06-11-2023 HOF - Flipbook - Page 17
Baltimore Sun Media | Sunday, June 11, 2023
T
he Rev. Dr. John Richard Bryant long ago
established himself as a towering figure in
the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
He turned historic Bethel AME Church
in Baltimore into a hub of community
service in the 1970s and ’80s, multiplying
its membership by more than a factor of
10. As a bishop of the denomination, he
presided over pastors and churches, and
set policy across 18 states, nine countries
and three Canadian provinces. He brought the AME Church into India and
along with his wife did the same with the Ivory Coast.
The man some have called “the pope of the AME Church” says that if
there’s one factor that accounts for the scope of his ministry, it’s that he
has never strayed from one of the simplest, most powerful ideas his master
ever uttered.
“‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach
the Gospel to the poor,’ ” the 80-year-old says in his mellifluous preacher’s
voice, quoting a line Jesus delivers in the Gospel of Luke. “If I didn’t believe
that and put it into practice, none of what has happened in my life would
have taken place.”
He was set on the ministerial path early. His father was also a pastor at
Bethel who would become an AME bishop. Bryant was just 10 when he
had a dream in which he saw himself, too, mesmerizing the faithful from
the pulpit.
Age: 80
Hometown: Baltimore
Current residence: Baltimore
Education: City College High School, Morgan State
University, Boston University School of Theology,
Colgate Rochester Divinity School
Career highlights: Peace Corps volunteer, Liberia;
Pastor of Bethel AME Church (Fall River, Massachusetts),
St. Paul AME Church (Cambridge, Massachusetts),
Bethel AME Church (Baltimore); 106th Bishop of
American Methodist Episcopal Church; Senior Bishop,
AME Church; chairman of the board, Paul Quinn College, Dallas;
author,“God Can: Sermons of Encouragement,”
and co-author (with Cecelia Williams-Bryant), of“Healing
the Wounded Vow: An Encouragement for Clergy Marriage”
Civic and charitable activities: Creator of food co-ops,
housing co-ops, food banks, women’s centers, job training
programs, school-supply programs, men’s fellowships,
church globalization initiatives, and programs for youth,
families and the elderly
Family: Married to the Rev. Dr. Cecelia Williams-Bryant;
two children, seven grandchildren
Years later, before he headed
off to seminary at Boston University, his own minister told
him that if he tried to tell his
new schoolmates he had been
anointed by God to preach, they’d
laugh. He ignored the advice, the
laughter did come, and “the more
they laughed, the more I prayed,”
he recalls, until a few students
quietly stopped by later to join
him.
Bryant’s faith kept inspiring.
As a Peace Corps volunteer in
West Africa, he says, he saw Black
people holding many positions of
authority, and learned the history
and culture of his people for the
first time.
He drew on those impressions in the early 1970s as he
deployed “liberation theology”
to help grow two Massachusetts
churches he called “unapologetically and unashamedly Black.”
By the time he returned to
Baltimore as pastor of Bethel
AME in 1975, Bryant was both
change agent and rising star.
His Pentecostal-style preaching, message of self-empowerment and outreach into the wider
community boosted membership at the church from about
600 people to more than 10,000
over 13 years. It also gave birth to
services ranging from food and
housing co-ops to a job program,
an elementary school and a thriving women’s center.
He found time to minister to
countless parishioners, including former Baltimorean Oprah
Winfrey and the city’s future
mayor, Sheila Dixon, as well
as to guide about 100 men and
women into the ministry. That
list includes such future AME
stalwarts as the Rev. Dr. Vashti
McKenzie, who in 2000 became
the first female bishop in denomination history.
“I always tell people that he has
the intellect of a W.E.B. DuBois,
the toughness of a Thurgood
Marshall, and the eloquence of
a Martin Luther King Jr.,” says
Ronald Flamer, a longtime friend
of Bryant’s.
His local success “did not deter
him from having a global vision,”
though, says Bryant’s wife of 53
years, the Rev. Dr. Cecelia (“Rev.
C”) Williams-Bryant. Conse-
crated as the church’s 106th
bishop in 1988, he oversaw four of
its worldwide Episcopal districts
over 28 years, guiding the work of
pastors and flocks in thousands of
churches in the American South,
West and Midwest as well as in
the eastern half of Canada.
During that time, Bryant says,
he’s proudest of having encouraged the church to focus on
youth and elderly engagement,
evangelism, church growth and
a strategy of expanding its reach
worldwide.
As bishop of the 14th district,
which covers West Africa, he
helped plant its flag in the Ivory
Coast for the first time, and eventually expanded the church into
India.
He was helping the World
Methodist Evangelism organization train local ministers in
the South Asian country when
a colleague invited him to give
them a lecture on the AME
church and its values.
He was astounded by the interest it generated, especially among
the Dalit, or “untouchable” caste,
a group Bryant says identified
with the disempowerment African Americans have long felt in
this country.
“About 20 little churches”
joined the denomination, a
number that soon jumped to
150. The country is now home to
about 200 AME congregations.
The Bryants today are often
called on to teach and visit
churches, and they speak
often of their two grown children, Jamal Bryant, now the
pastor of New Birth Missionary
Baptist Church in Georgia, and
Thema Bryant-Davis, a California professor who was recently
named president of the American
Psychological Association.
Bryant says he’s proudest of
having helped grow churches
and broaden the faith during his
more than half-century of ministry. His partner, Rev. C, expanded
on that idea.
“His legacy would be the
power of the Holy Spirit, the role
of faith, in the uplift of people
and the healing of the nations,”
she says.
— Jonathan M. Pitts
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