KIM LAWTON, anchor: A tense national debate about racial profiling has continued since Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was arrested in his Cambridge home for disorderly conduct. Gates, who is African-American, was arrested by Sergeant James Crowley, a white officer who had responded to a 9-11 call about a possible break-in. The controversy intensified when President Obama said the police “acted stupidly” when they arrested Gates. The president later said he regretted his choice of words and he hosted both Gates and Crowley at the White House Thursday for a conciliatory beer. The incident and the ensuing debate show how divisive racial issues can be in this country.  Even though America has elected its first black president, efforts toward racial integration are often still fraught with difficulties, not least in churches where it’s been said that 11 o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week. Lucky Severson reports.

LUCKY SEVERSON: If something seems odd or unusual about these worshippers, maybe it’s the diversity, all the different colors and nationalities of their faces. This is the Wilcrest Baptist Church in Houston, and Pastor Rodney Woo couldn’t be more proud of the cultural and racial mix of his congregation.

Pastor RODNEY WOO (Wilcrest Baptist Church, Houston, TX): I think my main passion is to get people ready for heaven. I think a lot of our people are going to go into culture shock when they get to heaven, and they get to sit next to somebody that they didn’t maybe sit with while they were here on earth. So we’re trying to get them acclimated a little bit.

SEVERSON: Assuming Pastor Woo is right, there are a lot of congregations that need to get acclimated. A recent study found that only 7 percent of churches in the US are integrated. This comes as no surprise to Ohio State sociology professor Korie Edwards, author of the book “The Elusive Dream.”

Professor KORIE EDWARDS (Sociology Department, Ohio State University and Author, “The Elusive Dream”): We’re segregated in housing. Even the job market is segregated, and we end up going to churches with people who look like us.

Professor Michael Emerson

Professor MICHAEL EMERSON (Sociology Department, Rice University): Sometimes,you know, you’ll hear the statement of African Americans saying, “I have to work with whites. I may have to shop with them. But on Sunday I want to — I don’t want to have to worship with them. I want to be able to just be myself and let my hair down.”

SEVERSON: Rice University sociology professor Michael Emerson, who authored the study on the make-up of churches in the US, says racial separation inside most churches is even more pronounced than it is outside for a number of reasons.

Prof. EMERSON: What we found in the study is that churches are 10 times less diverse than the neighborhoods they sit in.

SEVERSON: Emerson also found that churches in the South were the least integrated, partly because African Americans are concerned about whites taking over their congregation.

Prof. EMERSON: That’s a big fear, right, and when I talk with black pastors, the same thing: If we try to have this move towards interracial congregations, whites will just dominate them. There are so many more of them, and they’re used to being in the position of power, so they’ll just take over, and we’ll lose the one thing we do have.

Prof. EDWARDS: And so what happens in these congregations where you have whites and blacks, even though they may be well intended, people coming together and wanting to do the Christian thing, wanting to serve God together, you’re going to find that these kinds of issues that occur outside of the church come into the church.

SEVERSON: Pastor Rufus Smith of the City of Refuge Church in Houston is one of very few African Americans who lead an interracial church. Smith says when he took over the evangelical Presbyterian congregation it was mostly white, bored, and dwindling. He said he would only agree to be pastor if members promised to integrate.

Pastor Rufus Smith

SEVERSON: Today the church is about 45 percent white, 45 percent black, and the rest Hispanic and Asian. But Pastor Smith says the “grand experience” hasn’t always been pleasant.

Pastor SMITH: You’re certainly up against the natural stereotypes. You’re up against ignorance. You’re up against some hard-heartedness and, you know, some outright evil with respect to some people.

SEVERSON: Pastor Rodney Woo, half Chinese, grew up in a black neighborhood, went to an all-white church, and married his Hispanic childhood sweetheart.

Pastor WOO (preaching): The poor rich. Let me tell you who they are. They are the people who have a lot of money and nothing else.

SEVERSON: When he came here, the church had only two black members out of 180. Today Wilcrest Baptist has 500 members divided almost equally among whites, blacks, and Hispanics, with the remainder made up of Asians. Woo says he didn’t realize how difficult it was going to be integrating his church.

Pastor Rodney Woo

Pastor WOO: When we started a lot of people were going, “Ah, this is making me feel uncomfortable.” Whether the kids were in the nursery together, or their kids were in the young group, a lot of parents were fearful that their kids might start dating somebody that was a different race.

Prof. EMERSON: In the beginning stages, there’s often a lot of pain, a lot of confusion. A lot of people leave. Maybe there’s even anger. But if they make it through that, it becomes something that people just a lot of times will say, “I couldn’t live without it.”

Pastor SMITH (preaching): Ask me how I feel.

CONGREGATION (responding): How do you feel?

Pastor SMITH: If I was any better, I would have to be twins, and that’s the truth if I ever told it.

SEVERSON: Pastor Rufus Smith has succeeded in not only integrating his church racially. His congregation comes from all walks of life. When it grew, he deliberately located the church between affluent and low-income neighborhoods. Carol Vance, a former district attorney, was one of the founding members.

CAROL VANCE (Founding Member, City of Refuge Church): We picked Rufus because he’s a great pastor, not because he’s black. But I think it’s wonderful that he is, because we’re sitting right here on the edge, and I sort of like to think of our church as the “bridge over troubled waters.”

Pastor SMITH: To me, one of the true tests of the power of the Gospel is to unify people across socio-economic, racial lines, which is what the heart of Christianity is and was.

SEVERSON: Karen Giesen has a doctorate in theology. She says she grew up in a white church where people bowed their head, folded their hands, and worshipped quietly — very different from what she experiences at City of Refuge.

KAREN GIESEN (Congregation Member, City of Refugee Church): The worship style is an issue. None of us are right in probably our heart language style. We’re all making a sacrifice to be there. It’s a mix. A lot of people go looking for churches saying, “I am looking for the one that ministers to me,” and to go here we’ve obviously all made a choice that we want to serve there.

SEVERSON: Rebecca Miller wants to be a pastor. She says she searched to find a church that felt like a community.

REBECCA MILLER (Congregation Member, City of Refuge Church): People worship the way the spirit leads them to worship. I really don’t think that there is anybody saying you can’t shout, you can’t scream, you can’t say “hallelujah” or you can’t clap your hands. It’s not the typical Presbyterian “you can’t raise your hands” church.

Pastor WOO: Where we really changed, and we saw the growth, grow at exponentially, was when the church became less than 50 percent white, and so there was no majority group, and that just changed the entire mindset.

SEVERSON: Church guitarist Jim Kruse married a Hispanic and adopted a Hispanic child. He says he’s learning a few things about his own prejudice.

JIM KRUSE (Guitarist, Wilcrest Baptist Church): What we’re learning is that you may not come to it thinking you are prejudiced. You may be seriously trying not to be prejudiced. But then you find out the things you are doing come across as prejudiced. So I think a lot of our effort has been to learn to relax, to let people be people.

SEVERSON: It would be difficult to find a more graphic example of religion bridging a racial divide than Dwight Pryor and Rick Taylor. Taylor describes himself as a reformed “redneck.”

RICK TAYLOR (Congregation Member, Wilcrest Baptist Church): From where I come from, to be honest, I was taught to hate people like Dwight and to not have anything to do with them and that they were less than I was, and I believed that most of my life. I truly did. But the Lord has a way of showing you your prejudices in your life.

Dwight Pryor and Rick Taylor

DWIGHT PRYOR (Congregation Member, Wilcrest Baptist Church): I grew up in North Mississippi. As a little kid on those school buses, watching those people would shout racist names at me, and some of them were deacons and pastors in our community. It left a cold chill in my heart — a hatred.

SEVERSON: Dwight is a control systems designer, and Rick is a retired general contractor. The bond that has grown between them is plain to see.

Mr. TAYLOR: Racism colors the truth. It makes people not look at other people as if they were human. It goes that deep. It truly does, and Christ teaches us that we are all the same.

SEVERSON (to Prof. Emerson): Are churches that integrate richer because they did it?

Prof. EMERSON: Yeah. I never meet a church that wishes they didn’t do it. I never meet a leader that wishes they didn’t do it. They will all say, to the person, “It’s hard. It’s difficult. It comes with complexities and confusion.”

SEVERSON: And they will say, if they’re like Dwight and Rick, that church integration may not always come easy, but it comes with rich rewards and improbable friendships. For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson in Houston.

Professor Michael Emerson

Q: Fewer than ten percent of churches in America are integrated.

A: Yeah, that comes from our research here, actually.

Q: The number is that low?

A: Yeah, seven percent. That’s what it is.

Q: Were you surprised at that?

A: Yes. Well, yes and no. But yeah, that’s pretty low.

Q: Why? What are the reasons for its being so low?

