You would think that the Universalists, religious folk so radically
inclusive that their Heaven excluded
no souls, would welcome Black worshipers with open arms. And some did, especially in the North.
But the denomination which was governed mostly by state and
local conventions often reflected local racial attitudes and customs. Many Southern
Universalists might have been willing
to share eternity with Blacks, probably assuming
they would dwell on different clouds,
but were not willing to share a pew—or if it had come up the Convention
floor—with segregated Black churches.
That was the reality that Joseph Jordan—pronounced “Jerdan”—faced when he became the first African-American ordained by a Universalist
Convention. Jordan died on June 4, 1901
in Norfolk, Virginia at the age of
59. This is the story of his journey
and the faith to which he devoted his life.
Jordan was born in June of 1842, one
of seven children of a Free Black couple in West Norfolk on the Elizabeth River. He was literate, probably instructed
at home by his parents or perhaps in informal church school. He
entered the local trade of oysterman in his early teens and worked the shoals
until he was 21 and moved to Norfolk.
That would have been in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War and with so many White Virginians at war, there were opportunities for free blacks in one of
the state’s most industrial cities.
As he established himself, Jordon started a family. He married Indianna Brown, a free born woman. The couple would have three children, only
one of whom, Thaddeus—likely named for the fire-breathing Radical Republican Representative Thaddeus
Stevens of Pennsylvania—lived to
adulthood.
Starting out as a common laborer, Jordan rose in
the world. He operated a grocery store and
then became a house carpenter. From those earnings he saved enough money to become what we might call today a builder/developer—erecting several houses in the Norfolk suburb of Huntersville.
Rental income from those homes allowed him to retire from physical labor. He was now a successful and admired man in his community, a member of an educated and propertied
elite. But he yearned to turn his attention to a longtime passion—religion.
Always deeply religious, Jordan was
ordained to the Baptist ministry in
1880. He established himself in a
successful storefront ministry
preaching the Gospel of liberation popular in the Black community. But he was harboring some doubts
about the orthodoxy he was preaching. A sympathetic Methodist minister gave him a copy of Thomas Whittemore’s 1840 classic The Plain Guide
to Universalism. Jordan
was thunder struck.
Whittemore had been an up-from-the-streets Boston tough who rose to become a disciple of Hosea Ballou,
the foundational figure of 19th Century Universalism. He went on to be an influential minister, thinker, and writer who eventually questioned
Ballou’s death and glory Universalism
and became the leader of the Restorationists who held that a loving God would restore all souls to his grace and admit them to heaven, after the worst of them spent some time in a form of punishment to cleans them from their sins. The book that fell
into Jordon’s hands was one of the most important theological
expressions of this view as
well as a popular polemic that was
still influencing readers more than
40 years after its publication.
Jordan studied what he could from
the prolific Universalist press and tracts
of the period. When he could no longer
preach the traditional Baptist Gospel, he returned to construction work and
thought about his options. There
was no Universalist congregation in Norfolk or surrounding towns. But there was a vital Universalist center
in Philadelphia—one of the oldest hubs of the faith in North America.
In 1886 Jordan journeyed to the Pennsylvania city where he presented himself to the Rev. Edwin
C. Sweetser of the Universalist
Church of the Messiah. It was a fortunate choice. The Philadelphia church had historic sympathy for Blacks. It was responsible
for the first American resolution by a church body, the Universalist Convention, calling for the abolition of slavery back in 1792 and some members of the large free Black community in
Philadelphia had worshiped there. Moreover, Sweetser was a willing teacher and mentor. Jordan studied under the minister for seven
months not only deepening his newfound faith but mastering its theology.
Jordan returned to Norfolk with armloads of books and a determination
to preach the word of Universal Salvation. He rented a large room at 42 Lincoln
Street and converted it to a chapel
building the pulpit with his own
hands. As a well-known and respected
community leader he was able to gather a small
congregation.
