Black and white churches tackle racism
Local Christian groups are among those focusing efforts on moving beyond segregation.
Christian groups — including churches in Rome and Floyd County — have been putting more time and resources into addressing racism, with the issue at the forefront because of police shootings of black men and the Black Lives Matter movement.
One of the largest U.S. evangelical college ministries, Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, took up Black Lives Matter at its most recent student missions conference.
Two overwhelmingly white religious groups — the Episcopal
Church and the Presbyterian Church, (U.S.A.) — have for the first time elected black clergy as their top church officers.
The New Baptist Covenant, an initiative by President Jimmy Carter to unite Baptists, has sharpened its programming focus on building partnerships between black and white churches.
And Christian publications and blogs such as Christianity Today, Mere Orthodoxy, Relevant, The Christian Century and the Gospel Coalition, have also put a spotlight on systemic racism.
The Rev. Robert Brown of Rome First United Methodist Church believes uniting congregants of white and black churches is a constant effort in practicing what is preached.
As followers of Christ — who teaches to look beyond human differences — people must not only work to worship across racial lines but also build a community reflective of Christ’s teachings, he said.
“If we seek to live that out, then we do so without differences,” said Brown, whose congregation is predominately white.
When churches unite
For the last two years, First UMC has partnered with the black congregation of Metropolitan United Methodist Church in securing grant funding to purchase supplies for an afterschool program.
The program provides a safe place, from 3 to 6 p.m. at Metropolitan, where kids can receive something to eat, work on homework and socialize under adult supervision.
But more importantly, Brown said, the program brings black and white children to a place where they can interact and build relationships.
“We get them on a playground together or … together reading … (and they) learn to love one another,” he said.
Building a unified community starts with children, he said, because they don’t have preconceived ideas on racial differences.
The Rev. Carey Ingram, pastor of the predominantly black Lovejoy Baptist Church, said local efforts are on the right path.
“I don’t know a pastor in Rome or Floyd County who doesn’t embrace me as a brother in the ministry and I haven’t felt prejudice,” he said.
Every fifth Sunday, members of Ingram’s church and those from majority white Westminster Presbyterian Church gather for a service and a fellowship dinner.
“What I’m finding out is, when churches unite we become a more powerful people,” Ingram said. “If we are ever going to make changes, we have to learn to work with everybody.”
The Rev. Greg Lund, pastor of Westminster, said the two churches are finishing up their first year of partnership and he hopes it will spread as an example of racial and denominational unity.
“It has been a wonderful way to get to know each other and build a relationship and build trust,” Lund said. There’s a power in eating and worshipping together.”
Different elements, whether it be music or methods of preaching, meet when both churches come together, Lund said, and it “energizes” the service.
Churches in Rome and Floyd County are more diverse than ever before, Ingram said, but that doesn’t mean all church populations have hit a point of being equally black and white.
“It’s a change, slowly but surely,” he said, but added that the racial makeup of a church will depend on where it is located.
“If a church is in center of the black community then that will be the demographic,” he said.
However, churches, regardless of their congregants’ race, can bond along the common thread of collaborating to create the Rome they want to see, Brown said.
The unity between black and white churches is not meant to be a single showing of goodwill toward each other, he added, but rather “a lasting effort in sustaining the transformative experience.”
Around the nation
Here are some examples of how Christians around the country are tackling the issues:
Southern Baptist Convention: The denomination founded in 1845 in support of slaveholding has recently made a priority of addressing racism. In 2012, the convention
elected its first black president, the Rev. Fred Luter. The Southern Baptist public policy arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, has been holding talks and conferences for pastors on the Gospel and racial reconciliation. And over the past year, pastors from the 15.5 million-member denomination and a major black Baptist group, the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., started a public conversation about fighting racism. At the Southern Baptist Convention meeting last June, delegates voted to repudiate use of the Confederate flag
Episcopal Church: The church, which has been the spiritual home of many Founding Fathers and U.S. presidents, last year voted to put more resources behind combatting racism. The 1.8 millionmember denomination also elected its first black leader, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry. Dioceses have been holding anti-racism training and some are researching their historic links to slavery. The Diocese of Rhode Island plans a museum in its cathedral that will examine the church’s involvement with the slave trade.
Presbyterian Church in America: At its meeting last June, the nation’s second-largest Presbyterian group issued a detailed apology for its past bigotry, repenting sins “committed during the civil rights era,” past teachings that the Bible condoned slavery and discouraged interracial marriage, “participation in and defense of white supremacist organizations,” and its “continuing racial sins.” The denomination was formed in 1973 mostly by Southern churches that wanted to preserve their theologically conservative approach to Scripture, but who were also opposed to desegregation, according to Tobin Grant, a political scientist at Southern Illinois University and columnist for Religion News Service.