Black Churches

Becky Garrison 9-08-2008

[continued from part 1 and part 2]

Back in 1961, Gurdon Brewster was a seminary student at Union Theological Seminary, training to be an Episcopal priest. When this Northern [...]

Becky Garrison 9-05-2008

[continued from part 1]

Back in 1961, Gurdon Brewster was a seminary student at Union Theological Seminary, training to be an Episcopal priest. When this Northern liberal raised his hand to volunteer as a summer intern at Ebenezer Baptist Church, he had no idea what lay in store for [...]

Becky Garrison 9-04-2008

Back in 1961, Gurdon Brewster was a seminary student at Union Theological Seminary, training to be an Episcopal priest. When this Northern liberal raised his hand to volunteer as a summer intern at Ebenezer Baptist Church, he had no idea what lay in store for him. He tells this story in

Sondra Haaga 8-07-2008

American churches are still segregated, and it is the way most of us—regardless of our race—would like to keep it. At least, so suggests the recent online CNN article titled, “Why Americans Prefer Their Segregated Sundays." Curtiss DeYoung, professor of Reconciliation Studies at [...]

Diana Butler Bass 4-28-2008

Over the last several days, I watched Rev. Jeremiah Wright in discussions of faith, theology, history, and culture on television. The three-plus hours I devoted to PBS and CNN amounted to some of the most sophisticated and thoughtful programming on American culture and racial issues that any news station has offered in recent years. And, for those who really listened to Rev. Wright, he moved from [...]

Administrator 4-22-2008

In my ongoing quest for music that can enact positive social change, I came across the Black Gospel Restoration Project, a project spearheaded by Robert Darden, associate professor of journalism at Baylor University. Following is a [...]

Tony Campolo 4-02-2008

During the closing days of January, more than 15,000 Baptists from 30 different Baptist denominations gathered together at the Convention Center in Atlanta. Although all Baptist groups were invited to join in what was called The New Baptist Covenant, official representatives from the largest Baptist group in the U.S., the Southern Baptist Convention, were conspicuously absent. [...]

The recent controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright has initiated a new conversation about race in America. It has done so by making clear to white America what almost every black American knows-that 40 years after the civil rights movement, there are still two Americas. More pointedly for Christians, it is manifestly evident that we have two churches. After the integration of schools, the military, and the workplace, the church remains the single most segregated institution in America. [...]