From the the pulpit of Holy Redeemer Institutional Church of God in Christ, Bishop Sedgwick Daniels enraptured worshipers each Sunday with electrifying and uplifting sermons, often driving them to their feet in praise dances.
After more than three decades serving as head of one of Milwaukee’s largest Black churches and a guiding light for the city’s faith community, Daniels died Sunday. He was 64 years old.
Daniels founded Holy Redeemer church in 1986 in a small building on North 12th Street and West Atkinson Avenue. At the time, the church had only 40 members, but the congregation quickly outgrew its facility.
Under Daniels’ stewardship, the church turned an abandoned industrial site at North 35th Street and Weest Hampton Avenue into a multi-million dollar church complex.
Since then, the sanctuary has stood as an economic and social anchor for Milwaukee’s north side.
For many in the Milwaukee area, Daniels served as a father figure, shepherding hundreds of young people and families into the church. Daniels could often be found welcoming community members into his home for dinners, taking parishioners home in the church van after a late-night Bible study, or driving students to college tours or their freshman move-in day.
Kathy Harris, who serves as a Church of God in Christ Minister of Music, knew Daniels for much of her young adult life before joining the church as an employee in 1986. Working alongside Daniels, she said she learned what it looked like to build family through faith.
Though she described Daniels’ passing as a “catastrophic loss” to their church community, she finds solace in the fact that Daniels inspired so many to follow in his footsteps.
“He baptized me, he married me, he supported me when my parents died,” Harris said. “He’s trained us and taught us to make it through loving unity. He has really laid the blueprint out for us and we are more than capable of continuing his work.”
As a member of one of the city’s most influential families, Daniels…
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