One of the most gifted and remarkable pastor-theologians in American history grew up enslaved. Francis Grimké was born in 1850 on a South Carolina plantation. His mother, Nancy Weston, was a biracial slave, and his father, Henry Grimké, owned the plantation. Francis demonstrated brilliance and resilience as a child, thanks in large part to his mother’s great sacrifices for his education and spiritual nurture. Her love and prayer helped him to endure a difficult childhood filled with injustice.1
After the American Civil War, a teacher at one of the schools established for children freed from slavery noticed Francis and his brother, Archibald. She arranged for them to move north to receive further education. They began at Lincoln University, where Francis became the valedictorian of his class. “Archie” went on to attend Harvard Law School, and “Frank” also studied law at Howard University before sensing a call to the ministry and moving to Princeton Theological Seminary to complete his studies.
According to James McCosh, president of the College of New Jersey (later named Princeton University), Charles Hodge “reckoned him equal to the ablest of his students.” Benjamin B. Warfield, another well-known professor at Princeton Seminary, had a “high regard” for Grimké as well.2 The young Francis developed quite a reputation for his theological acumen and remarkable rhetorical gifts.
In 1878, Grimké became the pastor of Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. That same year, he married Charlotte Forten of Philadelphia, whose family was well-known for social activism. Alongside churches like Berean Baptist, Lincoln Temple Congregational, Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal, 19th Street Baptist, and St. Luke’s Episcopal, Fifteenth Street Presbyterian was home to many of Washington’s most prominent Black leaders at that time.
The young Francis Grimké’s ministry to his prominent church members focused on active church membership, preaching, personal growth in biblical holiness, visitation of the sick, and church discipline of wayward or noncommittal members. This ministerial emphasis on rigorous accountability indicates that Grimké demonstrated little if any deference to the wealthy and prominent members of his congregation. In fact, it seems that Grimké communicated that a church with many gifts possessed a deep obligation to utilize those gifts sacrificially for the good of the kingdom of God.
The church experienced tremendous growth during these early years and was a model of leadership development. According to one newspaper report, the church witnessed 80 conversions to the faith in 1879 alone. In the same year, according to church records, of 11 ministerial candidates under the care of the Presbytery of Washington City, nine were associated with Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church.
In 1880, just a few years into his first pastorate, Francis Grimké was elected as the moderator of the presbytery, becoming not only the first African American to serve in that role but also, at the age of 30, the youngest person ever to hold the position. His early years in the church were exceedingly fruitful.3
At the same time, his early ministry also required him to address significant controversies in his presbytery, the denomination, and in his roles outside the church as well. These tensions led him to Florida for three years to focus on his family’s health. His service there led to experience in ministry and social activism.
When Francis and Charlotte returned to Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in 1889, he was 38 years old and seasoned by his years in ministry. His experience proved crucial. If the post-Reconstruction years of his early ministry had been difficult, the circumstances for Black people in America now were even worse.
The hope and idealism of the Reconstruction era lay solidly in the past. Racially-motivated violence was commonplace. The 1906 race riots in Brownsville, Texas, and Atlanta, Georgia, along with the 1908 riot in Springfield, Illinois, worried Grimké for both the injustices that sparked them and the dangers they posed.
The 1919 race riot in Washington, D.C., brought these harsh realities even closer to home.4 These post-Reconstruction years also included the greatest numbers of recorded lynchings in American history. The victims were overwhelmingly Black people. Between 1880 and 1940, White mobs in the South killed at least 3,200 Black men alone.5 These grievous circumstances weighed on Grimké as he ministered in the nation’s capital.
Therefore, it is not hard to see why Francis Grimké believed that his vocation was to “preach the gospel of grace,” on the one hand, and to “fight race prejudice,” on the other.6 He believed that the Christian church needed to preach the whole counsel of God in order that people might find eternal hope in Christ. He also believed that the American church’s failure to obey God’s commands regarding human equality not only contributed to the prevalent evils of racial prejudice and violence but also left a hypocritical stain that hindered the ministry of the church.
To preach the gospel effectively, it is necessary to preach God’s law clearly. God’s moral law enables people to see their sin and need for Christ. It also teaches believers in Christ how to live. Therefore, the Christian church’s failure to teach and follow God’s moral law regarding the equality of all human beings was a hindrance to gospel ministry.
If the church’s failure to confront racial prejudice was an affront to the gospel, it is not surprising that Grimké also dedicated himself to civil rights efforts. In 1893, he co-founded the Afro-American Council to support Black clergy excluded from the informal networks of collegiality and partnership that White ministers took for granted.7
Alongside, Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, he was deeply involved with the Hampton Institute, preaching at its first conference and serving as chair of its Committee on Religion and Ethics from 1898-1902. He served as treasurer and on the executive board of the American Negro Academy, founded by Alexander Crummell to advance African American scholarship and promote literature, science, art, and higher education. His many years of service on the board of trustees of Howard University led to an invitation to serve as its president, a role Grimké declined due to his devotion to his ministry as a pastor.