A: There are three things, and it depends on the group that we’re talking about, but there’s history, there’s culture, and then there’s social networks. So, you know, historically black and white, they worship together until about the end of slavery, and people started moving out into separate churches. But it was because of discrimination and racism and such that blacks began to establish their own denominations and their own churches.

Q: They worshipped together before the Civil War?

A: Absolutely. In part because they had no choice, right? If you were a slave, you did what the master said. And they said to worship: “You’re going to worship with us.” Now they had to sit in separate places and sometimes they’d even have to sit outside and look through the windows. But they did worship together. So we didn’t get the denominations and the separate congregations really till about into Civil War time. What’s happened then, of course, is now that we’ve had well over 100 years of this history to establish separate cultures, different ways of worshipping, and different ways of understanding theology so that when people try to come together makes it very difficult. And then, of course, social networks, you know, how do we find a place to worship? We go where our family goes. We go where our friends are, and because our social networks are so segregated by race, we end up with what we have. We also find that, you know, if you’re immigrants, you’re not part of that history. So it’s a little bit different experience. So it may be a language that separates you — again, social networks. But second-generation Asian and Hispanics, second, and third and fourth and so on, they are much more likely to be in integrated churches than are blacks or whites.

Q: Are churches a reflection of our society? We live in different neighborhoods. We work in different jobs.

A: They are. But what we found in the study is that churches are ten times less diverse than the neighborhoods they sit in. So there’s something more going on than just reflecting the neighborhood, yeah.

Q: What is going on? Is it cultural — that it is difficult to accept an outsider? Is a black church accepting whites, or the other way around?

A: I’ve been in both settings and observed, and I think when non-blacks visit a black church they will feel, they always talk about feeling so welcomed and warmly greeted but being surprised or shocked or whatever by the length of the service, by the different worship style. If we go into white congregations, non-whites will sometimes say it felt like worship never started. It was sort of dead and didn’t feel that warmly received. But so — and there are different realities either way, and it makes it difficult for all groups to try and cross boundaries.

Q: Generally white services are more calm and by the book and a lot more emotion in black services. Is that difficult for whites when they go into a black church?

A: Right, right. Preaching styles and people being slain in the spirit and things like that. Now it doesn’t happen in all black churches, and it happens sometimes in white churches, right? But on average they’re quite a bit different.

Q: The congregation saying “Amen”?

A: Call-and-response style, yes, exactly. So whenever different groups get together then there has to be this long period of negotiation. How will we worship? What’s acceptable? What’s not? If I want to say “Amen” can I? It’s one of the things we find in these congregations is that they are much more likely to be sort of up-beat worship styles, more likely that people in these congregations say “Amen,” maybe get up and dance some, tend to be a little bit more lively than a typical white service would be, but not as lively as a typical black service would be.

Q: What is most likely, a black church that’s integrated with whites or vice versa?

A: We rarely see that. Almost never.

Q: Why is that?

A: Because I think whites are used to being in power, so when whites think we ought to have integrated churches they think, “People ought to come to our church. What can we do to get them to come?” I meet almost no one that goes to an African-American church or thinks, “I’m going to do that.” Now there are whites in African-American churches. They’re interracially married. They’re highly committed. Maybe there’s a professor or two, or a student. Once in a while you get people that maybe because of economic reasons, or have a social network, they get attracted. But it’s a very tiny percent so that when we look at, you know, who are pastors and who are the head clergy of these congregations, they’re overwhelmingly white, just a few African Americans, and those folks are usually called to what were formerly white congregations, or they started interracial church from the get-go.

Q: If the pastor is black, are whites going to be less likely to go to that church because the pastor is black and in charge?

A: Yup. It’s the sad fact of how race still works in our country. We find that over and over again.

Q: But a white church doesn’t feel very welcoming to African Americans, right?

A: That’s right, that’s right. So you can see what is the difficulty. I mean, how do you make these things happen? We’ve done a lot of studies to see when they do happen, why, and I mean there’s a variety of reasons. But one, it starts with a commitment where they decide this is going to be who we are. Maybe it’s out of their faith, a new way of looking at their faith, that we must be integrated across race. So they actually put it into their mission statement, and they start changing things as a result. They may change how worship works. They may actively recruit folks and try and get them to come and help them to feel comfortable and get them involved in leadership, and there’s a variety of ways.

Q: Are they glad they did it? Does the church end up being richer for it?

A: I never meet a church that wishes they didn’t do it. I never meet a leader that wishes they didn’t do it. They will all say, to the person, it’s hard. It’s difficult. It comes with complexities and confusion as you’re trying to go across cultures, and you don’t understand, you didn’t mean to offend somebody but you’ve offended somebody. But they will all say it just does something. They could never go back to being a uniracial congregation again. It brings excitement. It brings life. It allows them to be able to know people they would never know, to meet people that are outside the congregation they would have never connected with, you know, through the networks that they developed in the congregation.

Q: Would our society be a better society if we had more integrated churches?

A: I certainly think so, and I argue so, and I give talks on that. Are there risks by putting people together? Absolutely. Is there value in the black church? Absolutely. Is there value in having immigrant churches? Absolutely. But if we don’t have congregations gathering with people of different races, what we’re doing is we are redefining racial division, a racial inequality. I spent a lot of time developing in books why worshipping separately actually impacts inequality, economic, social, on and on. So I really do believe there are huge advantages to being together even though it’s difficult, even though we have a lot to learn.

Q: Is this integration happening more in one part of the country than in another part?

A: It happens a little bit more in the West, where there’s more fluid — where everybody’s originally from somewhere else. So they have a little bit more permission to do it. It happens the least, at the individual level at least, in the South, because the South has very strong, you know, set up black churches and white churches and a long history of that, and so it’s a bigger social cost. One of the things we find when we talk to people that attend these congregations, they all have social cost to it. People want to know why they’re doing that. Sometimes they’re questions about selling out on their race or “Are we not good enough that you have to go to this kind of congregation and not ours?” So there are costs to it, and I think they’re a little bit higher in the South because of its history.

Q: I guess a pastor really sometimes has to walk a tightrope as well as really be an amazing politician, too.

A: Absolutely. Every pastor I talk to says, and particularly if they’re African American they’ll say, “I’m not black enough for African Americans. I’m not white enough for the whites. I’m not Hispanic enough.” There’s always that sense of because we’re so racially defined, if you’re trying to cross the boundaries you don’t fit into any particular space. We just say there are five, you know, racial groups in the US. I say that these folks are what we call a sixth American. There’s something different. They are somebody who — they don’t exist in any particular racial category, so they all feel it and they kind of congregate to each other. So you find a lot of these sixth Americans congregate in these interracial congregations. They hang out together at work, at school, wherever.

Q: There is an impression that in many ways church has meant more to the black community over the years than any other particular section of America.

A: Absolutely. It may be changing, but still it’s the one place, that total control of an institution, that African Americans have. So sometimes, you know, you’ll hear the statement of African Americans saying, “I have to work with whites. I may have to shop with them. But on Sunday I don’t want to have to worship with them. I want to be able to just be myself and let my hair down.” It’s also, of course, as we know, the seat of political organization and the affirming of your blackness and so on.

Q: And hearing liberation theology. Is that fairly common, as in Jeremiah Wright’s church?

A: Yeah, there are variations of it. He says that very strongly, and you’ll find congregations that do that and others that would not say it as strongly. But it is a very common strain. Yeah, absolutely.

Q: Do African Americans worry that if whites come to my church, they’re going to take over?

A: Oh yeah, absolutely. That’s a big fear, right, and when I talk with black pastors, the same thing: If we try to have this move towards interracial congregations, whites will just dominate then. There are so many more of them, and they’re used to being in the position of power. So they’ll just take over, and we’ll lose the one thing we do have.

Q: I imagine there are phrases in the Bible they have to be very careful how they use.

A: Absolutely. There’s a lot of terminology, like “washes whiter than snow,” and these things which when they’re said in a uniracial congregation, they just go fine. But when they’re said in a mixed congregation, some people will get offended and wonder, “Why are you saying that? What are you saying?” And sometimes the clergy are blindsided by that. Other times they realize that ahead of time and say they’re not going to use those terms. So it gets complicated for sure.

Q: Is there a trend? Even though it may be slow, are we seeing more integrated churches?

A: We’re going to see more, and we are seeing more, and I’ll tell you exactly why. Not because white and black are more likely to get together. Only a third of the seven percent of congregations that are interracial are black and white. What’s happening is that Asian and Latino and other groups without that history are more likely to end up in either black churches or white churches and then make them multiracial churches. I talk about that in the US we have two cultures. We do not have an American culture. We have a white American culture and a black American culture. So when those two groups try to get together, [it’s] very difficult because they each feel like they have the right to their culture. If you move here from somewhere else, I often think if I move to Germany, for example, or if I move China and I go worship there I will understand and I’ll be willing to give up a lot of my culture because I’m in somebody else’s homeland. So I’m going to have to act German or Chinese, whatever that might mean. But in the US, when you have two separate cultures, each with its right, each of which has come to exist in this political entity in the last couple hundred years, each feeling like, “I have the right to hold onto my culture,” and that’s what makes it difficult.

