Black Faith History

This Week in Black Faith History – Minister Jarena Lee

Blackpast.orgFebruary 27, 2019

Minister Jarena Lee was the first authorized female preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Lee, whose family or maiden name is unknown, was born to a poor but free black family on February 11, 1783, in Cape May, New Jersey. In 1790 at the age of seven, Lee was sent to work as a live-in servant for a white family named Sharp. Lee moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as a teenager and continued to work as a domestic servant. One afternoon, Lee attended a worship service at Bethel Church where Bishop Richard Allen, founder of the AME Church, was scheduled to preach. After hearing the powerful sermon delivered by

Religion

This Week in Black Faith History – Bishop Charles Harrison Mason

Reprinted from COGIC.orgFebruary 20, 2019

Bishop Charles Harrison Mason was the founder and first senior bishop of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), the largest African-American Pentecostal church in the United States. Born to former slaves Jerry and Eliza Mason in Shelby County, Tenn., on Sept. 8, 1864, Mason worked with his family as a sharecropper and did not receive a formal education as a child. But at an early age, he was influenced by his parents’ religion. Mason joined the African American Missionary Baptist Church when he was an adolescent and later received his license to preach from the Mount Gale Missionary Baptist