Daniel Alexander Payne (1811-1893) received his call to educate while praying. It came shortly after his conversion at 18, when “I gave my whole heart to God.” As he was praying, he sensed God setting him apart to educate enslaved Blacks. Born to former slaves, Daniel’s parents died when he was nine and he was raised by a great aunt. After his formal education ended at 12, he became an apprentice to a shoemaker and later a carpenter. When he read the biblical commentary of John Brown, a self-educated Scottish shepherd turned preacher, he resolved, “If Brown can learn Latin, Greek, and Hebrew without a living teacher, why can’t I?” Daniel became rigorous in self-study early before work and late into the evening. He opened a school in Charleston for three Black children that soon expanded to sixty students, only to be shut down by a law that prohibited education for free and enslaved Blacks. He learned of a Lutheran seminary in Gettysburg, PA willing to educate a man of color, so he enrolled and received two years in theological education. His ordination sermon upon reception into the African Methodist Episcopal denomination (AME) was titled, “Domestic Education is of the Highest Duty of the Parent and the Citizen.” Most Black pastors in the 19th century were uneducated and distrustful of academic institutions. In the words of one itinerant AME preacher, “Education does not give someone power in the Spirit. It takes grace and gifts…St. Peter was a fisherman—do you think he ever went to Yale College?” Daniel advocated for training the mind to complement piety in the heart. When Wilberforce University, a school founded to train black teachers, closed during the Civil War, Daniel convinced the AME to buy it for $10,000. He became the first Black American college president, recruited the finest teachers, and stressed piety, scholarship, and character. On the day Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, his school was burned to the ground. Daniel led the effort to rebuild it, stating, “From these ashes, a nobler building shall arise.” Near the end of his life, he wrote the prayer:
Daniel Payne
I consecrate, O Thou Most High and Holy One, the remainder of my days to thy divine service. Let the past sins and errors of my life be all forgiven, let all my guilt be washed away in the blood of the Lamb, and give, O give unto me the mind that was in Christ who went about doing good, and was obedient unto death, even death on a cross! All the work of salvation and of education committed to my oversight, vouchsafe to bless, to build up, and to establish for the benefit of all generations and races. Let the translation of the Bible and the diffusion of its life-giving truths by the living missionaries go on without faltering. Let the victories of thy conquering cross be ever-increasing! Let its living testimonies to an unbelieving world be as innumerable as the stars in the skies and as countless as countless sands upon the ocean shores. To all these glorious ends, O Lord Jesus, make thy aged servant helpful!
Daniel Alexander Payne, Recollections of Seventy Years, 1888.
Rev. Dr. Peter James served 42 years as the senior of Vienna Presbyterian Church in Vienna, VA — 21 years in the 20th century and 21 years in the 21st century. He retired in 2021 and now serves as Pastor-in-Residence at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Even as a pastor, prayer came slowly to Pete. Read Pete’s story.