Leontine Kelly

BORN: March 5, 1920 • Washington, D.C.

American religious leader

Leontine T. C. Kelly was the first black American woman to be elected to the top ministerial (leader of a worship service) office of a major religious denomination. In 1984, she became a bishop in the United Methodist church and was assigned to administer the Nevada and California Conferences. Known as an excellent administrator and dynamic preacher, Kelly served over one hundred thousand members in nearly four hundred churches during her tenure as bishop.

Because of her position, Kelly became the first woman to preach on the National Radio Pulpit of the National Council of Churches in 1984. She also served as president of the Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops and on the Executive Committee of the Council of Bishops. In October 2000, Kelly was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.

"We were not reared that politics was not a part of a Christian's duty. If we were going to pray for liberation and equality, then we also had to work for it."

Religious prejudice

Leontine Turpeau was born in Washington, D.C., on March 5, 1920. She was born in the parsonage, or church house, of Mount Zion Methodist Episcopal Church where her father, the Reverend David De Witt Turpeau Sr., was minister. Her mother, Ila Marshall Turpeau, joined her husband in ministry and was an active supporter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Founded in 1909, the NAACP is one of the oldest and most influential organizations dedicated to eliminating racial and other forms of prejudice through legal action, educational programs, and encouraging voter participation. Her parents' leadership roles in ministry as well as social activism were a strong influence on Leontine and her seven siblings while growing up. In the late 1920s, the family moved briefly to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before settling in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1939 the Reverend Turpeau entered politics and was elected to the Ohio legislature for four terms.

Being raised in the parsonage of a Methodist Church proved to be a valuable education for Leontine for her future career path. She learned the rites and lessons of the Methodist faith and observed as her parents made their church the economic, cultural, and political center of their community. Methodism has its religious roots in eighteenth-century England. John Wesley (1703–1791), an ordained Anglican priest, and his brother Charles (1707–1788) founded the Methodist movement on the Oxford University campus around 1729 and it quickly grew. The movement originally became known as Methodism because of the consistent, religious practices Methodists followed. The movement soon came into conflict with the official Church of England. The resulting religious prejudice led to an anti-Methodist sentiment that brought much criticism aimed toward Methodist converts.

In the early 1770s, Francis Asbury (1745–1816) accepted John Wesley's call for volunteers to become missionaries in the American colonies. Asbury joined other itinerant (travel to different communities) preachers who spread Methodism to all the colonies and their frontier settlements on horseback. He was a leading force in Americanizing (make more independent from England's religious organizations) the church after the Revolutionary War and, in a move sanctioned by Wesley, organized the Methodist Episcopal Church in America in 1784. In 1794 the first black African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church was dedicated and in 1816 Bishop Asbury ordained Richard Allen (1760–1831) as America's first black bishop. Racial prejudice leading to segregation (separation of the races in public places) was deeply entrenched in society during the Civil War (1861–65) and, although Methodists opposed slavery, deep divisions developed within the church. By the early twentieth century, the church was facing many serious challenges including a split over racial equality in society as well as opposition to American involvement in World War I (1914–18) based on their pacifist beliefs.

Racial missionaries

Leontine and her siblings found a tunnel leading from the basement of their Cincinnati parsonage to the church next door. It had once been a station of the Underground Railroad (see box). The children were told how previous church members had taken great personal risk in helping fugitive slaves seeking aid from them during difficult times. Leontine was excited to be a part of such a church. However, she also questioned her father about the barriers of race and gender that persisted in their religious tradition during her lifetime. Her father explained that it was the duty of black Americans to be racial missionaries to the larger white church and to be patient while they worked for social change. The Turpeaus instilled a strong sense of self-confidence in their children and a deep commitment to the social and economic advancement of minorities. The lessons were not lost on Leontine as an adult.

The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad was a network of homes, businesses, and churches across the United States that helped runaway slaves escape throughout the nineteenth century. The slaves were escaping the American South to slave-free states in the Northern United States and to Canada. The system was made up of people, both black and white, who formed a loose network to aid runaways needing food, shelter, and a guide on their escape route. Participants faced great personal risk in aiding fugitive slaves for it was a federal crime to help slaves flee from their owners.

The terminology of the Underground Railroad developed in the 1830s when steam railroads were coming into use. Once slaves managed to escape from a slaveholder, they were taken to a place called a depot or station where they could rest and eat. Sometimes a conductor would enter a plantation posing as a slave to guide the runaways to a station. Conductors also had the dangerous responsibility of guiding runaways from one station to the next. The stations were run by stationmasters who received money or goods from stockholders. Stockholders provided money as well as letters of recommendation to help runaway slaves find jobs. The Underground Railroad operated until emancipation (freedom from slavery) was achieved in the late nineteenth century in the United States. Memories of the Underground Railroad and those who participated in helping slaves escape including former slave Harriet Tubman (1822–1913) provided inspiration to social activists, such as Bishop Leontine Kelly, in the twentieth century seeking to end racial prejudice in America. Tubman made thirteen trips guiding some seventy slaves to the North and was responsible for providing information to another seventy slaves who made it north.

Leontine received her basic education in Cincinnati's public schools and graduated from Woodward High School in 1938. She enrolled at West Virginia State College (later West Virginia State University) and completed her junior year in 1941. Leontine left the college without completing her degree in order to marry fellow student Gloster Current. The couple had three children. During World War II (1939–45), as they had earlier in World War I, Methodist church leaders professed pacifism (strongly opposing war). They were very vocal in calling for alternatives to international armed conflict. Following World War II church leaders supported the establishment of the United Nations (UN; an international organization founded in 1945 composed of most of the countries in the world) as a means for nations to resolve their disputes that were commonly driven by nationalism and ethnic prejudice.

