The name Bishop Vashti McKenzie is well known in Black Christian circles. The first woman to serve as a Bishop in the AME Church, Bishop McKenzie is a household name beyond the confines of her denomination and the Black Church in general. She currently serves as the President and General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. She was also the first woman to serve as President of the Council of Bishops making her the nominal head of the AME Church. She was asked by President Barack Obama to serve on the inaugural President’s Advisory Council of the White House Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
And, on January 20, 2025, she will be the keynote speaker for the Martin Luther King, Jr. City-County Celebration in Madison. It turns out Bishop McKenzie is no stranger to Madison. Her parents, Samuel Edward Smith and Ida Murphy Smith Peters matriculated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and she grew up hearing about their days in the upper Midwest. Umoja Magazine had an opportunity to talk with Bishop McKenzie about a month before her scheduled visit to Wisconsin.
We began our conversation having Bishop McKenzie describe her journey from the pulpit to her more public persona. She quickly responded that she always lived in the public eye. Her family were dedicated social justice activists who regularly asked the question, “What are you doing to help your community?” She recounted that her brother was a Freedom Rider who took those dangerous rides to the South to help register African Americans to vote and take full advantage of their citizenship. She described herself as a child of the Civil Rights Movement and served as an early school desegregation student who attended and graduated from Baltimore’s Eastern High School an elite all-girls’ high school where she was one of 6 Black students.
McKenzie’s grandfather, Carl T. Murphy, was publisher and editor of the Baltimore Afro American, a weekly periodical in the city. Her great-grandfather, John H. Murphy, Sr. was the founder of the publication. Her family was active in the NAACP, and she recalls, Thurgood Marshall was a regular visitor to their home.
As a pastor, Bishop McKenzie recounted that the AME Church has always engaged in social justice action and that the Black Christian community must be concerned beyond the church. She described her pastoral ministry as developing “inside-out” congregations—congregations that got engaged with the people outside their church. As a pastor working in an urban core church, surrounded by drug dealers and other crime, she started a “take back the streets” campaign to recapture the youth.
When asked how the community should respond during this particular moment, having witnessed the defeat of Kamala Harris for the US Presidency, Bishop McKenzie insists that we have a right to grieve and lament and that we should create space for that lamenting. Quoting scripture, she reminds us that the prophet Jeremiah says, “Send for the wailing women” (Jeremiah 9:17) as a way to help the community cope with grief and loss. However, she reminds us that we cannot stay in that place of sadness and lament. Instead, we need to make an honest assessment of our situation; understand that it is okay to be angry—i.e., be angry and sin not; use our anger wisely; and ask, what opportunities are out there to collaborate and partner?
She reminded us that we must be wise as serpents and harmless as doves and we think how we must prepare ourselves for what is ahead. “Black people deal daily with depression. We have always struggled!” remarked Bishop McKenzie. As we talked about what work we could or should be doing she asserted that we have to keep doing what we always do and re-shape and re-make what we have done in the past. She urges us to nurture our passions and keep doing what we do.
Finally, we discussed how to keep our community encouraged. I was not surprised by the woman of God’s response. “Keep your God/Christ in the center (of your life).” She also urges the community to keep its anger from tearing us apart. She reminded us that our ancestor worked for everything we have accomplished and left us a legacy of working for freedom, justice, and democracy. She ended our conversation by admonishing us to take a bit of time to rest so that we can be “rested and ready!”
