Description: The Episcopal Church was the first in the American colonies to baptize blacks, to ordain a black minister, and to establish an African American congregation. Yet membership by blacks in the Episcopal Church has always been viewed as an anomaly. In a nation in which 80 percent of the black Christian population belong to black denominations, it has seemed incongruous to many that the descendants of slaves and the descendants of slaveholders could together find a spiritual home in the Episcopal Church. Moreover, the mode of religious expression of Anglicanism has been seen as incompatible with the black religious ethos.
Review Quotes: "[Lewis's] book is a scholarly, carefully documented history of the participation of blacks in the Episcopal Church..." Diolog--Sanford Lakoff "Diolog - Diocese Of Atlanta "