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Meet Charles M. Kinny

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August 2 - Meet Charles M. Kinny

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There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Gal. 3:28, RSV.

 

Charles M. Kinny (or Kinney) would become the first Afro-American ordained as a Seventh-day Adventist minister. Born as a slave in Virginia in 1855, after the Civil War as a boy of 10 or 11 he drifted west with a group of ex-slaves who hoped to find better opportunities in the newly opened territories. And Kinny did exactly that.

 

The turning point in his life came in 1878 when he attended a series of evangelistic meetings conducted by J. N. Loughborough in Reno, Nevada. At its conclusion Kinny, presumably the only Black, became one of the seven charter members of the new Reno congregation.

 

While Loughborough's series was still in progress, Ellen White visited Reno, and on July 30 she preached to a crowd of 400 on the words of John: "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called sons of God." That text and the sermon that filled out its implications provided Kinny with an assurance and a courage that allowed him to push forward in his life.

 

His life as a slave and as a transient had been uncertain, but in Adventism he found a nurturing family. The Reno members, sensing his dedication, elected Kinny their first church clerk. But better things were soon to follow. The California Conference offered him the position of secretary of the Nevada Tract and Missionary Society. After he succeeded in that, the California Conference entered into an agreement in 1883 with the Reno church members to sponsor Kinny for study at the recently established Healdsburg College.

 

At the end of two years of study, church leadership sent him to Topeka, Kansas, in 1885 to begin work among the growing Black population of that city. In 1889 the General Conference assigned him to Louisville, Kentucky, ordaining him to the ministry that same year. For more than two decades Kinny labored across the upper South, organizing Black churches and becoming the first major Adventist spokesperson of Afro-American aspirations. 


Like so many things in Adventism, the 1890s would witness the Black work take a giant step forward through the ingenuity of Edson White and the founding of a school at Oakwood.

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Lord, we are impressed with what You did with the life of Charles M. Kinny. Take our lives today and enable us to be a blessing to others. Amen.

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