The Bishop Who Was Once Cargo

In 1821, slave traders raided a Yoruba village in what is now Nigeria and dragged a twelve-year-old boy named Ajayi onto a Portuguese slave ship. He was cargo — inventoried alongside barrels of palm oil and bundles of ivory. But a British Royal Navy patrol intercepted the vessel off the West African coast, and the boy was set free in Sierra Leone.

Missionaries there taught him to read. He chose the baptismal name Samuel Crowther, after a London vicar he never met. Crowther devoured Scripture with a hunger that startled his teachers, and he began translating the Bible into Yoruba so his own people could hear the gospel in the language of their mothers. In 1864, Canterbury Cathedral filled with the sound of ancient hymns as the Archbishop laid hands on Crowther's head and consecrated him the first African bishop in the Church of England.

The boy once logged as property in a ship's ledger stood robed and mitered before the altar of God.

This is precisely what Peter discovered in the house of Cornelius — that the Almighty plays no favorites. "In every nation," Peter declared, "anyone who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him." The gospel was never meant to stay behind one culture's walls. The same Lord who sent Peter across the threshold of a Gentile home lifted Samuel Crowther from the hold of a slave ship to the highest office of the church, because Christ is Lord of all.