About

A history of Westminster Presbyterian Church could not be written without a brief history about the person who first figured in the “mission”  that was the origin of the church. The person was Maria Fearing who was an American teacher and missioary  who was famous for her work in the Congo. 

 

Maria Fearing, born in 1838, was a former enslaved person on a plantation in Sumter County, Alabama. She was thirty-three years old before she learned to read and write.  She worked her way through the Freedman’s Bureau School in Talladega (Talladega College) to become a teacher.  She taught for a number of years in the rural schools of Calhoun County. 

 

In 1891, Maria heard William Sheppard, an African American Presbyterian minister speak at Talladega College.  As a Presbyterian missionary, Sheppard appealed to the audience for volunteers to return with him to the Congo.  At the age of fifty-six, Maria applied to work with the Presbyterian missionaries in Africa.  Denied at first, she was later approved as a self-supporting missionary.  In May 1894, after selling her house and receiving a pledge for $100.00 from the women of the Congregational Church in Talladega, Maria paid her own expenses and sailed from New York to the Congo (Zaire).  Once reaching shore, Sheppard, three other African Americans and Maria traveled another 1,200 miles inland to a mission station at Luebo.  The journey lasted almost two months.  After two years, Maria was recognized as a full missionary and began receiving a salary. Maria Fearing’s christian work in both Africa and Alabama became legendary. Maria died in 1937 in Sumter County, Alabama. 

 

In  1942, Rev. Charles Tyler organized the “Maria Fearing Mission” in her honor and to fulfill the religious needs of black people on the southside of Birmingham, Alabama.  Mrs. Blonden (Bonnie) Oliver worked untiringly with Rev. Tyler to help get the mission started. 

 

On November 26, 1944, the Central Alabama Presbytery sanctioned the “Mission” as a church body with Rev. John Wesley Rice, Sr. as the first pastor.  The newly-organized church was given the name Westminster Presbyterian Church.