This week in Christian history: Pope bashes French Revolution; ‘Heaven is for Real’ movie debuts
Richard Harvey Cain born – April 12, 1825
This week marks the anniversary of the birth of Richard Harvey Cain, a black bishop, civil rights activist and Republican member of the U.S. Congress, in Greenbrier County, Virginia.
The son of free black parents, Cain and his family moved to Ohio when he was a child. There, he was educated and eventually discerned a call to ministry in the Methodist tradition as a teenager.
After the Civil War, Cain was elected to two nonconsecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing South Carolina: first from 1873–1875 and then from 1877–1879.
Cain pastored multiple churches in his ecclesiastical career, including the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church of Charleston, South Carolina. In 1880, he was elected bishop of the AME Texas-Louisiana Conference.
“He cofounded Paul Quinn College, an all-Black Christian institution in Waco, Texas, and served as its president until July 1884,” explained the House of Representatives’ History, Art & Archives site.
“Cain then returned to Washington, DC, to serve as bishop of the AME Conference with jurisdiction in the mid-Atlantic and New England states, overseeing his new post from the nation’s capital until he died on January 18, 1887.”
