Pennsylvania Episcopalians, church to celebrate life and legacy of Absalom Jones

Portrait of Absalom Jones by Philadelphia artist Raphaelle Peale in 1810.

[Episcopal News Service] Church leaders and Episcopalians in the Diocese of Pennsylvania will celebrate the Feast of the Rev. Absalom Jones, The Episcopal Church’s first Black ordained priest, on Feb. 15 during a livestreamed service at the historic African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia, where Jones’ remains are interred in a side altar.

“We always start the service with silence and prayer surrounding [Jones’] final resting place. It’s a very moving tradition,” the Very Rev. Martini Shaw, St. Thomas’ rector since 2003 and dean of the Diocese of Pennsylvania’s Schuylkill Deanery, told Episcopal News Service.

This year, former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry will preach, and Pennsylvania Bishop Daniel Gutiérrez will preside. The celebration is taking place in partnership with nearby Christ Church and St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.

“What I love about St. Thomas is the congregation knows how to praise God and joyfully shout, ‘Hallelujah,’” Curry told ENS in a Feb. 9 phone interview. “They know how to find the strength to continue the struggle for God’s love and God’s justice and compassion in this world, to help us continue to take up the cross and follow Jesus.”

For the first time, members of Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia — the AME Church’s oldest congregation, founded by the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen — also will join this year’s celebration. This also will be the first year a presiding prelate of the AME Church and the pastor of Mother Bethel will participate in Absalom Jones’ feast day celebration at St. Thomas.

Absalom Jones was born into slavery in 1746 and released from bondage in 1784 following the American Revolution. Three years later, he and Allen, who also was the first bishop of the AME Church, co-founded the Free African Society, an organization that provided aid to Black people newly freed from enslavement.

Jones founded St. Thomas in 1792 and served as the church’s first rector. In 1802, he was ordained a priest. Jones’ feast day is on The Episcopal Church’s Lesser Feasts and Fasts calendar on Feb. 13, the date commemorating his death in 1818 at 71.

As is tradition, other congregations and dioceses nationwide also will be celebrating Jones’ feast day with special worship services and other events.

Also, coinciding with Jones’ feast day, The Episcopal Church raises money annually for the Absalom Jones Fund to support its two historically Black colleges: Voorhees University in Denmark, South Carolina, and St. Augustine’s University in Raleigh, North Carolina.

“In these difficult times, when even Christian communities can be strained by the forces of division and despair, our church urgently needs more leaders like Absalom Jones – leaders who act on behalf of the oppressed and distressed of our times, and at the same time embody the command Jesus gives us in the Gospel appointed for his feast day: ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you,” Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe said in a Feb. 12 letter promoting the fund. Rowe preached at St. Thomas’ for Jones’ feast day in 2025.

This year’s celebration comes two weeks after the National Park Service removed an open-air exhibit featuring Jones and Allen from Independence National Historical Park.

The now removed exhibit, “The President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation,” opened in 2010 on the site where Presidents George Washington and John Adams lived in the 1790s. It was removed in response to President Donald Trump’s March 2025 executive order prohibiting national sites from showcasing negative aspects of U.S. history, including slavery.

The removal “strategically” occurring days before the start of Black History Month, February, was “absolutely deliberate and calculated,” Shaw said, noting that 2026 also marks the 250th anniversary of the United States’ founding.

“It brings a totally different emphasis and focus on the celebration this year at the church,” Shaw said. “But while some want to erase history, we in the church are prepared to celebrate history.”

The executive order, called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” also directed the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, to defund Smithsonian exhibits. The order specifically targeted the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., accusing the museum of promoting “divisive” and “anti-American” ideologies.

The Diocese of Pennsylvania is working to get copies of the educational panels featuring Jones from the exhibit to display in churches throughout the diocese, Gutiérrez told ENS in a Feb. 10 phone interview.

“I consider Absalom Jones as equal to our Founding Fathers. He was a founding father not just in our faith, but also the United States because he represents the best of our country,” Gutiérrez said. “I pray that we carry the spirit of Absalom Jones with us into our churches, into our protests, into our voting, into our daily interactions, into our service. The best way to honor Absalom is by carrying his spirit of everything he accomplished.”

Last week, Gutiérrez released a statement calling on Trump to apologize or resign after he shared a racist video depicting former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes in a jungle. The Feb. 6 statement has been shared thousands of times on social media.

“This behavior is beneath the office of the president. …We have to not just be better, but we have to be human towards one another,” Gutiérrez told ENS. “This is why we shouldn’t look at Absalom Jones as just a figure that we celebrate once a year, but all year, especially now during this time of what the United States is going through.”

Like previous years, St. Thomas’ annual celebration of Jones’ feast day will include traditions like singing Harold T. Lewis’ “Blessed Absalom” hymn. The celebration also will incorporate items Jones used when he was alive, including the altar and table he used for worship services.

Because the celebration falls the Sunday before Ash Wednesday – Feb. 18 this year – a New Orleans-style jazz band will perform Mardi Gras tunes.

Finding motivation to celebrate is often difficult, Curry said, but “joy can always be found somewhere.”

“In spite of the hardship, in spite of the difficulty, in spite of the suffering – sometimes you just got to shout, ‘Hallelujah,’ anyhow,” Curry told ENS. “All that said, we will have Mardi Gras, and we will celebrate. We will be joyful even in the midst of this hardship – this travail – because we will not cease from laboring, and we will not cease from praising God.”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.