A founding incorporator of the Union of Black Episcopalians, the late John Thomas Walker, was the sixth bishop of Washington, dean of the Washington, and vice president of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church.
Bishop Walker was born in Barnesville, Georgia, but the family moved to Chicago and then to Detroit, where he spent his youth. He graduated in 1951 from Wayne State University in Detroit, MI and that Fall became the first black student at Virginia Theological Seminary. After graduation from seminary, Walker returned to Detroit and was ordained a deacon in 1954 and a priest a year later. After serving as rector of St. Mary’s Church in Detroit, Walker was called in 1957 to St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, were he taught American and modern European history and the history of philosophy.
In 1966, Walker came to Washington, D.C., as canon of the cathedral with responsibility for ministry to the city. As a part of that ministry, he hosted a weekly television program which focused on urban, ethnic, ecumenical concerns. He was consecrated suffragan bishop in 1971 and in 1976 was elected bishop coadjurur. Upon the retirement of Bishop William Creighton in 1977, Walker became the bishop of Washington. When the Very Rev. Francis B. Sayre, Jr., retired as dean of the cathedral Walker also assumed that post, linking the diocese and cathedral more closely in ministry to the city. Walker’s continuing concern for problems of urban America led him in 1976 to join with other bishops to form the Urban Bishops Coalition and serve as its first chairman.
Bishop Walker was also active in ecumenical affairs, helping to form in 1978 the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington whose membership includes Christians, Jews, and Muslims. He served as first president. He also served on the Episcopal Church’s Joint Commission on Ecumenical Relations, the Consultation on Church Union, and as a delegate to the World Council of Churches Fifth Assembly in Nairobi. Until his death he served as president of the Council of Churches of Greater Washington.
Bishop Walker’s civic activities also demonstrated his deep concerns for the future of the city. For example, he headed the panel that chose a new chief of police for the District of Columbia in 1974. He had long been a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Urban League, the national advisory council of the Americans for Civil Liberties Union, UBE, and the Absalom Jones Theological Institute. He was also a member of the special commission appointed to examine the scholastic honor system at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He had served on the boards of St. Paul’s School, Virginia Theological Seminary, and the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley.
Bishop Walker’s long involvement with the church overseas began in 1961 when he directed a summer training program for the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. He had also traveled extensively in Africa and taught for a year at the Bishop Tucker Theological College in Uganda. As chairman of Africare, a relief organization for self-help development projects, Walker observed, firsthand projects in Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Source: Courtesy of the Archives of the Episcopal Church