The “Stained-glass ceiling still exists,” said one of our African American clergy when asked what challenges still face Black clergy in this Diocese … We look at where we have been so we can see where we were, how we have grown, what we have overcome and where we may still have room to grow.

We are reminded by Francene’s testimony that If the Episcopal Church truly wishes to live up to its signage, “The Episcopal Church Welcomes you,” and does not want to stand accused and bear the tarnish of false advertising, then its members must be mindful of the things we do, the things we say, the things we do not do and do not say that can cause any of God’s children to feel unsafe, rejected, or not welcome. We must be willing to do some root work - the painful, the painstaking and sometimes excruciating work - of digging below the gumline to clean out the built-up gunk that can cause decay above the surface. We must be made aware of “things done and left undone” that may bruise and scar the dignity of others - that already have – causing them to seek refuge and a nesting place in the world instead of looking to the church to find it. This we do, not only for the sake of adding to the rolls of our churches, but for the sake of adding to God’s Kingdom.

Storytelling across the lines can be risky, but the potential rewards far outweigh the risks. At times, in my own telling I have felt anxious about sharing with a particular audience when I have felt my stories (i.e., I) would be rejected, or unappreciated, or criticized for some reason. I have worried that I might sound too Baptist-y for my Episcopalian audiences or too Episcopalian for my Baptist audiences; sound too ethnic for my Anglo audiences or not ethnic enough when telling in the company of other African American tellers. Years ago I was invited to present at an event commemorating Abraham Lincoln to an all-white, largely older audience. My husband advised me to “go easy on the slave stuff”—but being unable to create a program about Abraham Lincoln without including the stories of African American slaves, I couldn’t go so easy on it. Following my storytelling, an elderly woman approached me and apologized for her great-grandfather who had been a slave trader. To have gone too “easy” on telling what I feared the audience wouldn’t want to hear would have denied her that opportunity.

The people who sang together, prayed together, and worshipped together in these sacred places and spaces endured not only the challenges placed before them of a segregated world; a world that too often and in too many ways placed barriers before them, deemed them to be less than, then set about proving that to be so, but also the insult and injury caused them by their brothers and sisters in the faith, of another hue, who professed to seek and serve Christ in all persons,” only to follow it with a “but…” There are lessons to be learned from their stories, even from the ones that are no longer here to tell them. They still carry a balm that can bring healing even in this time. Every bit of medicine that we must take is not sweet. It is often the medicine that is bitterest and that even carries a lingering aftertaste that brings the desired healing.

Individuals, organizations, businesses, and churches alike were being required to take actions they were uncomfortable with and certainly unaccustomed to that would lead to better and fuller lives for a greater number of people, right? One might have thought that the Church, made up of followers of Christ, would be at the forefront of the movement or, at the least, would not be among the last to board the train. Right? Throughout the Movement, however, the practices of the Church, or should I say, church folk, too often reflected the practices of the world, instead of the other way around. Instead of modeling Christ to the world, it appeared in some cases to be following in the world’s footsteps.

Ironically, the largest predominantly African American Church in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas today, with a current membership of approximately 450, is the only one of the historically African American parishes of the diocese that did not have its origin as such. It began as an all-white church in the 1930’s, but is today 90% African American.  But, what’s race got to do with it? What’s race got to do with being church, at all?

When the invitation was extended, it had only been five years since the Diocesan Council meeting in Beaumont where delegates were forced to eat at segregated banquets, and where both bishops had expressed their disapproval in their addresses made to Council delegates. As compelling as the Bishop Coadjutor’s words quoted at the beginning of this article may have been to some, they failed to convince delegates to take any opposing action, but rather, resulted in their passing a resolution to commend their host for “abiding by the law.” Their refusal led Bishop Hines to warn that unless Christians in the United States supported the standards of the New Testament with respect to race, they would forfeit the position of world leadership they had recently attained.

And all these years later, when we find ourselves once again In a time of racial tension, following the deaths of George Floyd and so many who have suffered death and injury because of racism, who have been held down by the murderous knee of injustice, and when we continue to walk in suspicion of one another because of differences, however they may be defined, we are faced with questions of what and how. We are faced with questions of what can or what should the Church do. How can or how should the Church respond? Perhaps the question this story poses, or the challenge it confronts us with is the as the one posed at the beginning of this story: What happens when the Church remains silent…and keeps doing what it’s been doing as though nothing ever happened? In other words, how can the Church be the Church and remain silent?

