(RNS) — The Rev. Cecelia Williams Bryant, an African Methodist Episcopal Church bishop’s spouse identified for mentoring up-and-coming clergy and fostering prayer, died on Thursday (Sept. 26), her household introduced.
Bryant, 77, was the episcopal supervisor for the AME districts that her husband, now-retired Bishop John R. Bryant, oversaw. She additionally was the mom of the Rev. Jamal Bryant, pastor of New Start Missionary Baptist Church, a predominantly Black megachurch outdoors Atlanta, and the Rev. Thema Bryant, a Pepperdine College professor and former president of the American Psychological Affiliation.
“We have been blessed to share life with this anointed and devoted spouse, mom, grandmother and liberated world citizen,” Jamal Bryant mentioned in an announcement. “Of all her immense skills and items, Rev. C was a strong and dedicated intercessor on behalf of the poor and susceptible. I’m not the individual I’m at present with out her prayers and love, which have been my north star all through my life.”
Cecelia Bryant co-founded the AME Church in India together with her husband of 55 years and helped to discovered the AME Church in Cote d’Ivoire, in line with The Christian Recorder, the denomination’s official publication. A missionary, creator and feminist, she was targeted on well being, peace and ecological points and began major faculties in the US and Africa.
She “was a commanding disciple who stood deep and robust in her religion and household, whereas remaining deeply devoted to the reason for salvation,” mentioned Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., in an announcement on the social platform X. “As an advocate for group therapeutic and psychological well being consciousness, she dedicated her complete life to spreading the Phrase of God as a liberating and anointed power to everybody she met.”
She lived in Baltimore, the place she and her husband as soon as served at Bethel AME Church for greater than a dozen years, and was identified for her assist of girls and as a mannequin for ministers, women and men who ultimately led church buildings individually or collectively as co-pastors.
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“For these of us who have been girls getting into the ministry within the 1980’s, there have been no feminine position fashions — besides Rev. Cee. She got here and put in me at my first church: Mariners’ Temple, introduced me in to evangelise, let me accompany her on Missionary journeys to Guyana, and confirmed me methods to construct Christian Ladies’s ministries and conferences.”
Cook dinner mentioned about 40 individuals who have been influenced by Cecelia Bryant went on to be senior pastors. She recalled singing within the Nineteen Seventies within the New Temple Singers choir on the Bryants’ Cambridge, Massachusetts, church with {couples} such because the Rev. Floyd and Elaine Flake, who later co-pastored Larger AME Cathedral in New York Metropolis, and the Revs. Grainger and Jo Ann Browning, who collectively lead Ebenezer AME Church in Fort Washington, Maryland.
“John and Cecelia Bryant have been all the time public companions in ministry,” mentioned the Rev. Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, professor emerita at Colby School who now teaches at Hartford Worldwide College for Faith and Peace. “They have been the mannequin for these {couples}, particularly within the AME Church, but additionally all through the bigger Black church.”
In her ultimate sermon at New Start, which was reposted on Jamal Bryant’s Fb web page the day after his mom’s demise, Cecelia Bryant joined her husband as they preached collectively on “The Energy of a Praying Church.” She instructed performing on the biblical phrases within the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Colossians that say “Commit your self to prayer,” and she or he gave the congregation instructions.
“Level to your self and repeat after me: Commit your self to prayer,” she mentioned, because the individuals within the pews obeyed. “Lay fingers in your head and repeat after me: Commit your self to prayer. Then level to heaven and say: Commit your self to prayer. Amen.”
She later added: “Our name is to not these denominations that we love a lot however our name is to change into the praying individuals of God.”
Gilkes mentioned Cecelia Bryant made a degree of bringing girls collectively for conferences, comparable to one at Princeton Theological Seminary for Black girls in ministry that was organized by Renita Weems and Prathia Corridor, then PTS doctoral college students, in 1983.
“She was just like the mom hen that had introduced this group of girls who turned vital leaders and nonetheless are vital leaders,” Cook dinner mentioned.
The Rev. John Thomas III, editor of The Christian Recorder, mentioned Cecelia Bryant’s emphasis on prayer included her want for it to be understood within the languages of the international locations the place she served in ministry.
“On a number of events, she requested me to assist translate prayer calls, and as soon as, I used to be her interpreter for a sermon within the Dominican Republic at an AME assembly,” he mentioned in an e mail to RNS about his translations of her English prayers into Spanish. “She was formidable and pushed individuals to know how the Holy Spirit moved inside them.”
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