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.”…