As many of you are well aware by now, yesterday, on the first of February and the first day of Black History Month, several of our historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) were terrorized with bomb threats. Sadly, this incarnates the reality that we still have a long collective way to go to reach Beloved Community and that any notion that we can now stop talking, working, and struggling toward it is an illusion.

I want to say first how sorry I am to our African American and Black siblings who feel the terror of such acts and to all the BIPOC community as well. Second, I want to encourage all of you to be proactive in speaking out against this, and also to be working to change it.

Another concrete thing that I was going to put before you and ask of you, even before the sad events of yesterday, was to consider a gift to the HBCUs. Below, you will find a link to our Presiding Bishop’s invitation to give to the Absalom Jones fund in support of our HBCUs. You will also find instructions that will help facilitate your generosity both to economically assist these fine institutions but now, even more, to stand in solidarity with them. I gave today! Please pray for those who live in fear and anxiety due to such acts, and for those who feel the need to perpetrate them. Pray for our human family.

Presiding Bishop Curry invites gifts to Absalom Jones Fund for Episcopal HBCUs.

Giving the full history: Who owned Absalom Jones?

Absalom Jones is one of the Episcopal Church’s and our nation’s most heroic founding fathers, and on February 13, we commemorate blessed Absalom, the first black priest and founder of the first black congregation in the Episcopal Church. Absalom Jones had been born into slavery in 1746 and achieved his own freedom in 1784. But, from whom?

I know it’s awkward at this time of celebration to acknowledge the man who enslaved Absalom. But the 2006 General Convention mandated that the Episcopal Church give a “full, faithful and informed account of our history” with slavery. So, the time is right to remember that the man he called “master” for 38 years was Benjamin Wynkoop vestrymen, warden and benefactor of Christ Church and St. Peter’s in Philadelphia, our Church’s two historic congregations that helped give birth both to the nation and the Episcopal Church. May a fair accounting of Jones’ and Wynkoop’s history as slave and master provide Episcopalians today with the insight to overcome the legacies of a racist past infecting our society, and beloved Church, still.

Absalom was not given the last name of Jones when born on the plantation of Wynkoop’s parents in Sussex, Delaware. At an early age, he was taken from the fields and came to work in the house. When Wynkoop chose to farm no longer, but to make his way as a merchant, he sold Absalom’s mother and six siblings, and brought the 16-year-old Absalom as his slave to Philadelphia in 1762.

Upon arriving in Philadelphia, Wynkoop began attending the newly constructed St. Peter’s, built when Christ Church had become fully subscribed; Christ Church and St. Peter’s were one parish church in two congregations.

Wynkoop’s business was successful, and how not? Absalom labored from dawn to dusk, he reported, often till midnight. Not only staffed by slave labor, the store sold the fruits of slave labor: “rum, molasses, coffee, chocolate, pepper, and other groceries.” According to a biographer, Wynkoop was a “prompt contributor to worthy causes” through his gains reaped by the labor of others. A major donor in the parish, Wynkoop was elected to the common Vestry of Christ Church and St. Peter’s in 1769.

According to Absalom’s own autobiographical sketch, Wynkoop permitted him to attend a school for blacks, possibly one in Christ Church conducted by the Bray Associates (another history that needs a full accounting). Absalom married a slave, Mary, whose master was Wynkoop’s neighbor and fellow parishioner at St. Peter’s. Absalom took on the cause of Mary’s freedom. With the skills learned in school, he wrote the case and raised the necessary money to purchase her freedom, which her master accepted. Absalom remained a slave.

When General Howe marched his British troops into Philadelphia in the autumn of 1777, Wynkoop temporarily fled. Absalom could have easily taken refuge with and received freedom from the British. But he stayed in the Wynkoop’s store. Mary was now free, he had a family that he would not abandon, and a house he had built that he rented to free blacks, saving the money. “I made application to my master in 1778 to purchase my own freedom,” he wrote, “but this was not granted.”

“My desire for freedom increased,” he wrote, because he feared that, while a slave, his house might be taken by Wynkoop. He made “many applications to [Wynkoop] for liberty to purchase my freedom,” but Wynkoop wouldn’t budge. Why couldn’t Wynkoop breath the air of freedom rich and redolent in Philadelphia? Why did his Church, that had many abolitionists as members, remain silent? Those are the questions we are obligated to ask now.