Perhaps most importantly, Grimké was involved with the Niagara Movement and played a crucial role in the founding of the NAACP. Alongside Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Du Bois, Grimké was one of six African Americans who signed the call for the Emancipation Conference that led to the formation of the NAACP.8 As a pastor, Grimké elected not to take on a leadership role in the organization, however, and instead his brother Archibald served on the committee that established the organization and eventually as a vice president. Francis Grimké took nearly every opportunity he could to work diligently and advocate prophetically for civil rights.
After 50 years of faithful ministry, Grimké finally retired from his pastorate at Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in 1927. His retirement did not stop his pen, though, as he continued to write prolifically until his death in 1937, the day after his 87th birthday. The prominent historian of African American history Carter Woodson collected his works, a four-volume set that remains valuable to this day.
Francis Grimké’s legacy challenges simplistic visions of the Christian life and ministry. His writings remain instructive for today’s debates on Christian living that tend to polarize so-called conservative and progressive Christians. His voice is needed today as much as ever.
Along these lines, Grimké’s life and ministry offer Christians today thought-provoking resources for reorientation. Contemporary Christians need to hear the voice of a theologian who was both an adamant advocate for the centrality of the church’s spiritual mission of preaching the gospel of salvation through Christ alone and one of the founders of the NAACP. Francis Grimké was one of the most important and influential pastor-theologians in America a century ago, and the teachings of his life and ministry remain incredibly relevant in our present cultural moment.
Despite his significant influence, Grimké is often overlooked in discussions of American religious and civil rights history. And yet, he was a leader in the church and the early civil rights movement for 50 years. His essays and sermons were published widely and regularly commented on by notable figures. He corresponded with Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson. He was a close and personal friend of Frederick Douglass, even officiating Douglass’ wedding.
He was intimately connected with some of the most important social activists of the early 20th century, including both Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, as well as abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison. African American Presbyterians looked to him as a de facto leader, and he influenced a host of other crucial institutions beyond the church. The neglect of his legacy is significant, given his long and influential tenure as a pastor and his crucial involvement in the early civil rights movement.
Thus, Grimké’s life serves as a reminder of the need for a more comprehensive telling of American church history, one that acknowledges the vital role of Black religious leaders in shaping the nation’s spiritual and social landscape. His writings and activism provide profound insights into the intersection of faith, race, and justice.
Toward the end of his ministry, he wrote the following memorable words in a letter to the alumni of Princeton Theological Seminary:
During these forty years two things I have tried to do with all my might: (1) To preach the gospel of the grace of God, to get men to see their need of a savior, and to accept Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, the life. If I had to live my life over again I would still choose the ministry, I could not be satisfied in any other calling. (2) I have sought with all my might to fight race prejudice, because I believe it is utterly un-Christian, and that it is doing almost more than anything else to curse our own land and country and the world at large. Christianity, in its teachings, and in the spirit of its founder, stands for the brotherhood of man, calls us to do by others as we would be done by, to love our neighbor as ourselves.9
With characteristic passion and clarity, this letter points to perhaps one of the most significant aspects of Grimké’s approach to the Christian life. He made careful distinctions, but he did not divide the Christian life. He distinguished between preaching the gospel and fighting race prejudice, but he did not separate the two. He distinguished between sacred and secular knowledge, vocations, and issues, but he did not oppose them. He valued both the individual and the corporate aspects of Christian life and piety.
He saw the importance of Christian work in the church, in society, and in the state, but he did not confuse or collapse the different spheres. He believed in racial pride and solidarity, and also racial humility. He called for repentance for racism, and he willingly offered forgiveness and reconciliation. As such, Francis Grimké’s “both–and” approach to the Christian life remains a challenging and encouraging model for us to remember and reflect upon today.
Drew Martin is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Covenant Theological Seminary. The content of this article is adapted from Grimké on the Christian Life by Drew Martin, ©2025. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
1 Archibald H. Grimké, “A Madonna of the South,” The Southern Workman 29, no. 7 (1900): 392.
2 James McCosh to unnamed addressee, October 18, 1879, in The Works of Francis J. Grimké, ed. Carter G. Woodson, 4 vols. (Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1942), 1:x; Ethelbert D. Warfield to Francis J. Grimké, December 28, 1922, in Works, 4:357.
3 Peoples’ Advocate, May 3, 1879 (Washington, DC); Presbytery of Washington City, “Records,” 2:119, cited in Henry Justin Ferry, “Francis James Grimké: Portrait of a Black Puritan” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1970), “Francis James Grimké,” 138, 139, 145.
4 Ferry, “Francis James Grimké,” 272–86.
5 Amy Louise Wood, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 3.
6 Francis J. Grimké to the members of the class of 1878 of Princeton Theological Seminary, April 27, 1918, in Works, 4:215.
7 Ferry, “Francis James Grimké, 195, 204, 207, 214-215, 267.
8 For Grimké’s teaching on the spiritual mission of the church, see his sermons, “Christ’s Program for the Saving of the World” (1936), box 40-6, folder 309, Francis J. Grimké Papers, Howard University Library; Francis J. Grimké, “The Nature and Mission of the Christian Church” (ca. 1889), box 40-8, folder 415, Francis J. Grimké Papers, Howard University Library.
9 Grimké to the class of 1878 of Princeton Theological Seminary, April 27, 1918.