of the people who came to my Monday night Bible study were allies, or maybe had never had an opinion because they didn’t need to, and then one of their kids came out as trans, for instance. I hope my readers will discover that the book is a way into Scripture that’s friendly, faithful, and makes space for questions and God’s grace. Jesus doesn’t speak about homosexuality in the Bible. Isn’t that interesting? Jesus does call us to love God and to love our neighbor. Jesus is always putting everything through a lens of love. So for me, it empowers me as a queer person, but it also empowers an ally to say, “Wow, I can love God, and I can love my neighbor, and I can specifically stand up for my queer and trans friends, not in spite of Scripture, but because this is who God made me to be. This is who God has called me to be. This is the work that God has called me to do.”
By Canon Sarah Louise Woodford
Did you know that Advent observances had more in common with Lent, especially in the Middle Ages? Though not as rigorous as Lent (especially in regards to fasting days), Advent was a time marked with fasting, simplicity, and pilgrimage. It was a time to focus on the life of Jesus and to step into his story to deepen faith, to deepen connection, to deepen compassion.
As I spoke with Sasha Biagiarelli, Ekklesia Contemporary Ballet’s Administrator and Business Manager, about the company’s upcoming production of Ahavah, I couldn’t help but wonder—is Ahavah a modern-day Advent pilgrimage for us here in ECCT?
The production tells the story of a girl named Hope, who lives in the modern age. Her life is one of repetition and routine. Yet—she is longing to find meaning in her life, she is longing to be part of a larger story. Her longing is met by finding the Bible and then stepping into the past and into the story of Jesus. After Hope’s discovery of the Bible, the ballet moves between the present day and Biblical times and Hope learns to find inner meaning, and Jesus, through it all.
This imaginative retelling of the story of Jesus’ birth and life has run for 18 years and Sasha has been part of the production for seven. One of the reasons she thinks this retelling of Jesus’ life is so effective is that it isn’t based on speech, it’s based on movement. “Movement,” she says, “allows for more abstraction, more space. It passes the conscious part of the brain. It surpasses words.”
She gave me the example of a scene in the production between Jewish and Gentile women at a well. It begins with a Roman soldier drawing a line down the center and then each side tries to gain a larger portion of the well—some outwardly fight with each other, some sneakily tip-toe around the well so as not to be detected. The scene ends with one of the women being pushed into the well. It’s funny, it’s sad, and it says something bigger about empire, about conflict, about human nature and its need for the life of Jesus.
If that’s not an Advent pilgrimage, I don’t know what is.
Ahavah will run from December 7 to December 8 at Middletown High School. You can purchase tickets here. All of the profits from the performances will be donated to St, Vincent de Paul soup kitchen in Middletown.
Written By: Caela Collins, Digital Storyteller
Photo Credit: The Reverend, Deacon Donald Burr, Christ Church (Stratford)
The blood in your veins, trembles in the presence of water,
Rushing towards an ancient past that passed but refuses to pass away.
Like the buried seeds, whose harvest sits atop varnished wood
During a November altar, reveals the immortality of ancestral traditions
Even as the recipe alters.
It’s the rivers that give you shivers.
The rumbling world below your steps are quaking the earth.
Un-birth your faults when friction builds along the edges of plates,
Piled with potatoes, cranberries, pumpkin, and three sisters.
Miracles live in your lithosphere;
It’s the magnitude of tribes who marched before you
Who are at the epicenter of turning tides,
Causing your spirit to quiver.
Give thanks to our “Long Tidal River,”
A name baptized by ancient elder tongues
Who inherently knew the restorative power and blessing in The Creator’s water
In “Quinnitukqut.”
Now named Connecticut, the bridge that binds historical text and esoteric nature
In a world where Ezekiel 47:9 becomes a synonym for waterbirth.
Deep within the rivers is a knowing, a humbling calling.
Not a place for drinking, but one where knees are falling.
The hunger for a Native past
Is passed around the table of offering,
Anointing the centerpiece of prayer.
There’s something in the water,
You feel it in your bones.
Light a candle of gratitude,
Because the ancestors are here.
