Reverend Yielbonzie Charles Johnson

1952 - 2023

Reverend Yielbonzie Charles Johnson

August 26, 1952 - June 2, 2023

  Reverend Yielbonzie Charles Johnson, artist, teacher, mentor, and friend departed this life and joined the ancestors on June 2, 2023. He was 70 years old.

  Yielbonzie was born Charles Edward Johnson on August 26, 1952, to Claude Johnson and Sallie Marie Johnson (née Hannah), in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was a very inquisitive and precocious child, attending Dunbar Elementary School, Carver Junior High School, and Booker T. Washington High School, from which he graduated in 1970. Yielbonzie earned a full scholarship to Penn State University studying Psychology, something that rarely happened to young black men during that time.

  The challenges he faced at that time were in the context of the global Black liberation movement. The period was marked by another end of American innocence ushered in with assassinations, Vietnam and cultural revolution. In answer to James Baldwin's crucial question, "Who wants to be integrated into a burning house?" Yielbonzie made his way to art through engagement with the "community mental health" movement specifically and what was generally referred to as the "human potential movement."

  In 1986, Yielbonzie earned his Master of Divinity at the Starr King School for the Ministry, then part of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. He was ordained into the Unitarian Universalist ministry in 1987, and founded and pastored the Church of the Restoration Unitarian-Universalist in Tulsa. He departed the church to become an Associate Professor of Ministry at Starr King from 1996 to 2001.

  For 30 years, he worked in a variety of contexts and cities organizing and teaching worship arts and promoting art as an essential component of healthy and liberating communities. In 2013, he retired from active ministry and returned to Tulsa, devoting himself to his artistic practice. In 2015, he organized Black Artist Collaborating-Tulsa. Two years later, Black Artist Collaborating was awarded a grant from the Greenwood Arts Project/Bloomberg Philanthropies for their "Lives on the Line" initiative. In his final years, he continued integrating his love of the arts into the teaching, counseling, and healing of African Americans in the city.

  Yielbonzie leaves to celebrate his life his brother, Claude Johnson Jr. (Danielle) of Maine; sister, Mary Outland of Tulsa; nieces, RoShona Anderson of Mansfield, TX, Stephanie Johnson of Dallas, and Shelly Johnson of New Orleans; nephews, Claude Johnson III (Christelle) of Connecticut, Sterling Johnson (Liz) of England, and Eric Henderson of Houston; very dear friends, Carlton E. Smith of Colorado and Francine Campbell (Yusuf) of Tulsa; grandnieces and nephews; and a host of relatives, friends, colleagues and students.

  We are blessed to know the ancestors dance and sing at his arrival. Yielbonzie continues to live within all of us, for a spirit as great as his cannot be destroyed - It can only change forms.

  In lieu of flowers, the family encourages donations to the Unitarian Universalist Society for Ministerial Relief, c/o Rev. Susan Suchocki Brown, 80 Mill Glen Road, Winchendon, MA 01475.

  Celebration of the Life of Yielbonzie Charles Johnson will be Saturday, June 10, 2023, 2 p.m., at All Souls Unitarian Church, 2952 S. Peoria Ave., Tulsa, OK. The service will also be live-streamed for those who are not able to attend.