Q: If you have a white church and Asians move in and Hispanics move in, is it less of a problem than if African Americans –

A: Yeah, I think it’s still a problem, but I think it’s easier, I really do, because of not having that similar history, so that’s why I think two-thirds of these mixed congregations are either white with Asian and Hispanic, or black with Asian and Hispanic.

Q: But if you have a white church, and you have a mix of Asians and Hispanics, it makes it easier for African Americans to come?

A: Yes and no, because what happens is sometimes these congregations will still have the white style of worship, even though they’re mixed, because folks are willing to give up whatever they may have come with. So it’s still quite a stretch for African Americans, yeah.

Q: Music is very, very important in a black church.

A: Absolutely, although every congregation will say, you know, every worship leader will say it’s vital. It’s very important, but again these are, you know, these are different cultural styles. So the tradition from Europe is that you’re supposed to emphasize the mind over the body, so you sing from a very kind of staid perspective. Again, there are charismatic white congregations all over, and they don’t sing that way. But, you know, on the average.

Q: I was recently in South Philly in a neighborhood that has a lot of violence. If the churches there were more integrated, do you think that would work more toward healing the wounds that are there?

A: It would because, you know, think about it. I see this in the way that sermons are preached. How would you give a Black Nationalist speech or campaign for the Republicans when you’re an integrated congregation? It doesn’t happen. But I see it happen in uniracial congregations all the time. But people — when they’re in mixed company, we speak differently. So one of the profound things we found when studying these congregations, the mixed ones, is just how much overlap and interracial ties that develop not only with the people in the congregation, but they start meeting each other’s families, and their friends, and they go to each other’s neighborhoods if they live in different neighborhoods, and at work they meet people they wouldn’t otherwise met, and so it creates a whole new definition of what the group is. So I think it’s a lot harder then to have racial violence against each other.

Q: Are you familiar with the City of Refuge Church and Reverend Rufus Smith?

A: I think they’re doing an amazing thing in that they have all groups. But they have large segments of white and black, and so I think it’s the most difficult of these kinds of congregations to have, and it takes a very deft leader, and him being African American, I mean I’m sure it’ll be interesting when you talk with him. He’ll have to be very knowledgeable of white culture, black culture, and walk these fine lines.

Q: His is more multiracial than, say, Pastor Woo’s –

A: Oh, Pastor [Rodney] Woo would be more multiracial and more groups, right. I think they have people from 40-some different countries. International church is what I would call it. They’re immigrants from all over the world, be they black, Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern.

Q: I assume that Pastor Woo’s church is the way it is either because the congregation wanted it, or because he wanted it. How did it end up being that way?

A: It was an all-white church. It was starting to decline. They had to hire a new pastor, and they hired him. But he came under the condition that “I want and I’m called to make this a multiethnic church.” So they knew. He’s interesting because he’s part-Asian, part-white. He’s married to a Hispanic woman, so that’s their family and that’s their vision.

Q: What’s it feel like in one of his services? I’m sure you’ve been there.

A: I think it’s pretty dynamic. There’s a lot of energy there and life, and you’ll have women dressed in their traditional African dress when they come, and you have people from all over the place, and some people have headphones on because they’re listening in Spanish.

Q: So it’s a rich cultural experience.

A: Yes, absolutely.

Q: And Pastor Rufus Smith and the City of Refuge. Tell me a little bit about that.

A: Same thing. There’s a lot of life there, but it’s a different sort, because there’s a lot less immigrants and a lot more racial, the mix of black and white in particular. I’ve actually never been to their worship for an extended period of time, so I can’t comment wisely on it. I can say that I’ve talked to people in both congregations, and there are both positives and negatives. I mean, so if I’ve talked to whites in City of Refuge, sometimes they’ll wonder, “Why do we do things a certain way, and why do we make a big deal out of events?” And what’s happening is they’re falling back on their understanding of the way that church should work. It’s not always working exactly like that, and they feel frustration or confusion. Sometimes people leave. That’s certainly common in mixed churches.

Q: So there are downsides, but the downsides are outweighed by the upsides?

A: Downsides, yeah, and when there are more downsides when churches first start — they go through stages of transforming to becoming multiracial. So in the beginning stages there’s often a lot of pain, a lot of confusion, a lot of people leave. Maybe there’s even anger. But if they make it through that they come to a new agreement, and they start creating a new culture, and it becomes something that people just — a lot of times they’ll say, “I couldn’t live without it. I just have to be there.”

Q: You see it manifest in any other ways, for instance, in the neighborhood? Do they socialize together if they go to church together?

A: They do, and that’s what really surprised us, because it was such strong effects. They’re more likely to live in integrated neighborhoods after they start being in these kinds of congregations. They are much more likely to say that their two very best friends are of a different race, that their circle of friends, their friends in the church, but also in their whole social network, absolutely. We’ve had people say, “Now when I go to work, I don’t feel uncomfortable talking to people of different races, and I go up and introduce myself, and I start making a new friend I wouldn’t have done otherwise.” And again, this connection that you get: I meet Joe at church. Joe’s connected to a whole network of people I don’t know. Joe likes me. He invites me over to his son’s birthday party, and I meet his whole family. I meet his friends. I get to know his neighborhood. That happens all the time.

Q: Will the election of Barack Obama have an impact on interracial churches? Will we see more of them?

A: Oh, yeah. I think with President Obama there’s going to be a discussion, because he himself is multiracial, because we have for the first time a non-white president. There’s going to be talk about what does this mean? What is it? Are we in a new era? And I think it’s going to open up a wider place for a discussion about we ought to come together in our churches, in our neighborhoods, in our work places, in our clubs and our networks. I think it’ll be more acceptable to talk about it. We’ll see what happens. It’ll take some time. But I think it will.

Q: But generally you think it will be positive.

A: Yes.

Q: Can you talk a little bit more about why it is difficult to integrate churches?

A: What sort of difficulties would happen when people of different cultures try to come together to worship? Tiny little things such as let’s tell jokes with each other. Humor is so culturally based that when I try to tell a joke as me being a white American, if I tell other white Americans, they’ll laugh. If I tell an African American, they might not laugh. In fact, they either might not find it funny, or they might find it offensive, and I didn’t mean it to be offensive. So these are the sort of little things that build up over time, just like in a marriage. You know, the little things can build up over time. Then of course there are bigger things that matter, like who do I see up there in the congregation? Do I see myself up there? Well, I don’t. So I ask the clergy why don’t I see myself represented in leadership? And I’m told, and this happens quite a bit, “We don’t think about race when we hire. We just hire the best person for the job.” So then I have to conclude, oh, the best people are all somebody other than my own race. So that’s difficult. How do we interpret the Bible? Should we stress things like justice and that God is somebody who cares about equality of all people? Or is he a God of love and a God who’s there to give me an afterlife? And different traditions stress different — so then there’s that. I talked to an African American who says before she goes into an interracial church, she sits in her car and she listens to gospel music to get her fill, and she goes into an interracial church where they don’t do gospel music, and she’s ready to accept the other sorts of ways of worshipping. So there’s that. There’s always the question of time. Does time at 10:00 mean 10:00 sharp? Or does it mean give or take a few minutes? And a few minutes, is that plus or minus two minutes? Or plus or minus ten, or maybe a half an hour each way? So different groups have different definitions, and then they clash on those. So it takes adept leadership to say we’re going to work through these.

Q: Are you looking at Protestant churches, Catholic churches?

A: Protestant, Catholic, even Muslim. We studied a mosque, and this is when we were at Notre Dame, and in this mosque they had people from a variety of countries, most of them immigrants. In some of the countries, when you go into a mosque you remove your shoes. To not do so could be punishable even by death in that nation. In other countries, it would be a great offense to remove their shoes when they come into the mosque, a sign of disrespect. So there was great clashes when, you know, if you believe you shouldn’t remove your shoes and someone’s taking their shoes off, how can they do this? That actually was such a big clash in this case that they had to put a curtain down the middle of where they would worship. And then they would have the shoe removers on one side, and the non-shoe removers on the other side until they could work through coming to understand why we might both be trying to worship authentically, and because of our cultural background we have these different ideas. But it took a while.

Q: Any particular denominations that you’ve seen the most progress?

