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Bishop Michael Curry tells worshipers to ‘keep going’ and ‘wear this world down’ in the fight for justice

February 16, 2026

[Episcopal News Service] Those attending the annual Absalom Jones service at African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Feb. 15 were challenged by former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry to “keep going” no matter the obstacles in the fight for justice and fairness. His remarks were part of the annual service to remember the life and ministry of Jones, the first Black priest in The Episcopal Church, and took place in the church Jones founded in 1792. Jones was born into slavery in 1746 and released from bondage in 1784 following the American Revolution. He was ordained in 1802 and now is remembered on The Episcopal Church’s Lesser Feasts and Fasts calendar on Feb. 13, the date he died in 1818 at 71. Before the service started, the church’s rector, the Very Rev. Martini Shaw, prayed at a side altar where Jones is interred, thanking God for using Jones “to plant this ministry.” He asked God to keep helping those, now more than 200 years later, who are “continuing to fight some of those battles” that he fought. In his sermon, Curry told the packed church always to persevere, just as Harriet Tubman exhorted the enslaved people she helped toward freedom through the Underground Railroad. In doing so she purportedly told them, “If you hear dogs barking, keep going. If you see torches in the woods, keep going. If they’re shouting after you, keep going – don’t ever stop,” Curry said. Telling the congregation that he would be “getting biblical, not political,” he told the story of the unjust judge in Luke 18, in which a poor widow felt wronged but couldn’t get justice from a man Curry described as a “powerful and rich official.” So she went back to him, day after day, asking him to do what was right, until he finally got tired of her visits and gave in. “[Jesus] was telling them, sometimes you’ve got to wear this world down,” Curry said, as applause spread through the congregation. “Wear it down of its nightmare until God’s dream gets realized for all of God’s children.” A livestream of the service is available here. Also attending the service were the Rev. Carolyn Clarene Cavaness, pastor of Mother Bethel AME Church and the first woman to lead the church, and Bishop Samuel Green Sr., prelate of the AME Church’s First District, headquartered in Philadelphia. Mother Bethel’s founder, the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, and Jones were friends who together in 1787 founded the Free African Society, an organization that provided aid to Black people who were newly freed from enslavement. — Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.