“Eleven o’clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour, and Sunday school is still the most segregated school of the week” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In his speech yesterday, Barack Obama referred to these words. At the time that Dr. King uttered them it was true. Is it still?
All this prologue (in the post below) brings me to the main story:
While in Nashville attending seminary, my wife and I were members at a small white church,Hickory Hollow Baptist Church. We had a nice building and a good location. A local black congregation, Simeon Baptist Church, was looking for a place to meet. They were a SBC church and their pastor was an employee at the Baptist Sunday School Board. Their pastor and our pastor really made a connection with each other. They asked if they could rent our building on Sundays. The proposal was that they would have Sunday School at 10:30, right when we were finishing SS and going to church, they would arrive and go to class right as we were leaving class. Then they had church at noon, right as we were leaving the sanctuary. So when we would be going out, they would be coming in.
It was then that I learned what had really happened. When their pastor approached our pastor about renting our space, our pastor asked if our churches could merge. Our pastor offered to resign, and their pastor would become the pastor of the combined group. (It was a sincere offer.) Simeon Baptist rejected it. They wanted their own identity. So our church approved the rental unanimously.
We were excited about it. Our two churches got a long wonderfully. We hired a pianist that happened to be one of their members. When our pastor was absent, their pastor would preach for us and vice versa. Our churches had fellowships together and joint outreach projects. Some of their members would attend our services and some of our members attended theirs. Their drumset got moved to the front of our sanctuary, and though we never used it, it sat there in all of it's gleaming red glory, silent, every Sunday morning. And we knew it was going to get loud when we left. :)
It was a great thing. One that both of our churches were happy with. Our sign out front had both churches listed. My only regret was the same as our pastor's, I wished we could worship together. But it was made clear to me from some of my friends in Simeon that they didn't want that. They wanted to maintain their own identity, and they didn't want to have to tone down their worship.
Somehow the editor/writer of the Nashville newspaper's religion section found out about our arrangement. He scheduled a day that he would attend both services and interview members of both churches. Both churches were so excited. We really felt like God was doing a wonderful thing, and that we had a mutually beneficial, God-glorifying relationship.
The reporter came. He saw. He interviewed. He left. He wrote.
Front page headline of the Religion section next week read,
"Segregated on Sunday"
We were crushed. The article emphasized the fact that though it was the 90's we were still segregated. It was a negative piece. And though the individuals interviewed had only positive things to say, the reporter managed to make it look like our attitude was that the black church was good enough to pay us rent, but not good enough to worship with us white folks.
It hurt the members of both churches. We were outraged. Some wrote letters to the editor.
It still hurts me. What I remember is that the white folks wanted to merge. But I also understood the concern of Simeon. Would it ever really be "their church"? I respected their choice to remain seperate. And I rejoiced in our relationship. But a reporter had to find the negative. He had to point out a racial divide where much had gone on to bring racial reconciliation at our church.
I suppose it's still like that. As I read Obama's words about how special he felt in his black church, I was reminded that for many blacks, their church is still a special place, and they want it to remain that way. Though Obama would want whites to be welcomed at his church (and I'm sure they are), he would never want it to cease to be a black church. So in that sense, I think the segregation on Sunday will continue for a long, long time.
Obama had some good points in his speech. The media does benefit from and look for racial conflict, and they just make it worse.
In his speech, Obama referred often to "the black community" and "the white community". Will that ever end? Will there ever be a time when we are an "American Community"? Will there ever be a time that to refer to "the black community" will be just as silly sounding as "the red headed community"?
Part of what I learned from my experience with Simeon & Hickory Hollow is that the answers aren't so simple. Blacks have a community, they have an identity, one forged in hardship in persecution. You can't just expect them to give that up. Though I do long for a day when we no longer use the word "them" in reference to any racial makeup.
I don't think Obama used Dr. King's words in quite the same way that Dr. King meant them. In Dr. King's day, white churches were keeping blacks out while preaching racial reconciliation. Dr. King was challenging white churches to practice what they preach. Reading Obama's excerpt from his first book that he quoted in this speech, it seems that Obama chose his church partly because it was segregated, not in spite of it. That it was by African-Americans for African-Americans was important to him. I respect that. But that's the reason for the "segregation".
But race is difficult. Obama's race is irrelevant to me. And I wish it were irrelevant to everyone. But to the black person his or her own race isn't irrelevant. It's who they are. And so we as a society and as churches seem to be embracing racial differences at the same time that we repudiate them. It's weird. It's schizophrenic. It's complicated. And pardon the pun, it's not a black and white issue. There's a lot of gray.
Good points. Though I have to say, I'm not at all sure that Trinity UCC would really welcome white people--at least, not most, and not very many.