Rev. Vivian Baker Castain didn’t set out to make history. But when she became the first woman to serve as pastor in the Second Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church — spanning the District of Columbia, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia — she stepped into a role few women before her had been allowed to imagine. The “call” to ministry came later in life, but once it did, she didn’t hesitate. It wasn’t about courage, she says. It was just something I knew.
She grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, where then-Charity Edna Adams, now known as the first Black woman officer and leader of the 6888 Battalion in World War II, was one of her junior high school teachers.
And it was when now Bishop John Richard Bryant returned from his pastorate in Boston to assume leadership at the renowned Bethel AME Church in Baltimore that her ministry officially began. His celebrated ministry style includes the birthing of sons and daughters, of which she is the first, and her favorite name for him is “Daddy Bishop.”
Her years in ministry have not been without conflict, but she speaks her mind and continues to move with whatever she feels is right in the moment.
She retired in 2000, as the church requires, at the age of 70, but she remains unofficially active in ministry, travels regularly, and has recently decided to stop driving as she approaches 95.
Rev. Vivian Baker Castain: I really had no thought of preaching at that time because we attended a Baptist Church, and women weren’t accepted as preachers. This lady, who was a Baptist, the wife of a Baptist preacher, would tell me all the time, ‘Vivian, you will make a good pastor’s wife,’ because I could play the piano and all of this. We really weren’t Baptist. I’ve always been Methodist.
WIB: So where’d you settle after that?
VBC: Daddy took us to an AME Church, and I ended up at Bethel AME around the same time Bishop Bryant came with his new Pentecostalism, and a lot of people moved from Boston University to Baltimore following him. And the spirit was so high, I got the call to preach. Well, mostly I got the call to give my life to Christ and to preach at the same time. And one of my aunts in South Carolina, the Baptist side of the family, wrote me that I did not have the call to preach. But I didn’t pay her any attention. That was in 1976. In February 1978, I preached my first sermon.
WIB: What was the next step?
VBC: And then right after that, I was in an interdenominational meeting and somebody asked me, how did I feel going into ministry when women are not allowed to preach? And that I had not even considered. In fact, I wasn’t even that familiar with the Bible. And I told Reverend Bryant that, and he told me, well, you get familiar with it. You do chapter book by book as you go along.
And so, the fact of women not preaching didn’t bother me. The first woman I heard preach after I got the call was Rev. Alfreda Wiggins. Her scripture was, “How can you sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” Her title was, ‘But sing you must. I didn’t even know anything about what preachers were supposed to wear, so Rev. Agnes Alston from Gillis was teaching my daughter, and I talked to her about what to wear. She told me black, long sleeves, suits, and dresses. That’s all I knew.
WIB: So tell me about your first assignment?
VBC: My first church was Mount Joy AME in Monkton, Maryland. It was 20 miles from Baltimore, and the roads had a whole lot of curves and all of that going on. But I drove it. It didn’t even bother me at night. Last time I was there, about three years ago in the daytime, I was crying, I was so scared. I was the first woman to pastor there, but that was never an issue out there. I was sent as an itinerant deacon, but I had been well trained by Rev. Bryant, who had us sit in his meetings. When I had to make a decision, I’d ask myself, ‘What would John do?’ We called him John then.
WIB: You mentioned Reverends Agnes Alston and Alfreda Wiggins earlier. Who are some of the other women who helped you in ministry?
VBC: Of course, Rev. Cecelia Williams Bryant. Rev. Sarah Francis Davis, an awesome prayer warrior, episcopal daughter of Bishop Bryant, who died too soon. Rev. Joanne Browning, recently retired, who served as co-pastor with her husband, the Rev. Dr. Grainger Browning, at the Ebenezer AME Church in Fort Washington.
This story originally appeared here.