Liberia: Immigrant Liberian Consecrated 14th Episcopal Bishop of Arkansas
By Dr. D. Elwood Dunn
“…It is not the least of the pleasing encouragements of the present day, that the attention of the Christian world is unusually turned towards the regeneration of Africa; and although only here and there a solitary missionary has hitherto been found to risk his life on its shores, yet it would now seem that God is leading the hearts of many of his ministering servants towards this work. As one of those servants about to embark for Western Africa, the Committee desires to commend you and your cause into the hands of the Lord… Go, then, Christian Brother, trusting that His grace will be sufficient for you, and preach the unsearchable riches of that grace to benighted Africa…”
— Letter from Foreign Committee, Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (DFMS) to Rev. Thomas Savage, MD in 1836
It is the nurturing of the Episcopal Church of Liberia (ECL) that has made possible The Rt. Rev. John Toga Wea Harmon, who was consecrated the 14th Bishop of the American diocese of Arkansas on January 6, 2024.
The election and consecration of The Rev. Canon John Harmon as the 14th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas, while history-making at many levels, is a seminal moment in the history of the Episcopal Church of Liberia. It signifies a church that has come full cycle — from a halting missionary enterprise in 19th-century colonial Liberia to a ministry that has migrated back to America. The church planted in Cape Palmas by valiant missionaries of the DFMS of the Episcopal Church is witnessing a reverse missionary movement.
This movement has several dimensions. It is linked to a broader phenomenon of African or international priests filling American pulpits (See: Grace Doerfler, “African Priests fill American Pulpits…,” USA Today, 12/26/23). But it is also a consequence of out-migration from Liberia traced to two political events in the West African country, namely a military coup d’etat of 1980, and a civil war that was initiated in 1989 and lasted for 14 years. One consequence of these developments is the emergence of the Liberian Episcopal Community in the United States (LECUSA), an organization of Liberian clergy and laity. Harmon, the 14th Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church, Washington, DC with a 23-year service record, is also among the founders of this diasporic community.
Bishop Harmon personifies this reverse missionary movement. Born and nurtured in the Liberian missionary district/diocese of Cape Palmas “and parts adjacent,” civil war circumstances led him to follow many of his compatriots to the United States. A significant diaspora of Liberians, many Episcopalians or products of Episcopal schools has resulted.
There are two phases to the genesis of the Episcopal church in Liberia. The first is the freelance and pioneering missionary work of an African-American couple, James Madison and Elizabeth Mars Johnson Thomson. The Thomsons arrived in the Mesurado settlement of colonial Liberia in 1832, and relocated to Cape Palmas in 1834 where James served as Colonial Secretary while initiating the Episcopal church’s ministries of education and evangelism. The Thomsons were employed as teachers “under the patronage and direction of the Episcopal Mission Board.” They secured the land for the first mission station at Mount Vaughn (Nyepaulu) in 1835.
The second, more institutional phase begins with three white American missionaries sent to the colony of “Maryland in Africa” by the DFMS of the American church. The missionary doctor Thomas Savage led the way in December 1836, followed in June 1837 by the Rev. John Payne and the Rev. Lancelot Minor. This trio would set in train the mission’s three-pronged ministries of evangelism, education, and healing.
A framework for the mission was incorporated in a document given to Savage. “You are to seek distinctly to form a visible church of Christ…” “There is, we believe, something of awakened supplication through our church in favor of suffering Africa, and her degraded children…” “Go, then, Christian brother, trusting that his grace will be sufficient for you, and preach the unsearchable riches of that grace to benighted Africa…”
To the Thomsons and the Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS) trio would in time be joined several other “Builders for Christ.” This was the case especially as the Episcopal Missionary District of Cape Palmas and Parts Adjacent began to expand after 1847 into the new Republic of Liberia. Now the mission design and the vision of Bishop Payne found themselves in a rapidly changing environment of indigenous and colonial peoples. Men arose to give shape and tone to the church and the new nation in which it was now embedded. Among them were the Rev. Martin Parks Keda Valentine, a product of the early mission and the first principal of Cuttington Collegiate and Divinity School; the Rev. Alexander Crummell, a towering figure and pan-Black patriot who spent 20 years of his life as a citizen of Liberia beginning 1853; Samuel David Ferguson, the 4th Missionary Bishop of Liberia (1884-1916) and the first Liberian Bishop of the Episcopal Church; Bravid Washington Harris, the first African-American Missionary Bishop of Liberia (1945-1964); and George Daniel Browne, the first Bishop of the Episcopal Church of Liberia elected by Liberian Episcopalians. It was during Browne’s episcopacy that the Liberian church severed ecclesiastical and canonical ties with the American church and joined the Church of the Anglican Province of West Africa. It was the vision and action of these men, and many more, that shaped the ECL.