A: You find the most in not any particular denomination specifically. It’s the style of worship. So if we have what we call a charismatic worship style, that means upbeat music and a more lively style of preaching usually, people are allowed to clap, say “Amen,” whether they’re mainline Protestant, conservative Protestant, and Catholics, whatever, they’re much more likely to be integrated. There’s one denomination in particular, though, that has pushed very hard to be multiracial in its denomination — not only its denomination but, I mean, in its congregations, and it’s called the Evangelical Covenant Church, http://www.covchurch.org/ which is headquartered in Chicago. Their whole goal is that’s the kind of churches they start, multiracial, and I think they say now 20 percent of their churches are that.

Q: Is there particular Christian scripture that points to interracial acceptance?

A: Scripture is vast, and people can pick and choose what they emphasize, and so for hundreds of years verses that said that you are to welcome the stranger, that with Christ there’s neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, we’ve broken down the dividing wall with the original church, where Christians were first called Christian was the church of Antioch in which for the first time you had Jews, Gentiles of all different ethnicities come together as one people. That’s when they were called Christians. So these are the kind of things that now when people are trying to move towards multiracial congregations that they’re stressing. They’re talking about these scriptures that say we ought to come together, and that at Pentecost, when that the Holy Spirit is said to have come upon the first Christians, they were given the ability to speak in different languages, and so that no matter who the people were, they could all worship together. But you know, interestingly enough, those things were not talked about much at all for a few hundred years at least.

Q: But it’s there. It’s a fundamental part of Christianity that you should welcome people of all races.

A: That’s right.

BOB ABERNETHY (Anchor): We have a story today about a remarkable man in California.  He is a Catholic priest from Ireland who has ministered for 37 years to both African Americans and Latinos in the Watts section of Los Angeles. Saul Gonzalez reports.

SAUL GONZALEZ (Contributing Correspondent): The Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts has long been synonymous with inner-city desperation and despair. It’s the neighborhood that exploded in urban unrest, after all, in 1965, and then again during LA’s 1992 riots.

Today, Watts is still home to some of the meanest streets in the city, but they’re streets walked regularly by Father Peter Banks, a Catholic priest who, dressed in his robes, rope belt, and straw hat, looks like a fish very much out of water.

Born and raised in rural Ireland, Banks arrived as a young priest in Watts in 1973, assigned to the Saint Lawrence of Brindisi Church.

FATHER PETER BANKS: My picture of America before I came was Hollywood, Disneyland, and the beach. So I got into the car, we drove up Century and we crossed Vermont, and I began to realize this is a very different world. It was all black, and the very first Sunday I stood up on the altar and I said what am I doing here? How will I ever understand the people? Will they understand me?

GONZALEZ: In the decades since, though, this Irish priest and the people of Watts have come to know each other very well, and Father Banks has become a beloved figure both in his church and the wider community. Father Banks says his taking an active role in the day-to-day life of the community has been key to being accepted by the residents of Watts.

(Speaking to Father Banks): How important is it for you to do what we are doing now, to get out and to walk the streets?

FATHER BANKS: Oh, I feel part of the flesh and blood and soul of Watts.

GONZALEZ: As he walks through the community, Banks meets and ministers to the casualties of drugs, poverty, and violence in Watts. One of them goes by the name “Red Man.”

FATHER BANKS: Now, he never minds me saying this, but this man was shot thirteen times and survived.

RED MAN: I love this man. Really, he is the only white man who can walk Watts with no gun, just walking by faith, and walk here and know everybody. Everybody knows Father Peter. He is the true father of Watts. He is a real servant of God.

GONZALEZ: Red Man and a friend then ask Father Banks to lead them in an impromptu street corner prayer.

Central to the story of Watts and Father Banks’s church is the incredible demographic shift that has occurred in this community in recent years. Once synonymous with the African-American community, Watts is increasingly Latino. With that change has come tension.

FATHER BANKS: They call it the black and brown conflict. How do we get black and brown to come together?

GONZALEZ: That conflict sometimes expresses itself in violence, but often its face is a soft, unofficial form of segregation. Latinos largely stick to themselves, African Americans as well.

(Speaking to African American girl): You wouldn’t go out of your way to hang out with Hispanic kids?

AFRICAN-AMERICAN GIRL: Definitely no, I really wouldn’t because, I know it might sound racist, but if I see a Mexican girl or a Latino girl I’m just, like, not hanging out with her because she is just not my people. I know that’s wrong, but that’s just, like, the way it is in our society and our community.

GONZALEZ: It’s such feelings that Father Banks has tried to battle in Watts, making both African Americans and Latinos feel welcome in his congregation and breaking down walls of mutual suspicion and hostility. He’s done that by learning Spanish, slowly integrating some church services, and developing sensitivity to the problems of both Latinos and African Americans.

GONZALEZ: Father Banks says being Irish can actually be an advantage in his work in Watts.

FATHER BANKS: I feel it is. One time I was talking to the black kids, that’s when I came first, and they were saying something about the whites, and I held up my arm and said, “Look at me,” and this little girl said to me, “Father Peter, you aren’t white, you’re Irish.”

I can relate very much to the black in the sense of the Irish being persecuted. It used to say in the States, I think, “No black or Irish need apply.” So I feel I do identify a lot with the African-American people and their pain and their suffering. I’m able to relate to the Latinos and say I am an immigrant, and I tell the Latino people, I say, I am an immigrant, too. I came here and, I said, I am far away from my own land. I know what you go through, too.

GONZALEZ: Members of Father Banks’s congregation say they appreciate his efforts to build bridges of understanding between African Americans and Latinos.

MARIAN ANTUCHA (Latino parishioner speaking in Spanish with English translation): He helps all the people, African Americans, Latinos, the entire community. To us, Father Peter doesn’t recognize borders. He’s a person who helps everybody, and that’s why we’re here.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN PARISHIONER: If PR and public relationships, communications was a gift from God, poof, he got it ten times, you know, because he can get out there and talk to different people, and they just feel his love, and he will tell them to come here, and then they feel the love. It’s just a relationship that blossoms.

GONZALEZ: As he’s gotten older, Banks says he’s increasingly focused his ministry on the education and safety of Watts’ youngest, at the elementary and middle school operated by his church.

FATHER BANKS: They know more about pain than I do in my lifetime, and they are only six, seven, eight, nine years old. You saw them this morning there, dying for affection. If I don’t feel optimistic and I feel tired, I come over to the school. I get energy from the school, energy from these children.

Hope is to be able to sing in the middle of the darkness, and I think that’s what hope is for me. I can still sing in the middle of the darkness.

GONZALEZ: However, after serving the spiritual and material needs of this community for much of his adult life, Father Peter Banks will soon depart Watts. He’s been asked to take a job as a church recruiter in a rural area of California. Although he says he feels duty-bound to fill this position, Banks acknowledges he feels conflicted about leaving this community.

FATHER BANKS: That’s an emotional issue for me. It’s going to be a big struggle to leave here. It’s going to be—I’m at peace with God. That’s all I can say. I am at peace with God. I feel it is God’s will that I continue his work, and we need priests for the church and brothers and…

GONZALEZ: But it hurts?

FATHER BANKS: Oh, it hurts deeply. I have put so much of my life in here. I have invested so much in children. It is the biggest change of my life. I feel I am leaving home twice. I left Ireland 37 years ago, and I feel like I am leaving home again, too. But I’ve come to terms with it, and I know that I am doing it for a higher cause, a higher power.

GONZALEZ: The people whose lives Father Banks has touched in Watts hope his example will inspire others to continue his work of cultivating peace and understanding in a community that so needs them.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Saul Gonzalez in Los Angeles.

Rabbi, welcome. How do you explain to yourself and to your children and to your congregation what happened at the museum?

Rabbi SHMUEL HERZFELD (Ohev Sholom, Washington, D.C.): Well, sometimes there are acts that have no explanation, that are so difficult to understand. But we have to try to explain. I myself was just shocked. When I heard about it I was devastated, but I thought I could keep this from my children. And we have five children — we’re blessed by God — and the oldest is nine. And we were sitting at the table last night, and I thought they didn’t know about it, and one of my children said, “Oh yeah, we know about the shooting.” And my jaw dropped open. And they wanted to know how something like this could happen. You know, I had been trying to protect my kids from hearing about this. I thought maybe we could keep them from knowing.

ABERNETHY: And what did you tell them?

Rabbi HERZFELD: Well, I said to them sometimes there are just people who are wicked. You know, like sometimes you’ll see a kid in school who’s just being mean for no reason. Well, if we multiple that by so much, there’s some people who are so wicked in the world and there’s no way to understand it. But that means we have a job to do, and our job, I said to my children, is to reach out and be extra nice to people — especially people whom we don’t know, especially people who are different. That’s a message that kids can understand, and in the face of somebody who acts with senseless brutality and evil we have to be the opposite of such a person. We have to double-down on kindness.

ABERNETHY: Do you see this as an isolated incident, or do you fear that it’s part of something larger?

Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld

Rabbi HERZFELD: Well, there’s always the fear that this is part of something larger, and I’m very afraid that this is part of something larger. In the last few weeks we’ve seen an attack on Wesleyan University where the killer had written he wants to kill Jews. We saw two synagogues nearly blown up in a plot in Bronx-Riverdale, New York, where I was a rabbi for five years. We see high unemployment, both in America and even higher in Europe, and there’s the fear of social unrest. So this is real cause for concern. I mean, ever since 9/11 we’re very concerned in this country especially when you see what one person — the damage one person could have done if he could have gotten through that security guard. There were 2,000 children in that museum that day. Imagine the horror that could have been inflicted. So that reminds us that we have to act with even greater responsibility to combat this, and the real way to combat this is through education, through reaching out across communities, across religions, and giving the message that even though we’re different, even though we worship differently, even though we might look differently and talk differently, we’re all children of God. This is the common message, that God created man in His image, and therefore no matter what religion you are, you are a child of God.

ABERNETHY: Some people might say, well, in addition to all that we should do something about hate speech, especially on the Internet, where there were some very, very hateful things apparently connected with the shooter. So what about that?

Rabbi HERZFELD: Well, I don’t think that works. I don’t think you can censor people. First of all, I don’t think we should do it, and I don’t think it will work even if we try to do it. I think the answer is we should do something about “love speech,” meaning we should spread words of love in the world, change the dialogue, change the discourse. Instead of reacting with hatred to people, we should reach out and as a community we should cross bridges and make these common connections. When I went to the vigil at the museum I was very touched that people from the Muslim community and the Christian community came there to stand as one with this attack, because this attack was an attack upon a guard on the museum. But the person that was killed was not Jewish, and when a person comes with senseless acts of hate, the bullet knows no name.

ABERNETHY: Rabbi Herzfeld, many thanks.

KIM LAWTON: As they prepared for inaugural festivities, President-elect Barack Obama and his family visited the Lincoln Memorial this week, evoking more memories of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Reverend MARTIN LUTHER KING, Jr.:  I have a dream…

LAWTON: It was on the 45th anniversary of that speech that Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president. He noted that, given the situation in 1963, the crowd could have expected to hear King speak in anger, with the frustration of dreams deferred.

President-elect BARACK OBAMA (in speech): But what the people heard instead, people of every creed and color, from every walk of life, is that in America our destiny is inextricably linked, that together our dreams can be one.

LAWTON: In this historic week, connections between Obama and King are inevitable. Many Americans across racial and religious lines see Obama’s inauguration as one key fulfillment of King’s dream.

Reverend Donna Jones

Reverend DONNA JONES (Senior Pastor, Cookman United Methodist Church): For this bi-racial guy with an immigrant father, with roots in community organizing, with an African American wife and two black kids to move into the White House — what kind of country we have today that that can happen is such a testament of hope and a testament to the sacrifice of Martin Luther King.

LAWTON: Philadelphia United Methodist pastor Donna Jones says Obama’s election has ignited a new sense of optimism in her community and in communities across the country.

Rev. JONES: What this campaign has done in its entirety, and this is beyond Barack Obama, is it let us know that the process can work to effect change, but it didn’t necessarily change anything.

LAWTON: And, indeed, amid all the talk of hope, some religious leaders are also cautioning that much work still needs to be done before King’s full social vision may be realized.

Professor HAROLD DEAN TRULEAR (Howard University Divinity School and President, GLOBE Community Ministries): We don’t want to come to the conclusion that because Obama is now the president we’re going to have this sort of panacea-existence both in the United States and with respect to our position in the world.

LAWTON: Dreams aren’t always easy in this North Philadelphia neighborhood, where Jones is senior pastor at Cookman United Methodist Church. It’s an area plagued by drugs, prostitution, and economic distress. Cookman has developed a host of social programs to try to deal with the problems. The church has a special focus on at-risk youth. They run an after-school program and teen lounge where kids can hang out, take refuge from the streets, and get counseling and homework help, and Cookman also has a school for chronically truant youth that uses a home-school curriculum. The students meet at the church every day for classes.

Professor Harold Dean Trulear

Rev. JONES: I believe that Jesus was involved in social service. He went around healing. He healed a lot of people. He healed before he went out with the gospel message. So it’s an expression of Christ’s love, and whether people even accept Jesus Christ or not, his love should be offered.

LAWTON: She also believes the programs fit into Martin Luther King’s vision of what he called “the beloved community,” a term he learned from earlier theologians. It’s an inclusive vision of brotherhood and sisterhood, where all people share in the wealth of the nation, and justice and peace prevail. A place, Jones says, where all God’s children have enough, and nobody has too little.

Rev. JONES: That’s the legacy of King, first putting out the reality of the beloved community, again, all of that’s very biblical, but also putting out the hope and the encouragement to say you know what, you can do something to help create that, whatever the something is.

LAWTON: Students at Cookman got excited about Obama’s campaign, and several were part of a get-out-the vote project. His election means a lot to them.

ZULEIKA SILVERA (Student): I ain’t going to lie, I didn’t think he was going to win. But I’m like, wow, we really did it. It really felt like we made a change, like we got people to go out there and vote, and I’m, like, we made a change. We really did.

KHAREEM COLEY: You could do anything if you put your mind to it. That’s what that message really gave me.

Prof. TRULEAR: They have the sense that they too can become president. I mean, part of the thing with Obama is that it’s not just that he’s an African American, but he’s also common. He cut his teeth, even as a Harvard-trained lawyer he cut his teeth working in neighborhoods like this in the South Side of Chicago.

“What kind of country we have today… is such a testament of hope and a testament to the sacrifice of Martin Luther King.”

LAWTON: Howard University theology professor Harold Dean Trulear is president of GLOBE Community Ministries, a faith-based group that offers support to youth programs, including those at Cookman. He says Obama’s election will have a profound impact on coming generations.

Prof. TRULEAR: My daughter sends me a text message next morning, it says, “Dad, I have a black president.” That won’t be an unusual thing for her. Those kinds of things, I think, give my generation a lot of hope, and the only nagging thing is we just don’t want to lose sight of where we’ve come from.

LAWTON: It’s easy to forget, he says, that King’s vision was about more than race.

Prof. TRULEAR: Most people, when they refer to King’s dream for America, they go back to 1963, and they refer to the “I Have a Dream” speech, which of course is about racial justice and racial equality. But five years, later when King is assassinated, his dream is more about economic injustice and working with poor people. He talked about economic justice, he talked about militarism, war and peace, and he talked about racial justice.

LAWTON: Just as King led his grassroots movement from churches, Trulear says congregations of today still have the responsibility to lobby for broad social change no matter who is president.

Prof. TRULEAR: A lot of our religion, whether it’s the television prosperity gospel or whether it’s what you hear in a regular mainline church, has more to do with affirming who we are than challenging us at our root. I think we’ve lost sight of the prophetic dimension of the faith tradition.

President-elect BARACK OBAMA (in speech):  What we have already achieved gives us hope — the audacity to hope — for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

LAWTON: Pastor Jones says seeing the success of Obama’s grassroots effort gives veteran activists like herself renewed motivation to keep working toward King’s vision.

Rev. JONES: For our generation, I believe it was a sense of confirmation that this stuff of democratic renewal and public policy advocacy and community organizing really does work.  And I think that we needed to see that, because we were getting really cynical.

“The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep… I promise you, we as a people will get there.”

LAWTON: She says many faith-based activists had begun to feel like the children of Israel, wandering in the wilderness in the 40 years since King’s death. Obama’s election changed that.

Rev. JONES: I would have said “not my lifetime.” Now I don’t have anything that I will say “not in my lifetime.” So that means beloved community could happen in my lifetime. For King to hear that in heaven he’s probably, like, “All right. They’re coming out of the wilderness.”

President-elect BARACK OBAMA (in victory speech):  The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there.

LAWTON: Ultimately, Trulear believes, there is a spiritual message that Martin Luther King preached as well — the true meaning of hope.

Prof. TRULEAR: We say I hope it doesn’t rain. I hope the Eagles win the football game. I hope I hit the lottery. It’s more like a wish that’s not grounded in any kind of reality — it may happen, it may not, I have no control over it. In the biblical sense of the term, hope is a very, very fixed reality. It means that I have an expectation that something is going to be different than the way it is now.

LAWTON: Obama’s election, he says, has tapped into that deep place of hope.

Prof. TRULEAR: There really is an expectation in this country that things are going to be different. There really is an expectation around the planet that things are going to be different. Whether those hopes are materialized or not is a different issue and nobody really wants to even think about that right now. But there’s a real sense that there is going to be a change, and a real sense that people are going to be disappointed if there’s not a real, concrete change.

