When Beloved White Evangelical Leaders Die

Charles Stanley

He was a pastor in Atlanta during the Civil Rights Era. Like so many white Evangelicals and Pentecostals, it was not worth mentioning for him. Surely he had opportunities to reject the racist voices in his community. There’s no record of a public outcry when four little Black girls were bombed to smithereens during Sunday School in his own state.

Instead, he had guards stationed outside his church to keep African-Americans out. His own books make no mention. He was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Yes, that Southern Baptist Convention. Twice. He never recanted for blaming homosexual sin for the AIDS epidemic.

But now I keep reading about how Charles Stanley taught the “Word of God.”

Full disclosure, in my youth, I was also taken with Stanley.

But I had to decide. And I chose Black people because I heard the “Word of God” from the lips of Martin Luther King, Jr., James Lawson, Fannie Lou Hamer, John Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, Marsha P. Johnson, and of course, Malcolm X.

I still hear God speaking to me through them.

And I acknowledge my personal history of ignorant and heteronormative faith. I was an unwitting heavy while doing good for the people as I understood good. I can tell you if you want a light heart, a faith that excludes is not sustainable.

Jimmy Carter

When I was in my forties, I became friends with a white pastor who had to face racism in his own congregation. The now-deceased Bruce Edwards made national news because his church in Plains, Georgia was where President Jimmy Carter held his membership. African American activist Rev. Clennon King tried to join the church.

The church held a meeting to determine whether they would open their doors to black people. Bruce told me years later that Carter left Washington to be a part of the meeting, but church leaders “would not let him have the floor.” Eventually, Bruce left the church to take a pastorate in Honolulu and served there for 13 years. They helped him purchase a home, and when Bruce fell ill, he said, “Without the equity from that house I don’t know what Sandra and I would have done.” He said Hawaii was where he learned that a church can heal a pastor.

 

 

 

 

 

Jimmy Carter 1924-2023

Jimmy Carter 1924-2023