Ever since my husband shared them with me, I have been fascinated with some old letters that he let me read. The letters written in 1935 and 1936, now nearly a century ago, were exchanged between Bishop Clinton S. Quin, the 3rd  Bishop of Texas and my father-in-law, the Rev. John E. Culmer, who at that time was priest at St. Agnes Episcopal Church in Miami, FL, and who later became Archdeacon of South Florida.

Church can be about a lot of things to a lot of people. Now, especially, we have been challenged to think about and re-think what church really means to us. Sure, church is the place where we worship, but it is so much more. For some, it is the place we come to know and know about God. It is about tradition. Service. Community. A place to be fed. And to feed. But, church is also the place we come to feel good together, with God at the center.

It’s kinda like what Beverly said, “It was just our church. The place where we went to have fun and enjoy ourselves.” That is a common attitude expressed by older Black Episcopalians when asked about their experience growing up as an Episcopalian in this diocese.

As I was thinking about the beauty and serenity of Camp Allen, as we know it now, and all its splendor and vastness all snugly tucked away among towering pine trees, some of which have no doubt been standing for ages, I started to wonder, what if those trees could talk? What if those trees that have borne witness to who-knows-what could tell the stories of all that they have seen and heard and witnessed, who would be implicated and who would be celebrated by the truths they told?

The spiritual, “Sit at the Welcome Table,” was a double entendre. When slaves, who were unwelcome at their masters’ tables, sang about the “welcome table,” they were singing about someday sitting down together at the table with and being welcomed by those who had once been their oppressors, as well as singing about a time when they would sit at the table at the marriage feast of the Lamb spoken of in the New Testament book of Revelation. African-Americans bound in slavery were never welcome to their master’s table, and this song echoed their hope of the tables turning in future glory. But whatever the case, they sang of someday being a welcomed guest at a table where everybody is accepted without prejudgments.

When I think of The Rev. John Dublin Epps, the longest serving priest for St. John the Baptist in Tyler, Texas and the second Dean of the Colored Convocation for the Diocese of Texas, I think of the verse above from Rev. James Cleveland’s 1979 gospel recording, “I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired.”

With the end of Reconstruction in Texas, segregation and suppression controlled the physical movement, social advancement, and political participation of African Americans in Texas. Laws requiring segregation of railroad cars, waiting rooms, restrooms, restaurants, entertainment establishments, and residential neighborhoods severely hindered African American mobility and advancement during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Ku Klux Klan, enacted violence and terror on Texas African Americans, and lynching became an increasingly prevalent form of racial intimidation. Between 1885 and 1942, there were 468 documented victims of lynching in Texas, the overwhelming majority of whom were African American.

Named after the biblical prophet, John the Baptist, who was referred to as “a lone voice in the wilderness,” St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church in Tyler became the second African-American congregation in the Diocese of Texas. St. John’s began as a Sunday School for Blacks in Marshall, Texas, under the leadership of James I. N. Thompson.

No doubt, there was something exceptional about the Rev. Thomas White Cain, a pioneer in Black ministries and the cause of social justice in Texas and beyond. Whether traveling the state or the country to raise funds for St. Augustine’s, challenging the Jim Crow laws of the South, leading his people in the fight against Yellow Fever, or struggling to have a voice and a seat among his fellow Episcopalians, the challenges were great, but so were the strides he made.

In too many instances, Southerners were unwilling to see former slaves truly as fellow citizens of God’s Kingdom or to recognize them as being capable of reading, comprehending and living out the Gospel without their direction or, albeit, interference. Yet, when given the opportunity and support, they proved themselves to be no less capable or deserving. And while we recognize there are untold stories and obstacles that have been overcome that we can’t begin to imagine, we can see through the examples of these servants, called to lead in the establishment and growth of St. Augustine through the most perilous of times and devastating of circumstances, that God’s providential hand was no less upon them and that they were in no ways any less equipped to answer the call.

While the Emancipation Proclamation may have held similar religious meaning for opponents of slavery in the North and those who had been active in the abolitionist movement, who thanked God that their nation at last was purging itself of its most detestable sin, for some others, and Episcopal clergy among them, they were feeling that God had deserted them. Episcopal priests in the South had been pretty successful in getting African Americans into their churches, but while white clergy taught that all people were in equal in God’s sight, they also stressed the need for slaves to remain obedient to their masters.