His efforts drew the scorn and condemnation of his former Baptist
colleges and other orthodox ministers who echoed the usual charge that without the threat of Hell, men, marked by original sin would sink into depravity, sin, and degradation. Moreover, the
promise of universal salvation meant that the oppressors of the Black
race, those who had held them in slavery and who were creating
the new Jim Crow South, would
also reside ultimately in Heaven. The
Black Church had long offered the solace that as a People they would “cross
over Jordan” leaving slavery and
degradation behind and being rewarded with eternal life in the arms of
the Lord while their evil oppressors would be struck down and condemned to eternal damnation. It was a comforting thought, but one that made
Jordan’s task more difficult.
Despite these difficulties, Jordan’s
little congregation thrived. The congregation formally organized itself
as a Universalist Mission in June of
1887.
He was soon approached about adding a school to the church’s services. Freedmen
schools of Reconstruction which
had been staffed by idealistic mostly Northern teachers, many of the Quakers,
Unitarians, and Universalists were long gone. And in the re-segregated South of emerging Jim Crow, public schools for Blacks were pitifully
funded with few books, woefully underpaid teachers, and students
crammed into tiny, overcrowded facilities. Blacks often turned to private academies sponsored by local churches.
Classes were operating at the capacity of the rented Chapel by the
next fall.
Jordan’s next step was to apply to be officially recognized
as a Universalist preacher. With Sweetser’s endorsement the Universalist General Convention granted him a one year license to preach in June of 1888. This was the first step in the process of ordination.
The following year a Universalist Ordaining Council of three
ministers including Sweetser and four
lay persons met with Jordan in the Church of the Messiah to examine his fitness for the
Universalist ministry. The council found him to have a “clear and bright mind” and to be “free alike from pretension and from abjectness.” Most importantly “He believes in us, and knows
why.” The Council endorsed his candidacy as “exceedingly satisfactory.” The next
day, March 31, 1880, Jordan was ordained
as a Universalist minister at a ceremony in the Church of the Messiah.
He was the first fully and properly ordained Black minister of the Universalist General
Convention.
His mission church was reorganized as the First Universalist Church of Norfolk and admitted to the Convention, which agreed to subsidize its operations and
Jordan’s efforts to further spread
Universalism in the upper South.
All of this frenzied activity to get his church and school set up and operating
and regularizing his personal and professional ties
to the wider Universalist movement put
a strain on his marriage. His wife Indianna
left him taking their son Thaddeus with her.
The couple was divorced in
1890.
Soon the Church outgrew its rented room. The
Congregation was unable to raise the money to buy property and build a building on its own so
Jordan personally appealed to the General Convention meeting in Washington D.C. in 1893. $2,758
was raised for this purpose enough to build a
church and provide for some of its furnishings. Johnson
himself built the new church on Princess Anne Avenue in the heart of
the Black community which opened in November 1894.
The new building included a more spacious sanctuary and classrooms. It even attracted
a handful of local White Universalists who had no church of their own in
which to worship—a then rare breach of rigid segregation in Sunday
worship. Jordan shared instructional duties at the school now with two additional teachers.
That led to romance. In 1896 Jordan married one of his teachers, Mary Elizabeth Clark who was about half his age. The couple had one child, Richard Sweetser Jordan.
His happiness was not to last long. He worked long and hard to make his
congregation and school thrive. He was
able to achieve part of his dream of spreading Universalism when he founded a Suffolk Mission as a daughter
of his Norfolk congregation. Perhaps over
work contributed to his death in 1901. He was widely
mourned in the Norfolk black community—even former foes and critics among
the city’s other clergy turning out for his funeral in recognition of his good work.
Although Jordan’s cause of death was not listed, both his wife and his son died of tuberculosis within two years, making
it likely that the scourge also contributed to his death. With his
family gone his estate went to the General
Convention which used the proceeds to subsidize the growing Suffolk church.
Unfortunately, without Jordan’s personal leadership his Norfolk congregation began to unravel. The church was closed in 1906 and the building became
a billiard parlor. The Suffolk church, however continued to
thrive, especially after the arrival of Joseph
Fletcher Jordan, the Universalist’s third African American minister in
1904. Despite the similarity of name,
the two Jordans were not related. The Suffolk church and its day school
continued service until the congregation dissolved in1984.
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