Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church

Global Spiritual Community

It was our first wedding anniversary September 18, 1965 and we celebrated the occasion by going to the Jazz Workshop. The plan was to start with John Coltrane and then check out some other entertainment venues. But when John Coltrane came onto the stage we could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit moving with him. He lifted his soprano sax, pointed it at us, focused on us with his big clear eyes and began playing what seemed to be a non-stop one movement suite. We did not talk to each other during the performance because we were caught up in what later would be known as our Sound Baptism. Even in a jazz club we experienced the effectual transference of the Holy Ghost through sound.

After much repeated listening, subsequent reading and meditation we experienced a greater sense of awareness concerning the significance of John Coltrane's expression through his horn. Coltrane would claim "Yes, I think the music is rising, in my estimation, it's rising into something else, and so we'll have to find this kind of place to be played in." That experience and those words had a lot to do with the forming and structure of this church. We further witnessed a second performance of John Coltrane in 1966. Here John Coltrane expanded the classic quartet and unleashed the kind of Holy Ghost power that is at the center of our religious beliefs and practices.

On July 17, 1967 Archbishop King was at Bop City when he heard the news of John Coltrane's ascension. From the time of our arrival in San Francisco, we maintained our apartment in Potrero Hill as a cultural space for listening and learning about jazz music and African American culture. With the help of Archbishop King's brother Landres we established "The Jazz Club" where people would bring new recordings and readings and we would host listening parties. Upon hearing of John Coltrane's ascension we were moved with a greater sense of urgency to increase our activity, and in 1968 "The Jazz Club" became the "Yardbird Club" where we offered an after-hours venue for musicians visiting the Bay Area to experiment with new sounds and ideas. In its heyday the community owned "Yardbird Club", it was an oasis in an atmosphere of rapidly diminishing Black ownership of jazz club venues. We saw ourselves as bringing the music back to the community.

By 1969 our spiritual yearnings and understanding of the essentially sacred message of John Coltrane's music would necessitate a shift from "Yardbird Club" to the "Yardbird Temple," and our efforts would move from purely cultural to spiritual. The "Yardbird Temple" was a manifestation of how we were being guided by the Holy Ghost. We would move toward meditation, fasting, prayer, and remove everything that we understood to be at odds with the spiritual elevation of the music. We were now seeking the spiritual enlightenment promised by the 1965 Sound Baptism. The "Yardbird Temple" would evolve into the "One Mind Temple" in 1971 when we moved to 201 Sawyer Street, the "One Mind Temple" would also come to be known as the "One Mind Temple Evolutionary Transitional Body of Christ" upon further relocation to 351 Divisadero Street. The One Mind Temple Years (1971-'74) coincided with our activist involvement with the Black Panther Party and the creation and expansion of food, clothing and shelter programs for the poor. Here at One Mind Temple we attempted to realize the charitable and compassionate vision of Jesus Christ and our patron Saint John Will-I-Am Coltrane.

In 1981 His Eminence Archbishop Hinkson of the African Orthodox Church would send an emissary, Bishop Ajari, to San Francisco to invite the "One Mind Temple"/"Vedantic Center" congregation to join the African Orthodox Church. The African Orthodox Church was founded in 1921 in the midst of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) under the belief that black Episcopalians should have a denomination of their own. Bishop Alexander McGuire, who had served for many years as a UNIA chaplain, served as the first Archbishop of the African Orthodox Church. Under the tutelage of Archbishop George Duncan Hinkson, Archbishop King would study in Chicago and would be consecrated in 1984 as a Bishop. The church would briefly become know as the "One Mind Temple Missionary Episcopate of the African Orthodox Church." Upon the granting of sainthood for John Coltrane, the church would become the Saint John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church where we have continued to evolve as a religious, cultural, and political force in the community even in spite of our relocation from 351 Divisadero to 930 Gough Street and now 1286 Fillmore Street in the heart of the redeveloped Western Addition and San Francisco's developing "Jazz Preservation District"