We’ve all heard the phrase “Knowledge is power.”
Teachers know this well.
People who enter the teaching profession don’t do it for the great
pay and certainly these days they don’t do it because they think they’re going
to get a gold star or a medal of some kind.
For many… the motivation to teach comes from their own insatiable
appetite to learn. And then they want to pass along what they’ve learned to
others.
The reward for their work comes when they see in the face of a
child that spark… when a connection gets made… and there’s the big “a-ha!”
And there is so much joy in watching a student fall in love with
learning.
One of my friends who teaches at Florida State says that she
realized recently that her years and years of study… and then working in the
world of academe gave her the advantage of knowing how to persist in the face
of bureaucratic red tape.
Universities are great big bureaucracies.
Knowing how to negotiate through them is a learned skill. And it’s
these skills that one carries into every day life.
Again…”knowledge is power.”
I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s so disturbing to see
political leaders actively working against teachers and their abilities to pass
along knowledge.
Teachers have a passion for wanting to encourage students to
understand the world and be able to think through problems and find solutions.
They want to encourage the next generation to recognize the
mistakes of the past and lead us to a better future.
Not only is knowledge powerful… it leads to independence.
Teachers know this.
Anna Alexander knew this.
You have in your bulletin insert this morning a very brief history
of Deaconess Anna Alexander’s life. But there’s much more to be said about this
remarkable woman who our Episcopal Church recognizes as among the saints of our
tradition.
Anna was the youngest of eleven children. Her parents… Aleck and
Daphne Alexander… had been slaves in the mid-1800s. Aleck was a waiter on the
Butler Plantation outside of Brunswick.
That’s where he encountered the retired English actress Fanny
Kemble, the wife of the plantation owner Pierce Butler.
Aleck was a teenager…and he begged Fanny to teach him to read and
write.
Unlike her husband… and the rest of rural Georgia society at the
time… Fanny was a staunch abolitionist.
Georgia law prohibited teaching the African slaves…but Fanny did it
anyway. And Aleck proved to be an exceptional student.
When Aleck and Daphne married… they moved to Pennick to start their
family.
They both had a keen appreciation for how important education had
been in their lives.
And they knew this would be the bedrock for their children as well
as they prepared them for the world.
The family were all Episcopalians and so their two major textbooks
became the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer.
Anna took to education like a fish to water.
She left Georgia and graduated from St. Paul’s College in
Lawrenceville, Virginia…a school founded by the Reverend James Soloman
Russell…an African-American Episcopal priest who had been one of the first
graduates of Bishop Payne Divinity School… a school started to train blacks for
the Episcopal priesthood.
My own alma mater...Virginia Theological Seminary…had refused to
train black men for ministry…hence the need for Bishop Payne Divinity School.
When Anna went back to Georgia…she joined her sisters Mary and Dora
in teaching at St. Cyprian’s School in Darien. Anna was living in Brunswick.
Every day…she would make the trip to Darien by foot and by row boat
to teach children.
It was during a service at St. Athanasius Episcopal Church in
Brunswick… that Anna felt a call to start a school and later a church in her
hometown of Pennick. With the help of one of her brothers…they built a one-room
schoolhouse and later added a loft above the classroom where she lived.
In 1901…Anna had her first six students. The following year… they
opened their church…The Church of the Good Shepherd.
About five years later… the Bishop of Georgia…C.K. Nelson… went
against the Southern cultural norms of the time and he ordained Anna Alexander
as the first African American deaconess in the Episcopal Church.
This was the formal recognition of her calling to be an educator.
Deaconesses in the Episcopal Church were women operating in various service
professions…including teachers. Anna’s teaching…like that which her parents had
instilled in their children… was very much tied to the Book of Common Prayer
and the Bible.
Unfortunately…her ordination in 1907 came at the same time that
there was a split in the diocese of Georgia. The state’s population had grown
enough that The Episcopal Church created a second diocese…the diocese of
Atlanta…and sent Bishop Nelson to the west.
Georia elected a new bishop named Frederick Reese…a man who didn’t
know Anna Alexander.
Bishop Reese and the diocese of Georgia segregated their
convention… excluding the eight black congregations from participating in the
larger life of the Episcopal Church. The separate Council of Colored Churchmen
went largely unnoticed by their white counterparts.
This disparity continued until 19-47…the year Anna Alexander died.
But knowledge is power. And
Anna Alexander knew how to work around the church to continue to seek funding and
support for her school and Good Shepherd through the program that is now the
Episcopal Church Women or E-C-W.
She kept teaching and encouraging the children of Pennick.
She started taking them on trips to visit some of the historically
black colleges including Fort Valley State…Voorhees University in South Carolina
and her alma mater St. Paul’s in Virginia.
In our Gospel… Jesus encourages those who are getting held down
under the thumb of an oppressive Roman Empire to turn to him…and ‘take his
yoke’ upon them.
This is a Jewish phrase for “be my student” or “let me be your
tutor.”
What Anna Alexander provided to her community was fifty plus years
of breaking down barriers and opening the world to children in very rural
Georgia in ways that might never have happened for them otherwise.
Thanks be to God for her and for all those who today persist with
determination to teach and excite the minds of the next generation.
In the name of God…F/S/HS.
No comments:
Post a Comment