LAWTON: I’m Kim Lawton in North Philadelphia.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Sometimes the stories we tell on this program have a dramatic effect, as one did last summer about a struggling, itinerant black pastor in Louisiana — a modern-day circuit rider driving his old car from one poor, little church to another every Sunday. That story was seen by a white pastor in Texas with a large, upscale congregation, and Lucky Severson tells what happened.

LUCKY SEVERSON: David Brown is a modern-day circuit rider, pastor of seven Baptist congregations in Mississippi and Louisiana. Every Sunday he visits at least three of them, driving hundreds of miles in his battered Chevrolet.

Pastor DAVID BROWN (preaching): I want Jesus, I want Jesus, I want Jesus, Aaaah, I want Jesus.

SEVERSON: What he earns is whatever goes into the collection plate. Pastor Brown has high blood pressure, diabetes, and no health insurance. He is dedicated to serving congregations that are too small to have a pastor of their own.

Pastor JOHN ROBBINS (Marvin United Methodist Church): Good evening, Marvin Church…

SEVERSON: Three hundred miles away, in Tyler, Texas, John Robbins is pastor of Marvin United Methodist Church, a mostly white congregation of 3,000 people.

Pastor David Brown at Marvin United Methodist Church

Pastor ROBBINS (to congregation): Now I have a nice church with a steady salary, with insurance, a pension plan, a great staff. Pastor Brown doesn’t have those luxuries.

Pastor BROWN (preaching): Well, I got somebody. He takes me in his arms, he rocks me when I’m weary. He tells me that I’m his own. Oh, he’s all right, he’s all right.

SEVERSON: Last summer, when we first reported on the ministry of Pastor Brown, Pastor Robbins was watching, and he says he has watched the segment over and over since then.

Pastor ROBBINS (to congregation): He said several things in there that absolutely changed me. I needed to get in touch with him. I needed to let him know that just watching him on television made a difference in my life.

SEVERSON: Pastor Robbins has a well-heeled congregation — a lot of doctors, lawyers, oil company executives. But he says they give generously of their time and money to charities and causes. The latest cause is Pastor David Brown.

Pastor ROBBINS (to Pastor Brown): I’m glad you guys made it. We’ve been waiting for you a long time now. Everybody in the church has been waiting for you.

Pastor John Robbins

SEVERSON: Robbins tracked him down and after a series of phone conversations invited Brown to come preach to his congregation.

Pastor ROBBINS (to Pastor Brown): And I want to take you down to the sanctuary. I want you to see the beautiful sanctuary.

SEVERSON: He and his wife Gwendolyn arrived in a borrowed car because the transmission in his well-used Chevy finally gave out on him.

Pastor ROBBINS: Pastor Brown, Gwendolyn, what do you think? Beautiful, isn’t it?

GWENDOLYN BROWN: Oh, beautiful.

Pastor BROWN: Oh man…

Pastor ROBBINS: This is it, and the beautiful stained glass from the floor all the way to the ceiling…

Pastor BROWN: I’ve only seen stuff like this on television, in books and stuff.

Pastor ROBBINS (to Pastor Brown): Let me see how you look up there. You look like a preacher.

SEVERSON: Brown told us that coming here was one of the highlights of his life and that his brand of preaching would be a new experience for a congregation like the one here.

Pastor BROWN: It’s going to be different, yeah it’s going to be different, because, like I say, I’m from a different era, so to speak, because I’m what they call, where I live, I’m what they call “old school.”

Pastors John Robbins and David Brown

Pastor ROBBINS (to congregation): Please be seated.

SEVERSON: Robbins, on the other hand, is new school. He has a doctorate in theology from Southern Methodist University, but he found inspiration in the life and ministry of Pastor Brown. Robbins’ friends say he has found a mentor.

Pastor ROBBINS: I have a lot of stability in my life when it comes to those worldly kinds of things, and this is a man who lives from hand to mouth. This is a man who tries to find a way to get from one church to the next in a broken down, worn out car that may or may not make it to the next stop, and yet he continues to have such a great faith and a willingness to have such passion for what he believes in, and I want to be like that.

SEVERSON (to Pastor Brown): You’re a black Baptist preacher from Louisiana preaching to a mostly white congregation. There’s something a little unusual about that picture.

Pastor BROWN: Yeah it is, it is, but they all have one thing in common. They have souls that need the gospel, and I’m here to deliver it.

Pastor ROBBINS (to congregation): It is truly, truly for me an honor and privilege to have you here and for Pastor Brown, for you to stand in my pulpit.

Pastor ROBBINS: We have an obligation to interact with each other. We have an obligation to worship with each other because we all believe in the same God we know through Jesus Christ. We can feel comfortable in a restaurant with people who look different from us; we can go to school with kids who look different from us; we can even go to the mall and shop with people who are different from us. But on Sunday morning we still all believe, generally speaking, that we have to look alike.

Marvin United Methodist Church congregation

Pastor BROWN (to congregation): What a mighty God we serve. He is good in his greatness and great in his goodness, and his mercy endures forever.

SEVERSON: Members here had already sent Pastor Brown several hundred dollars to help with his ministry. Pastor Robbins suggested they might want to be extra generous when the collection plates were passed around before the circuit preacher gave his sermon. And what a sermon it was.

Pastor BROWN (preaching): I want to see Jesus, yes I do. I want to see him. Yes, I want to see him tonight. If anybody here, if you want to see Jesus you ought to stand on your feet. I want to see Jesus. Oh, that man. Oh that man, oh that man, oh that man, that man from Galilee. I want to see Jesus.

I’ve had people ask me, from the larger congregations, “Why do you preach so passionately to a few people like you do when there’s a crowd of people?” I say everybody’s just as important, there’s just more of them. That’s the only difference.

(preaching) I heard that there was a strange man came to this big church. He went to sit in one place, and he said, “No you can’t sit. That’s the chairman of the board’s place. You can’t sit there.” He moved again. He said, “Well, that’s the chairman of the finance committee’s seat.” Finally, one of the member’s came over and said, “Stranger, what happened to you? You got holes in your hands, holes in your feet?” He said, “Over 2008 years ago, I took your place on a Roman cross.” What am I saying? He took our place. He died in our stead, and we ought to live for him. All right? Praise the Lord. May God bless you.

Pastor David Brown in the pulpit

SEVERSON: The members we spoke with were not disappointed — not with the message, not with the messenger.

PAT THOMAS: Did you feel how he energizes the place? I mean, he makes the Bible come alive. He made it come alive. And he had no color.

MARY DALE THOMAS: This man is — we could call him a missionary to the Methodists.

JAN MCCAULEY: We can live in a very insular world if we’re not careful, and that the vast majority of the world, 99 percent of the world, is not our world.

SEVERSON: The offering on Pastor Brown’s behalf amounted to over $14,000. When he got back to Louisiana, the pastor immediately got his transmission fixed but then learned he needed a new engine. That may not be necessary, because church members are now raising additional money to buy him a new car.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson reporting.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: All over Western Europe, not least in Britain, the traditional majority is struggling to assimilate a fast-growing Muslim minority. Some of the Muslims, especially some of the younger ones, are said to be alienated and militant and, as Saul Gonzales reports from London, that is testing the tolerance of the majority.

SAUL GONZALEZ: In years past, this mosque in London’s Finsbury Park neighborhood was synonymous with extremism. Led by a firebrand cleric, it was a hotbed of Islamic militancy. Those who attended services here included 9/11 co-plotter Zacarias Moussaoui and “shoe bomber” Richard Reid. Worries about the mosque’s role as a center for terrorism became so serious police raided it in 2003, finding weapons and fake passports.

Imam AHMED SAAD (North London Central Mosque): This mosque has been hijacked by some extremists, and it has been dominated by them.

GONZALEZ: Egyptian-born Ahmed Saad is the mosque’s new imam, selected after a reformist board of directors was put into place. A religious moderate, Imam Saad has condemned Islamic extremism and terrorism.

Imam SAAD: You cannot kill people and slaughter them. I believe this is a criminal act that cannot be given any other name except criminal acts.

GONZALEZ: Although Imam Saad is working to change the once fearsome image of this mosque, concerns about Islamic radicalism still run very high in the United Kingdom. That’s because of such incidents as the July 2005 suicide bombings of the London mass transit system. Those attacks, which claimed the lives of 56 people, including the bombers, were carried out by four young British-born-and-raised Muslims. That was followed by this year’s failed terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow’s airport. Such incidents, say many British Muslims, have increased Islamophobia in the U.K. and unfairly placed their entire community and its religion under suspicion.

MURAD QURESHI (London Assembly): Race was, I think, the dominant issue in community relations, and now it’s religious identities.

GONZALEZ: Murad Qureshi is the only Muslim elected official on the London assembly, the city’s governing body.