The Galilee United Methodist Church

Leontine and Gloster divorced in 1955. Leontine was deeply affected by the divorce. She immersed herself in prayer and Bible study in order to deepen her own faith and spirituality before moving on with her life.

Ready to begin a new life, Leontine married James David Kelly, a United Methodist minister, in 1956. They moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he was the minister of the East Vine Avenue Methodist Church. She resumed studying for her bachelor's degree at Knoxville College. In the mid-twentieth century, the Methodist Church was facing internal problems of unity. Out of this strife a movement grew, its goal to join with other Protestant denominations. Two issues central to the controversy had to do with a growing uneasiness with the problem of racism, both in the church and in the nation, and with women's rights to full clergy status. As a result, women were granted full clergy rights in 1956.

In 1958, James was reassigned to Richmond, Virginia. Leontine transferred to the Virginia Union University in Richmond and completed her degree with honors in 1960. That same year, she was certified as a lay speaker (church members who are not ordained as ministers) in the Methodist church and began teaching social studies at the local high schools. Finally in the later 1960s, a merger of church organizations came about. The Methodist Episcopal Church became the United Methodist Church.

In 1966, James was reassigned to Edwardsville, Virginia, to pastor the Galilee United Methodist Church. When James died in 1969, the congregation asked Leontine to serve as layperson in charge of the church and temporarily fill the vacancy left by her husband. It was at this time that Leontine felt the call by God to become an ordained (granted priestly authority) minister herself. Because her father, brother, and both of her husbands had been ministers, she was comfortable with the responsibility and began formal studies toward ordination. Kelly completed the course of study for ordained ministers and was ordained as a Deacon in the Methodist church in 1972.

Kelly left the Galilee Church in Edwardsville in 1975 to serve as Director of Social Ministries for the United Methodist Virginia Conference Council on Ministries until 1977. Continuing her studies, Kelly earned her Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in Richmond in 1976. She was ordained as an Elder (one who assists pastors during worship services as well as conducts other church administrative duties) in the church in 1977. Throughout the 1970s, Kelly became increasingly involved with the United Methodist clergywomen's movement. The goal of the movement was to break down the barriers posed by gender prejudice and gain greater access for clergywomen in all the church's administrative positions, including the office of bishop. Kelly left the Virginia Conference Council in 1977 when she received a call to pastor the Asbury-Church Hill United Methodist congregation in Richmond. While at Asbury through the early 1980s, Kelly became active in educational programs. She served on the Richmond School Board and was director of a cooperative urban outreach ministry that was headquartered at Asbury.

Bishop Kelly

Kelly left Asbury in 1983 to join the United Methodist Church's national staff. She served as Assistant General Secretary in the area of Evangelism (spirited traveling preachers) for the Board of Discipleship in Nashville, Tennessee. Kelly also served on the Health and Welfare Ministries Division of the General Board of Global Ministries.

Earlier in 1980, the United Methodist Church had elected its first female bishop, the Reverend Marjorie Swank Matthews (1916–1986). Due to mandatory (required) retirement policies, Matthews left her position in 1984, leaving the church once again without a female bishop. With nineteen new bishops due to be elected that year, Methodist clergywomen recruited competent female candidates to apply for the position. Kelly was selected as one of the candidates and eventually was accepted into the position.

On July 20, 1984, Kelly was consecrated (dedicated to religious service) as bishop in the Western Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church. Her selection made her the second woman, and the first black woman, to be elected to the top ministerial office of a major religious denomination in the United States. Bishop Kelly moved to the San Francisco area from Tennessee to assume her duties over the California and Nevada conferences. She was now responsible for supervising over one hundred thousand members in 386 churches. Kelly used her tenure as bishop to increase the church's involvement in community development to help the poor and needy. She was an advocate especially for women and ethnic minorities within her jurisdiction.

Bishop Kelly accepted several church leadership roles during her term. She was selected to serve on the executive committee of the Council of Bishops, was chosen as president of the six-member Western Jurisdictional College of Bishops, and was also a member of the General Board of Church and Society.

Upon her retirement in 1988, at the age of sixty-eight, Kelly taught for one year as a part-time visiting professor at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. In her retirement from the ministry, she became active in several Methodist church projects including the Bishops' Initiative on Children and Poverty, and the Africa University in Zimbabwe. In 2000, Bishop Kelly was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.

For More Information

BOOKS

Hine, Darlene Clark. ed. Black Women in America. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005.

Lanker, Brian. I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, Inc., 1989.

Salem, Dorothy C., ed. African American Women: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland Publishing, 1993.

Salzman, Jack, David L. Smith, and Cornel West, eds. Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1996.

Smith, Jessie Carney, ed. Epic Lives: One Hundred Black Women Who Made a Difference. Detroit, MI: Visible Ink Press, 1993.

WEB SITES

"History of the Church." The United Methodist Church. http://archives.umc.org/interior.asp?ptid=1&mid=346 (accessed on December 11, 2006).

PBS. "The Underground Railroad." Africans in America: Judgment Day. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2944.html (accessed on December 11, 2006).

"Women of the Hall: Bishop Leontine Kelly." National Women's Hall of Fame. http://www.greatwomen.org/women.php?action=viewone&id=92 (accessed on December 11, 2006).