Description
Book SynopsisThe story of America's first black bishop and his struggle, against white apathy, lack of funds, and jurisdictional ambiguity, to rebuild the African-American component of the Episcopal Church in the context of a segregated church.
Trade Review"A minutely and scrupulously detailed biography and analysis of the first Black man appointed to be a bishop in the Episcopal Church."--
Paul Harvery, Religious Studies Review"Beary's conclusions to this deeply researched and well-written study are important and solid. His work will be useful to many, particularly students of southern religious history and race relations."--Terry D. Goddard,
Arkansas Historical Quarterly"This meticulously researched, sensitively written, and readable book is a church history with a difference. It is a biography of Edward T. Demby, the first Black bishop in the Episcopal Church, and a history of race relations within that church."--William Norton,
Journal of the West"A riveting and valuable analysis of the long and often dehumanizing struggles of the Reverend Edward T. Demby as he fought on two equally difficult fronts: to become the first duly elected Black bishop in the Episcopal Church and to expose and overcome the racism that marked both Episcopalianism and the secular society of his age. . . . Beary's historical analysis of racism in the Episcopal Church shines such a powerful floodlight on this truth that racist confessors should no longer be able to hide behind ecclesia's walls."--Paul R. Griffin,
Anglican and Episcopal History"This relentlessly honest, scrupulously researched and well-written biography rises above praise and blame and allows the life of a remarkable Christian to speak for itself. In the process, he also illuminates the moral geography of an era." -- Robert Neralich,
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette"Beary skillfully narrates the shifting alliances within the Episcopal Church and shows how race was but one aspect of a more elemental struggle for power. He demonstrates how Demby's steadiness of purpose and nonconfrontational manner gathered allies on both sides of the color line and how, ultimately, his judgment and the weight of his experience carried the church past its segregationist experiment." --
African Sun Times"A fine study, not just of the life of an individual, but of an era in the life of the Church. Bishop Demby reminds us that even in the midst of the painful and the unjust, the work of the Spirit cannot be entirely extinguished." -- Caroline T. Marshall,
The Historiographer