Mr. QURESHI: There are a very, very small minority with an Islamist agenda, which the bulk of the Muslims of London don’t really have any truck with at all. To taint a whole religious community, from the orthodoxy to those who are more relaxed about their faith, I think, is a real tragedy.

GONZALEZ: However, despite anti-Muslim sentiment, the community has put down deep roots in Britain. Because of immigration from Islamic countries and the relatively high birth rates of native born British Muslims, Islam is now the largest minority religion in the United Kingdom, with more than 1.8 million members. London’s Muslim community is so prominent and diverse some have taken to calling the city the Muslim capital of Western Europe, or, more controversially, “Londonistan.” Take a stroll around some of the city’s neighborhoods, and it’s easy to feel like you’re in the Middle East instead of Europe.

AHMAD AL-DUBAYAN (Director General, London Islamic Cultural Center): I think the Muslim community now in the in the U.K. and in many other European countries — they are already now a part of society.

GONZALEZ: Ahmad al-Dubayan is director general of London’s Islamic Cultural Center. He says as his community grows in Britain, it must keep a balance.

Mr. Al-DUBAYAN: That means they have duties, but they have also rights — the rights, of course, guaranteed by the law in this country: practicing their religion, having their chances, of course, for knowing their faith. And at the same time they have duties, of course, to cooperate with others, to be integrated with the other communities, to have good relations with the other faiths. This is the balance that I think the Muslim community should really look and take care of.

GONZALEZ: However, many Britons are hostile to the idea of a growing Muslim presence in the country, arguing it threatens British values.

DAVID CONWAY (Research Fellow, Center for Social Cohesion): I believe it would be a sad thing were the form of life and society which has been in this country for centuries to cease to be, and I see a real threat in which we just become part of a greater “Eurabia.”

GONZALEZ: David Conway is a research fellow with the Center for Social Cohesion, a conservative London think-tank.

Mr. CONWAY: There are growing up very, very large communities of — with very high concentrations of people whose traditions and religion and customs simply don’t gel with native British traditions and customs and religions, and their allegiances would be sorely tested in certain sorts of situations.

GONZALEZ: (to Mr. Conway): The allegiances of Muslims living in Britain?

Mr. CONWAY: Yeah, or anywhere actually where they are in a minority.

GONZALEZ: Many Britons feel successive governments haven’t done enough to cultivate a sense of common national identity among the country’s religious and ethnic minorities. The result, they say, is a growing number of young Muslim citizens who feel alienated from mainstream British society. Poverty and high unemployment rates among British Muslims increase that alienation.

MUNIRA MIRZA (Sociologist): They are searching for an identity, and they want to belong to something, and I think the greater cultural threat is really in how we deal with that.

GONZALEZ: Sociologist Munira Mirza is a co-author of a recent study that tracked Muslim attitudes in the United Kingdom. Her finding that more than a third of young British Muslims would prefer living under Islamic law sparked a national debate in the U.K.

Ms. MIRZA: What we found with the report is, in fact, younger Muslims are much more likely to express strident religious views, much more likely to identify with their religion than their parents were. In fact, their parents were more likely to think of themselves as British than the younger generation. And so what we concluded from that was that the sense of alienation that Muslims do feel in Britain is not something that’s come from abroad. It’s not an imported phenomenon.

GONZALEZ (to Ms. Mirza): It’s homegrown?

Ms. MIRZA: It’s homegrown. Exactly.

GONZALEZ: Seventeen-year-old Muhammed Salah, whom we met in a London market, says he’s more religious than his Somali-born parents. Salah expresses his piety in his choice of clothing.

MUHAMMED SALAH (wearing “Soldier of Allah” t-shirt): By the writing it says “Soldier of Allah,” and to me it means, first, I am part of Islam religion. That’s firstly. Secondly, I just want to state that I am Muslim, and I want to show everyone that I am proud of being Islamic, a Muslim boy in London.

GONZALEZ (to Mr. Salah): Can you understand how some people might get the wrong impression, the wrong message from that?

Mr. SALAH: Yeah, yeah. Obviously people might think I’m a soldier. People come up to me often, but I am not going to do anything. It’s just a shirt that shows I’m Islamic, I’m a Muslim.

GONZALEZ: Many experts argue compared to Muslims in the United States it’s often more difficult for Muslims in the U.K. to feel fully accepted by British society.

Mr. MIRZA: The way in which the authorities treat them, that makes things worse, because it tells them you are different, you are a Muslim. This is your religion. This is your identity, and I think the effect is to reinforce the sense of difference that younger Muslims have.

GONZALEZ: However, some Muslim leaders in Britain actively encourage a separate Islamic identity and dismiss integration.

JAMAL HARWOOD (Member, Executive Committee, Hizb ut-Tahrir): Talking as a Muslim living in Britain, we see the Western secular values day-in and day-out, and we have a great amount of critique of those values.

GONZALEZ: Jamal Harwood, a convert to the Islam, is on the executive committee of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Muslim political group that some British politicians would like to see banned. Harwood believes Britain, like the rest of the West, has become a deeply immoral and materialistic society whose secular values harm Muslims living in the country.

Mr. HARWOOD: Now, I will accept that there’s also problems in the Muslim community, because unfortunately some of these notions of freedom and liberalism have actually tended to infect the Muslim community as well, so that unrestrained freedom has led towards this type of delinquency and looking out for number one.

GONZALEZ (to Mr. Harwood): You use the word “infect,” like it’s a virus?

Mr. HARWOOD: Individualism is a serious problem, and I think that is a very negative thing, and I think people could learn a lot from Muslims and Muslim society.

GONZALEZ: However, most British Muslims are trying hard to raise families, run businesses, and establish institutions that contribute both to their community and country. At his mosque, once a center of religious extremism, Imam Saad works to show that Muslim and Western values can and must co-exist.

Imam SAAD: What is needed here is the majority, the balanced majority, dealing with the extremist minority, and when we manage to get rid of this extremism, then we will have a very diverse culture that can accommodate, can act as a meeting point for the East and the West.

GONZALEZ: For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Saul Gonzalez in London.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now a report on the divisions over immigration. With Congress unable to agree on immigration law reform, many local governments are trying to act on their own to discourage illegal immigrants from settling in their towns. Some say that’s just protecting their communities, but others call it racism. A federal court has ruled that an anti-immigrant ordinance in Hazleton, Pennsylvania is unconstitutional, but that decision is being appealed, and until it’s settled other local governments are acting. One place in which opinion has been sharply polarized is Northern Virginia, as Lucky Severson reports.

Chris Pannell

CHRIS PANNELL (Resident, Manassas, Virginia, speaking during meeting of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors): I have to tell you this is one of the happiest days in my life.

LUCKY SEVERSON: Chris Pannell is a fourth-generation resident of Manassas, Virginia and she is happy, to say the least, that the county Board of Supervisors approved a tough new measure to crack down on illegal immigrants.

Ms. PANNELL: I’ve certainly prayed about this matter for many, many years. It’s just devastating. It’s heartbreaking, too.

SEVERSON: She is referring to the negative impact she thinks the influx of immigrants has had on her community, especially illegal immigrants.

Ms. PANNELL: I feel that all of these things — the crowding of our schools, the trash, overcrowding in the house — all together are just changing quality of life for us, and I can’t put a price tag on the quality of life that’s lost here.

BRUCE E. TULLOCH (Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, speaking during meeting): We want everyone to enjoy the American dream, but the American dream must be earned. It cannot be stolen.

SEVERSON: Local and state governments have approved hundreds of tough new immigration resolutions since Congress failed to pass national legislation. But some religious leaders, like Father Robert Menard, say they are deeply troubled by the tone of the debate — that it goes against the precepts of all the major faiths. Father Menard is also disturbed about what is not being discussed.

Father ROBERT MENARD (St. Francis of Assisi Parish, Triangle, Virginia): I think one of the great sins is the silence that is echoing around this topic. The whole discussion seems to be around the question of law. No one’s talking about the values to care for those who are being oppressed — to treat the alien in the land with respect and dignity.

Father Robert Menard

JOHN STIRRUP (Supervisor, Gainesville District, Prince William County, Virginia): In terms of where we are seeing a lot of the complaints about illegal immigration.

SEVERSON: Supervisor John Stirrup says the outcry he hears from constituents has everything to do with the law. He introduced the Prince William County resolution, in his words, “to stop the bleeding.”

Mr. STIRRUP: We have literally millions of illegal aliens crossing into — crossing our border every year with no stem to the flow.

SEVERSON: John Stirrup’s resolution is said to be one of the strictest of its kind in the country.

Mr. STIRRUP: Many folks have raised the question is this going to be a door-to-door search or are people going to be stopped on the street and asked for their papers? And that’s the furthest thing from the truth.

SEVERSON: The resolution is being studied to determine if it’s constitutional, but as it stands now the new law says anyone who is seeking public services can be questioned about their immigration status. If they’re without proper ID, they can be deported. The same is true with a minor traffic violation.