On October 1, 1784, Absalom recounts with a charity surprising that Wynkoop, “generously gave me a manumission.” Then, Absalom freely took the surname Jones, uniquely American and sounding nothing like the Dutch Wynkoop.

Within three years, Absalom Jones co-founded the Free African Society. In 1792, he led his congregation from St. George’s Methodist Church and founded St. Thomas, which then in 1794 affiliated with the Episcopal Diocese, and the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas was born. But what of Benjamin Wynkoop? He becomes warden of Christ Church and St. Peter’s during these formative years of the Episcopal Church, but little detail of his life remains. The most interesting detail is from Absalom Jones.

After his manumission, he writes, “I have ever since continued in [Wynkoop’s] service at good wages, and I still find it my duty, both late and early, to be industrious to improve the little estate that a kind Providence has put in my hands.”

I leave to historians the interpretation of the meaning or importance of Absalom Jones continuing to work for Benjamin Wynkoop, building a relationship of some warmth and forbearance such that Wynkoop’s respect for Jones was quoted in Jones’ obituary in 1818. But I challenge myself, and the tour guides at Christ Church who will tell Wynkoop’s history of slaveholding this year to some 100,000 school children, not to jump to the conclusion of a happy ending to a slavery story in our beloved Episcopal Church. I hope that Jones and Wynkoop truly enjoyed the embrace of reconciliation, but take that possibility as a challenge today to reconcile our present Church with its own history with slavery. Might we be guided by the wisdom of theologian Miroslav Volf: “Remembering well is one key to redeeming the past; and the redemption of the past is itself nestled in the broader story of God’s restoring of our broken world to wholeness — a restoration that includes the past, present, and future.”

Absalom Jones wrote that the motivation for founding the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas was “to encourage us to arise out of the dust and shake ourselves, and throw off that servile fear, that the habit of oppression and bondage trained us up in.” That same habit of oppression and bondage will continue to infect the Episcopal Church until we tell our complete history with slavery. I pray we, as a Church, arise out of the dust and shake ourselves, and give an informed account of the slaveholders in our past, and not just the slaves.

[This article from the Episcopal Church website.]

Bishop Greg Rickel

The Rt. Rev. Gregory H. Rickel was elected bishop on May 12, 2007, and became the eighth Bishop of Olympia in September 2007. He embraces radical hospitality that welcomes all, no matter where they find themselves on their journey of faith. He envisions a church that is a safe and authentic community in which to explore God’s infinite goodness and grace as revealed in the life and continuing revelation of Jesus Christ.

Church of the Redeemer

Welcome to Church of the Redeemer: Worshiping God, living in community, and reaching out to the world. We are an Episcopal Church serving north King County and south Snohomish County, Washington. As you travel your road, go with friends walking the way of Jesus at Redeemer.

Church of the Redeemer is at 6220 Northeast 181st Street in Kenmore, Washington. We are a short distance north of Bothell Way, near the Burke-Gilman Trail. The entrance looks like a gravel driveway. The campus is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. And we managed to hide a large building on the side of a hill that is not easily seen from the street.

The Episcopal Church welcomes you.

Bishop Rickel’s Statement on the Kyle Rittenhouse Verdict
Declaración del Obispo Rickel sobre el veredicto en el caso de Kyle Rittenhouse

Dear Ones,

I was saddened to learn of the verdict today in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the young man who traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year and fatally shot two people, seriously injuring a third. The incident brought to the surface many of the issues that our country wrestles with—and all-too-often attempts to ignore—around racial justice, white vigilantism, and gun violence. Rittenhouse came to Kenosha, heavily armed, as part of a mob of white men to stop the protests for racial justice and took two lives. Under the auspices of protecting property, he came prepared to commit violent acts and did just that. As the prosecutor stated, there is a difference in defending yourself from violence perpetrated against you, and you creating the situation in order for you to do it—or more specifically, “You lose the right to self-defense when you’re the one who brought the gun, when you are the one creating the danger, when you’re the one provoking other people.”

