24th Temple Guard: The Rt. Honourable Rev. Absolom Jones
A Temple Guardian:
The Right Honourable Mini-Star, Absalom Jones.
Absalom Jones was born into slavery in Sussex County, Delaware, U.S, on November 7, 1746 and ascended in peace on February 13, 1818.
When he was sixteen, his owner sold him along with his mother and siblings to a neighbouring farmer, the same year the farmer kept Absalom, but sold his mother and siblings, and moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Absalom was allowed to attend a school here and learned to read and write. While still enslaved by Mr. Wynkoop, Absalom married Mary King (an enslaved woman owned by S. King, a neighbor to the Wynkoops), in 1770.
By 1778 Absalom had purchased his wife's freedom so that their children would be free; Absalom also wrote to his master seeking his own freedom, but was initially denied, but in 1784, however, Wynkoop set him free and he took the surname "Jones".
By 1790 Jones had became a lay minister of the interracial congregation of St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Together with Richard Allen, Jones was one of the first African Americans licensed to preach by the Methodist Episcopal Church.
But the white members of the church still practiced racial discrimination, so in 1792, while at St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church, Absalom Jones and other black members were told not to join the rest of the congregation and instead had to be segregated. After completing their prayer, Jones and most of the church's black members got up and walked out.
Jones and Allen founded the Free African Society (FAS), a non-denominational mutual aid society, to help newly freed slaves in Philadelphia. Jones and Allen later separated in 1794 as there ministry’s took them in different directs, however they remained lifelong friends and collaborators.
Jones wanted to establish a black congregation independent of white control, while remaining part of the Episcopal Church. After a successful petition, the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, the first black church in Philadelphia, opened its doors on July 17, 1794. Jones was ordained as a deacon in 1795 and as a priest in 1804, became the first African-American priest in the Episcopal Church.
A month after St. Thomas church opened, the Founders and Trustees published "The Causes and Motives for Establishing St. Thomas's African Church of Philadelphia," saying their intent was
“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.”
Until ascending in peace on 13th February 1818, Jones continued to work tirelessly, through the ministry of his church, to raise the social and economical condition, he petitioned congressed, spoke openly and slavery and was very vocal about the need for Black people, to own, run and develop their own Church’s independent of outside control.
The Credentials and Significance:
He devoted his life to first obtaining his own freedom, then that of his brethrin, not only physically but also spiritually. He co-founded the Free African Society and help to establish the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in 1794, the first independent black Methodist denomination in the United States. He like his trusted associate Richard Allen and others, saw the need for African's to worship the Divine and Christ, through their own unique Spectacles, Temples & Churches.
