Wednesday, August 3, 2011

The Rev. Dr. George Freeman Bragg, Jr.



(The Rev. Dr. Bragg picutred with his sons who were also Episcopal clergy.)


The Episcopal Church provisionally adopted today as the day to remember and honor the Rev. Dr. George Freeman Bragg, Jr.

He was born into an Episcopalian family on 25 January 1863 in Warrenton, North Carolina. Bragg was the grandson of a slave who helped to found St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Petersburg, Virginia. The Church Awakens: Keeping the Story: The Reverend George F. Bragg, D. D., 1863-1940, Archives of the Episcopal Church (2008).

In 1879 he campaigned for the Readjuster Party in Virginia, which endorsed voting and state-supported higher education for African-Americans. Bragg was appointed a page and postmaster in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1881 and began the publication of a secular weekly for African-Americans entitled The Lancet the following year. Id.

In 1885 when Bragg was in the seminary at the Bishop Payne Divinity School, he re-titled his newspaper the Afro-American Churchman. Id.

Bragg was ordained a deacon in 1887 in Norfolk, Virginia, and he was ordained priest in 1888. Bragg served as rector of St. James Episcopal Church, Baltimore, Maryland from 1891 until his death in 1940. St. Augustine’s own, the Rev. Allen F. Robinson, is currently rector of this very same parish. He also knew how to connect with the social needs of his people by establishing the Maryland Home for Friendless Colored Children in 1899. During his appointment he worked to advance the education of African-Americans within society and the Church, fostering some twenty vocations including that of the Rev. Tollie Caution. Bragg agitated against the exclusion of African Americans from participation in the Episcopal Church’s central missionary society and field work. Evangelizing African Americans was not a priority of the white church, which left black congregations to survive on their own devices and paltry resources to build up their numbers in a Church that would not engage its Black heritage. Id.

Let us pray: Almighty God, we thank you for the strength and courage of George Freeman Bragg, who rose from slavery to freedom, documented African-American history, and helped to found the first advocacy group for black people. Grant that we may tell the story of your wondrous works in ways that proclaim your justice in our own time, to the glory of Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

CALENDAR REMINDERS

St. Augustine’s Feast Day is the last weekend of August. We will have a dinner and dance starting at 7 p.m. on Saturday, and on Sunday, Eucharist, Rite II, at 9 a.m. followed by a reception in Sutton Hall.

PRAYER MINISTRY

Please remember everyone on our Prayer List. C.S. Lewis wrote: “In worship, God imparts himself to us.”

Your servant in Christ,

Fr. Chester J. Makowski+
St. Augustine of Hippo Episcopal Church
Galveston, Texas 77550

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