Ten years ago, at the bicentennial gathering of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the now Dr. John Thomas III stepped into the role of the 21st editor of The Christian Recorder as the youngest general officer to hold this office and on the bench, and the publication has not been the same since. Over the next several days, TCR will celebrate this milestone with videos and testimonials from those who have walked alongside him in media and in the life of the AME Church. Before those stories begin to roll out, it is worth remembering who John is, what he ran on, and what he has stood for across this decade of leadership.
Who Is Dr. John Thomas III
Dr. John Thomas III came to this role as a leader since his teenage years. By the time he ran for editor, that leadership matured into something distinct. Hailing from the 13th Episcopal District, he was described by those who knew him well as a young man shaped by a genuine love for Jesus Christ and a global perspective that reached far beyond any single corner of the church. He, by every account, was also a serious student of the church’s history. He had spent years reaching back across earlier generations, mining their wisdom to sharpen his own understanding of the present moment. This combination was never hardened into rigidity. He knew the church’s tradition deeply, but he was never bound by it in the way that the description might suggest. Instead, he pushed at the edges of that tradition and spoke more directly to his own generation and to the present age he inhabited. Those closest to him framed him as one of the church’s new millennium leaders, someone whose perspective, insight, and sensitivity set him apart from the leadership that had come before.
His Campaign: “A Global Paper with A Global Editor for A Global Church”
Dr. John Thomas III’s campaign was backed and supported by leadership across the connection, including the now-retired Senior Bishop John H. Bryant, the now-retired General Officer Richard A. Lewis Sr., and the then-presiding prelate of the 13th Episcopal District, Bishop Jeffrey N. Leath. His campaign carried a clear and memorable message: a global paper with a global editor for a global church. He welcomed opportunities for the church to get to know him before casting its support. He traveled across the connection speaking at various meetings and services. It was important for him to see the church and its people for himself while making sure they saw and heard him.
Those who backed his candidacy described the moment in almost prophetic terms. One early supporter framed his potential editorship as a new day for the AME Church, a chance to usher the publication into the new century under his leadership and vision. That supporter spoke of a God who is not confined to a backyard or a single people in one part of the world, but one who branches out globally, and said John carried that same spirit into his candidacy, echoing the very global vision at the heart of his campaign message. The expectations set for him were significant. He was expected to challenge the church to think, respond, and engage in real self-examination, all while disseminating information and ingenuity the church needed more than ever.
What He Stood For
At the heart of Dr. Thomas’ platform was a conviction about identity and voice. He often returned to the fact that The Christian Recorder is the world’s oldest continuously published Black periodical, tracing back to 1852, and he believed the church had not fully reckoned with what that legacy meant. He pointed out how historians regularly combed through TCR’s archives, and that a major academic book on the publication’s history had come out not long before his campaign. In his eyes, this was proof that the wider world already understood the Recorder as an important voice, even if the church itself had grown hesitant to claim that power.
That hesitancy was the problem he set out to address. He believed the church needed to do a better job of speaking life over itself and naming the good that was already there, rather than letting time and habit erode its confidence in its own story. His platform was, at its core, a call to pride without arrogance, an insistence that TCR share its voice and its story with the same conviction that outside historians and scholars had already shown it deserved. That was the mission he carried into the editor’s office, and it is the same mission that has shaped the last ten years of his leadership.
Looking Ahead to the Celebration
As the videos and testimonials roll out over the coming days, they will add color and personal memory to the vision described here. Some will speak to Dr. Thomas’ leadership style, others to specific milestones from the past decade, and still others to the way his early convictions have played out in practice. This article is simply the starting point, a reminder of who Dr. John Thomas III was before he took the helm and what he promised to bring to it. Ten years later, that promise is worth revisiting in full.
Join us in celebrating the editorial leadership of Dr. John Thomas III, the 21st Editor of The Christian Recorder.
