Absalom Jones and the Work of Holy Belonging

Every February, the Episcopal Church commemorates Absalom Jones: priest, prophet, and pioneer. His story is one of courage and conviction, of faith forged in the face of injustice. But beyond the dates and titles, beyond the stained-glass windows and commemorative collects, Absalom Jones leaves us with something deeper: a vision of holy belonging.

Born into slavery in 1746, Absalom Jones purchased his wife’s freedom and later his own. He became a lay preacher in Philadelphia and helped found the Free African Society, a mutual aid organization that supported Black communities who were excluded from white churches and civic life. After being forced to leave St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church when Black worshipers were pulled from their knees in prayer and told to move to the segregated balcony, Jones and Richard Allen led their community out.

They did not leave the Church.

They built one.

In 1794, Absalom Jones founded the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, the first Black Episcopal parish in the United States. In 1802, he became the first Black priest ordained in The Episcopal Church.

His life was not simply about protest. It was about proclamation. About claiming space. About insisting that the Gospel of Jesus Christ could not be contained within the narrow boundaries of racism and exclusion.

And that insistence still speaks.

As disabled Episcopalians, we know something about the ache of partial belonging.

We know what it feels like to enter a sanctuary and realize the building was not designed with our bodies in mind. We know the experience of being warmly welcomed yet still feeling like an afterthought in the architecture of worship. We know what it is to be prayed for as a problem rather than invited to lead as a gift.

Absalom Jones knew what it meant to kneel in prayer and be told to move.

He knew what it meant to be physically present in a church and spiritually marginalized within it.

The image of Black worshipers being pulled from their knees while praying is searing. They were not protesting. They were not disrupting. They were speaking to God. And still, they were told their bodies did not belong in that space.

Jones refused to accept that.

He believed that the Body of Christ must mean something real, something embodied.

The Church proclaims that every human being is made in the image of God. Absalom Jones took that proclamation seriously. He did not ask for tolerance. He claimed dignity. He did not beg for accommodation. He insisted on equality before God.

For disabled Christians, his witness offers both comfort and challenge.

Comfort, because it reminds us that exclusion is not a sign that we lack faith. Sometimes exclusion is simply the world revealing its unfinished work. Jones experienced racism within the Church itself, and yet he did not conclude that God had rejected him. He concluded that injustice had no place in the Gospel.

Challenge, because Jones did not settle for private faith. He organized. He built. He created structures of care and community through the Free African Society. He founded a parish where Black Episcopalians could worship without humiliation. He understood that belonging requires more than kind words. It requires both architectural and spiritual dimensions.

What might that mean for disability justice within the Church?

It means ramps, yes. It means accessible bathrooms, large-print bulletins, ASL interpreters, scent awareness, and livestream captions. But it also means leadership. It means disabled people serving on vestries, preaching from pulpits, arranging altars, and shaping our theology.

Absalom Jones did not wait to be invited to the table. He helped build one.

There is something profoundly Eucharistic about that.

The Eucharist is not a private devotion; it is a shared meal. It requires a gathered body. And if some members of that body are excluded, the table is diminished.

When Jones founded St. Thomas, he was not creating division for its own sake. He was creating a sacred space where dignity could flourish. He believed that the Church could be more faithful than it had been. His life was an act of embodied hope.

Disabled Episcopalians live in that tension, too. We love the Church. We cherish its liturgy, its sacramental life, its rhythm of prayer. And yet we know its gaps. We see where access ends, and assumption begins. We feel where inclusion is spoken but not structured.

The witness of Absalom Jones tells us that loving the Church does not mean ignoring its failures. It means calling it toward its own deepest truth.

It means remembering that Christ’s Body includes EVERYBODY.

Absalom Jones’ ministry teaches us that visibility matters.

Representation matters.

Dignity matters.

And every time we insist on accessibility, every time we widen the doorway or amplify a voice, every time we refuse to accept exclusion as normal, we stand in Jones’ legacy.

A legacy of holy belonging.

A legacy that reminds us that no one should ever be pulled from their knees in prayer.

And that in Christ, Every Body has a place at the table.