The Rev. Craig D. Townsend

Faith in Their Own Color:
Black Episcopalians in Antebellum New York City

Anchored by the stories of the Rev. Peter Williams, the second African American ordained in the Episcopal Church, and of Dr. James McCune Smith, the first African American to earn an M.D., Faith in Their Own Color covers the 44-year struggle of St. Philip’s Church of New York City to be fully accepted by an otherwise white denomination in the first half of the nineteenth century. This history thus sheds new light on the ways religious faith can both reinforce and overcome racial boundaries. The tensions between a black congregation’s desires for autonomy and self-determination on the one hand, and for full acceptance by and participation in a white denomination on the other, provide the book with a series of dramatic encounters.

The book also illuminates a largely-overlooked aspect of New York City history, which is the interaction between racial communities in the early nineteenth century. In doing so, the narrative brings into view an extraordinary collection of historically-neglected individuals. These include - in addition to Williams and Smith - the tobacconist Peter Ray, the pickling magnate Henry Scott, the combative priest Alexander Crummell (greatly admired by W.E.B. DuBois), the black owner of the city’s most popular oyster bar (open only to white patrons), the ardent abolitionist grandson of the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, a tangled web of bishops and diocesan leaders, and an obscure white Brooklyn priest who lived out his beliefs in the equality of all humanity under God.

Episcopalians and Race in New York City's Anti-Abolitionist Riots of 1834: The Case of Peter Williams and Benjamin Onderdonk

During the anti-abolitionist riots that tore through New York City for seven days in the summer of 1834, St. Philip's Episcopal Church was brutally vandalized by mobs. This church was only the second African American congregation in the country; its rector, the Rev. Peter Williams, was the second African American ordained in the denomination. In the wake of the church's devastation, Williams and his bishop engaged in a public dialogue that illuminated racial and religious attitudes of the times in many revealing ways.

I seldom write sermons anymore; two published versions are available below. To hear more recent sermons, follow this link to the sermon archive at St. James', and click on any of them - mine or my colleagues'.