As the verdict came in today, it has been widely observed that we have two legal systems in this country—one for white men, and one for everyone else. Many have suggested that if Rittenhouse had been Black, the verdict would have been drastically different. I would go further—when you watch the videos of that night, I would say if Rittenhouse had been Black, he most likely would not have come out of that night alive. A young white man brazenly carrying an automatic weapon through city streets was virtually ignored by law enforcement. Had it been a Black man, I do believe the result would be drastically different.

In these same days we are witnessing the trial of the ambush of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man, in Brunswick, Georgia. And even with all the accused admitting that Arbery was unarmed and ultimately not threatening them, and all evidence pointing to Arbery trying to flee the scene unarmed, this case hangs in this unjust balance as well. In both cases, we see self-appointed vigilante’s taking justice into their own hands. And folks, if it can happen to these folks, it can just as easily happen to any of us.

But, the point is, mostly, it doesn’t. Especially if we are white, if we are privileged, if we have enough money to defend ourselves. We simply must do better, and we must be better.

This comes only one day after a judge in New York “prayed” about the sentencing of a young white man who had pleaded guilty to charges rape, sexual abuse, and sexual harassment and only gave the man probation because he said that prison time “wasn’t appropriate” (Judge ‘Prayed’ About It and Decided That Prison Time for Admitted Rapist of Teen Girls ‘Isn’t Appropriate’).

We know that incarceration rates for Black Americans is five times the rate of white Americans, and for Latin Americans it is 1.3 times higher (The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons). According to the ACLU, women who kill their abusers will spend an average of 15 years in prison, while men who kill their spouses spend two to six years in prison (Women Serve Longer Prison Sentences After Killing Abusers: When men kill the women they’re abusing, statistics say they get out sooner). Men from Indigenous communities are four times more likely to be incarcerated than white men, while Indigenous women are six time more likely (Indigenous Communities and Mass Incarceration).

Justice is supposed to be blind, but time and time again, our justice system has been proven to favor white men. It is severely out of balance.

I pray for all involved in this case, including Kyle Rittenhouse. I pray for all the victims of gun violence. I pray for our country and for our justice system. There is so much that needs to change. Let’s engage and act so that we may see a more just system going forward. To get involved in making our criminal justice system equitable, you can see what steps The Episcopal Church’s Office of Government Relations recommends here: Get Involved with Criminal Justice Reform.

Blessings,

+Greg

Bishop Greg Rickel

The Rt. Rev. Gregory H. Rickel was elected bishop on May 12, 2007, and became the eighth Bishop of Olympia in September 2007. He embraces radical hospitality that welcomes all, no matter where they find themselves on their journey of faith. He envisions a church that is a safe and authentic community in which to explore God’s infinite goodness and grace as revealed in the life and continuing revelation of Jesus Christ.

The Episcopal Diocese of Olympia

The Episcopal Diocese of Olympia traces its history to the establishment of the Missionary Jurisdiction of the Oregon and Washington Territories in 1853. We are also known as the Episcopal Church in Western Washington.

Admitted by General Convention in 1910, the Diocese of Olympia is made up of more than 26,000 Episcopalians in more than 100 worshiping communities through Western Washington. Our geographic area stretches south from Canada to Oregon and west from the foothills of the Cascade Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.

Through worship we do the following:

• Affirm our faith
• Pray together
• Reconcile together
• Share peace and thanksgiving together
• Gain strength and renewal through Eucharist
• Prepare ourselves to minister to the world

We share hope in God’s incredibly extensive grace to forgive all repentant people.

Our congregations cover a whole range of sizes and stages of development. Several affiliated institutions and numerous outreach and social justice ministries as well as a number of multicultural ministries are supported by the whole diocese.

Church of the Redeemer

Church of the Redeemer: Worshiping God, living in community, and reaching out to the world around us. We are an Episcopal Church serving north King County and south Snohomish County, Washington. As you travel your road, go with friends walking the way of Jesus at Redeemer.

Church of the Redeemer is at 6220 Northeast 181st Street in Kenmore, Washington. We are a short distance north of Bothell Way, near the Burke-Gilman Trail. The entrance looks like a gravel driveway. The campus is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. And we managed to hide a large building on the side of a hill that is not easily seen from the street.

The Episcopal Church welcomes you.