No one in Sumter County had encountered a minister like the Rev. Dr. James Bolan Lawrence (1878-1947)—“He smoked, he drank, he liked good stories.” He attended country club dances and made headlines for preaching a sermon in favor of golf on Sunday.
Gertrude Davenport, who knew him well, wrote that Lawrence, who was known in the area as “Brother Jimmy” was handsome, well-bred and scholarly. Lawrence, who grew up in the family of a patriarch of St. James Episcopal Church in Marietta, Georgia, was known for his love of “good food, good drink, good tobacco, good music, good clothes.” He read Homer and Virgil in their original Greek and Latin and to study laboriously to craft sermons “expressed in such beautiful language” that his friend noted were nonetheless “rarely were stimulating.”
Davenport recalls how though he was often ignored, laughed at and publicly made fun of, Dr. Lawrence persevered. He tirelessly worked to live out the Gospel. He carried the sick to hospitals, helped rehabilitate alcoholics, assisted boys and girls to get an education while teaching others himself. Little by little, she wrote, this county seat town observed the odd man with his collar on backwards helping people “high and low, rich and poor, young and old, good and bad.” He was versed in Greek, Latin and French, but he was never heard talking down to anyone. Too old to fight in World War I, he went into the YMCA and served near the front just the same. He returned from the war to take back up his steadfast example of trying to follow Christ.
Besides seeing significant growth in the membership at Calvary in Americus, he founded churches in Pennington (the log chapel is now in Andersonville), in Vienna, in Cordele, Blakely, Cuthbert, Dawson, and Benevolence. He would get on the train, and go to the next stop, get off and gather people to hear the Gospel.
In 1947 when Mr. Lawrence retired from active service, Bishop Barnwell commented on the Archdeacon’s forty-three years of faithful duty: “So far as my knowledge of the record goes, this is the longest period of service rendered by any man in the history of the Diocese.” He added, “Dr. Lawrence is still a missionary.”
When he died, he was laid to rest beside the log church of St. James. The mile-long funeral procession followed his casket, many on foot the 13 miles from church to church. Davenport shared that he had not gained hard-earned respect with noble church building efforts any more than through eloquent preaching. The people in Americus and the towns all around it loved Brother Jimmy Lawrence for his example of “kindness, selflessness, and utter goodness.” Bishop Henry I. Louttit, Jr. named him a Saint of Georgia in 1999 and established a local feast of September 3.
