(RNS) — The Rev. Cecelia Williams Bryant, an African Methodist Episcopal Church bishop’s wife known for mentoring up-and-coming clergy and fostering prayer, died on Thursday (Sept. 26), her family announced. Bryant, 77, was the episcopal supervisor for the AME districts that her husband, now-retired Bishop John R. Bryant, oversaw. She also was the mother of the Rev. Jamal Bryant, pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a predominantly Black megachurch outside Atlanta, and the Rev. Thema Bryant, a Pepperdine University professor and former president of the American Psychological Association. “We were blessed to share life with this anointed and dedicated wife, mother,…
Author: Religious News Service
By Adelle M. Banks (RNS) — When the Rev. Carieta Cain-Grizzell reached age 75, she had expected to retire after a lifetime as an African Methodist Episcopal Church member who became a pastor of several of its churches. Instead, the Washington, D.C., native-turned-Californian is now “on loan” to the United Methodist Church, first pastoring a Fair Oaks congregation and recently appointed to one in Oakland. “Pastoring is my ministry,” said Cain-Grizzell, whose lineage in the historically Black AME denomination traces back five generations. “It was something that I wanted to do,although I had to do it even if I didn’t…
(Religious News Service) —The Progressive National Baptist Convention (PNBC) centered its annual meeting on get-out-the-vote efforts and celebrated Vice President Kamala Harris’s candidacy for president. “We need everyone to register,” PNBC President David Peoples urged during a news conference on Wednesday (Aug. 7), emphasizing the importance of members encouraging “our friends and our frenemies and our entire family to vote.” Around 2,500 attendees gathered in New Orleans for the four-day session of the historic Black denomination, known as the church home of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Peoples clarified, “We are not political, but we are prophetic,” while also…