And the ECL remains a church with a fascinating story of a transplanted body from 19th century America to Liberia. There was mutual influencing. The church helped shape the modern Liberian State while also being impacted by the peoples and cultures of the land. It was this church in which Harmon, and his ancestors before him, was tutored and nurtured.
Harmon was born the youngest of 10 children on February 2, 1964, to parents of typically mixed ancestry, in his case, Grebo, Bassa, and repatriate ancestries. His mother, Annie Klade Wilson Harmon was a seamstress and homemaker, socially active in Grebo community affairs in Maryland County or Cape Palmas. His father, Henry Gargar Harmon was of Bassa ancestry and a ward of the prominent Harmon family, in this case, Hale Lafayette Harmon of Grand Bassa County. Upon moving to Cape Palmas where he would meet his wife, Henry was trained as a goldsmith. He would practice his trade along with becoming a postal worker in Harper.
Deeply influenced by his mother under whose tutelage he acquired knowledge of Grebo language and culture, it was she whom he told at an early age that he wanted to become an Episcopal priest. Thereupon she did two things – encourage him to associate with St. Mark’s, the main Episcopal church in Harper, and then took him to the priest in charge, saying to him simply: “my son says he wants to be a priest.” It was at St. Mark’s that John began his improbable journey to the priesthood and the episcopacy. Of the clergy who provided early tutoring and nurturing were the Rev. Vanii Gray (1911-1992), and the Rev. Samuel Yanqui Reed (1940-1991), and later Bishop George Daniel Browne (1933-1993). Gray baptized him, Reed prepared and presented him for confirmation, and Browne confirmed him.
Young Harmon received his early education in Liberia, at the government Nathan Barnes Kindergarten School, at Harper Elementary Demonstration School, and at the Bishop Ferguson Episcopal High School of Cape Palmas.
The death of his mother in May 1980, a month following the military coup d’etat, led to John’s brief relocation to Monrovia. As political instability deepened and many fled the country, John’s siblings apparently began plotting his exit.
He arrived in the U.S. in 1981 into the hands of his elder brother Henry Harmon and his family. He entered the Vailsburg High School of Newark, New Jersey as a junior in 1982, graduating in 1984.
Affiliation with the Episcopal Church of St. Andrew and Holy Communion in the Diocese of Newark soon began to open doors for the young man. Bishop John Shelby Spong of Newark suggested, and John agreed, that his next call should be college at St. Paul’s Episcopal College in Lawrenceville, Virginia. There, he would obtain his bachelor’s degree, cum laude, in 1988 majoring in English Literature and Political Science.
The following year he entered the Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS), as Liberian Archbishop George D. Browne requested his colleague, Bishop Charles C. Vache (1926-2009) of the Diocese of Southern Virginia to take John through the discernment process leading to ordination on behalf of the Diocese of Liberia, now a part of the Church of the Province of West Africa.
Other interesting developments followed. As a seminarian at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, 1989-1991, John was following the path of Bishop Dillard H. Brown who was rector of St. Luke’s before becoming the 9th missionary bishop of Liberia. And as assistant rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Norfolk, Virginia between 1991-1993, he was following another Liberia-related footstep, that of Bishop Bravid W. Harris, the 8th missionary bishop of Liberia who was once rector of Grace Episcopal.
Bishop Harmon is quintessentially Liberian with deep roots in Liberian soil. He is also a proud product of the efforts of the DFMS of the Episcopal Church which planted the Episcopal Church in Liberia almost 200 years ago. Bishop Harmon also follows the historical path of a number of black Bishops under the jurisdiction of the American church, among them: Bishop James Theodore Holly (1874-1911), Haiti, succession #106a; Bishop Samuel David Ferguson (1884-1916), Liberia, succession #139; Bishop Suffragan Theophilus Momolu Fikah Gardiner (1921-1941), Liberia, succession #318; Bishop George Daniel Browne (1970-1993), Liberia, succession #652; and Bishop Suffragan for Colored Work Edward Thomas Demby, Diocese of Arkansas (1918-1938), succession #296.
From the pioneering African American couple, James Madison and Elizabeth Mars Johnson Thomson, followed by Bishop John Payne and his white American colleagues, an indigenous Liberian church was raised, and it is that church which nurtured Harmon and placed him on a path that brought him to the American episcopacy.
My best prayerful wishes to Bishop John Harmon as he embarks upon his new ministry.
MAY GOD BE GLORIFIED AND JESUS CHRIST BE PRAISED!
The Author
Dr. D. Elwood Dunn is the author of a two-volume History of the Episcopal Church of Liberia.