Mr. STIRRUP: An officer stops you for an infraction of the law, whether it’s a violation of federal, state or local law, and the officer has probable cause to believe that you are here illegally, he may ask you that question. And if the answer’s affirmative, then he may detain you.

Fr. MENARD: It’s causing concern and, in some cases, real fear.

SEVERSON: Father Robert Menard says the anti-immigrant fervor is creating a culture of fear on both sides.

Fr. MENARD: People fear to go across their street, or to knock on the door and to get to know their neighbor, whether they are from one culture of another. And so the suspicion builds.

SEVERSON: There was a palpable fear at this labor center in Herndon, Virginia. Dozens of Hispanics, mostly undocumented, show up here every morning to find a job where they can earn $80 to $100 a day.

Abel has been in this country five years trying to support the five children he couldn’t support in El Salvador. He says the jobs are drying up because employers are afraid.

Jaime’s visa has expired. He says it’s very hard to be away from his six kids, but he could barely feed them when he was in Peru. He thinks Americans are decent people who don’t understand his situation.

Edwin Andrade, a local church pastor, says the controversy has left Hispanics under a cloud of suspicion, judged guilty by association, by the color of their skin — even those here legally.

(to Pastor Andrade): Does it concern you that people would look at you and say you could be an illegal?

EDWIN ANDRADE (Pastor, Nueva Rivera Presbyterian Church, Sterling, Virginia): Yeah. Does it concern me? Yeah, to a degree. It has happened. It happens all the time.

SEVERSON: Edwin and other church volunteers sponsor a lunch for the migrant workers and offer some comforting words the workers rarely hear.

Pastor ANDRADE: We want for you to have a place. We want you to have a place that you feel you are welcome in; that you don’t have to look over your shoulder.

SEVERSON: Jose and his wife are here illegally. Their child was born here. Jose says he came from El Salvador to escape poverty — that he does jobs most legal residents wouldn’t do. He has a message for Americans.

JOSE (through translator): I would like them to know that there is no Hispanics here who has come to hurt you.

Ms. PANNELL: I hear of crimes being committed around here. You know, I’ve heard of several people who have taken their trash out getting robbed at knifepoint.

Mr. STIRRUP: I think what people are concerned about is the lawlessness that has come with illegal immigration in the area, and it starts with those homes that are grossly overpopulated.

Ms. PANNELL: And there’s usually 10 or 15 cars at night there.

SEVERSON: Chris Pannell took us on a tour of her neighborhood.

Ms. PANNELL: When you see 20 people on a porch like, for example, like back there at a time, it’s pretty telling that’s probably not your typical family.

SEVERSON: You say you have more rats in the neighborhood?

Ms. PANNELL: Yeah, we’ve never seen rats in the neighborhood until recent months when the trash has gotten up really tall.

Fr. MENARD: I think it’s important that we name the sin that is part of every community and every tradition. I’m speaking specifically of racism.

Ms. PANNELL: It’s not about race at all. It’s very simple. It’s about legal versus illegal.

SEVERSON: One thing that riles critics of illegal immigrants is that they send such a large amount of their earnings back home, reportedly as much as $45 billion last year.

Pastor ANDRADE: The fact is that a lot of people who are undocumented do pay taxes, because the IRS provides a temporary tax number which they can contribute to the system.

OMAR (through translator): When I came to this country, I started paying taxes right away. I have always paid my taxes.

SEVERSON: Omar and Jesaina have been in the U.S. seven years. They have a young son and another child on the way.

(to Omar): If it gets too bad, will you go back to Honduras?

OMAR (through translator): Eventually we would return, but our intention is to fight to stay here because we have made an important part of our life here. .

SEVERSON: One reason so many immigrants have moved to Northern Virginia is because of the explosive growth of new construction. Contractors are often desperate for workers.

(to Mr. Stirrup): What do you do with employers who employ illegals?

Mr. STIRRUP: Well, that was not part of our resolution. We anticipate resolutions beyond what we’re doing now.

SEVERSON: Until recently, Omar had a full-time job which he lost when his employer became afraid that he might be visited by immigration authorities. These days, Omar can barely find day work.

OMAR (through translator): I feel that it is a great injustice to be treated as we are being treated, because we come here to work hard. We give a lot back to this country.

JESAINA (through translator): This law makes life very difficult for us. I cannot return to my country. I don’t want to return to my country, because life is very hard there.

PANNELL: I’m still compassionate. But they’ve broke the law, and I still believe those people need to go back home.

SEVERSON: Father Menard says among Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions civil law has always been subservient to values and judgment.

Fr. MENARD: If your family is struggling to survive, then to steal a piece of bread is okay. It’s not only okay it’s something that you’re required to do by your moral responsibility to provide for your family.

SEVERSON: Jose says he had heard about the American dream before he came here.

(to Jose): Do you think you will find it?

JOSE (through translator): Maybe some day, somewhere, somehow. But I don’t think in this country, because in this country they don’t want us.

SEVERSON: The county recently closed down its day-work center, so it’s even less likely that Jose and many others will find the American dream in this country as long they’re here illegally.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson in Herndon, Virginia.

ABERNETHY: All those on camera in that story gave us permission to use their pictures.

KIM LAWTON, guest anchor: Reverend Gardner C. Taylor may not be the best known of the clergy who helped lead the civil rights movement, but he remains one of the nation’s most influential pastors. For decades, Taylor has been included on virtually every list of the greatest preachers in America. He has taught preaching at some of the most prestigious schools in the country, and at 88 years old, he’s still mentoring new generations of pastors. I visited him at his home in Raleigh, North Carolina.

UNIDENTIFIED MINISTER: Give welcome to Dr. Gardner C. Taylor.

LAWTON: Reverend Gardner C. Taylor gets a celebrity’s welcome when he takes the pulpit in churches across the nation. And at 88, he still shows the charm that has pulled in worshipers for more than six decades.

Reverend GARDNER C. TAYLOR (Preaching): It’s been a year and I must say you don’t look a day older. Of course, I don’t see as well as I used to!

LAWTON: During his long career, Taylor has been repeatedly honored as one of the greatest preachers in America. President Bill Clinton agreed and gave him the Medal of Freedom in 2000.

“It is the mystery of preaching that it survives.”

Rev. TAYLOR (Preaching): They marched on …

LAWTON: And Taylor is still at it, a frequent guest preacher all over the country, even though he is technically retired. He says preaching is always a tenuous endeavor.

Rev. TAYLOR: It is quickly lost. It’s uttered, heard, and sometimes lost. But it is the mystery of preaching that it survives. And that it has survived so much of our bad preaching.

LAWTON: Professor Richard Lischer teaches preaching at Duke Divinity School. He says Taylor has set the bar high.

Dr. RICHARD LISCHER (Professor of Preaching, Duke University Divinity School): He almost single-handedly has elevated and made visible great preaching. He is one of the first whose influence crossed over into the realm of white homiletics and white preaching.

Rev. TAYLOR (Preaching): My father, who was a pastor, said that the children of Israel reminded him of the people he pastored. Not you, but the people he pastured. They were always complaining.

LAWTON: Taylor was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1918.

(To Rev. Taylor) (Looking at Photos): Was this you?

Rev. TAYLOR: Yeah. I like that serious look on my face.

LAWTON (To Rev. Taylor): I know. You were very intent on being a cowboy, I think.

Early on, Taylor says, he didn’t want to follow in his minister father’s footsteps.

Rev. TAYLOR: I wanted to be a lawyer, but no person of color had been admitted to the Louisiana bar, ever. And when I told an old family friend that I wanted to be a lawyer, he said, “Where you going to practice, the middle of the Mississippi River?”

LAWTON: Taylor ended up at Oberlin College’s School of Theology in Ohio, where he discovered he had his father’s gift of speaking.

Rev. TAYLOR: Both of my grandparents were slaves, and neither could read or write. But somehow he had this feeling for the melody of the English language, and I inherited it.

“Both of my grandparents were slaves, and neither could read or write.”

LAWTON: In 1948, Taylor and his wife, Laura, moved to Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn, where he spent the next 42 years, until his retirement in 1990. His eloquence and intelligence led to national prominence.

Rev. TAYLOR (Preaching): And, on Sunday morning, he came forth declaring, “All power is in my hands.” My friend, that is the destiny of history.

Dr. LISCHER: He manages to keep an enormous range of rhetorical skill under tight, disciplined control, so that when you’re listening to a Gardner Taylor sermon, you feel like something is about to break out or explode.

Rev. TAYLOR (Preaching): John talks about the song of the Lamb: “I saw a new Heaven.”

LAWTON: During the civil rights era, Taylor played a key role raising money in the North to support the Southern church’s efforts. Together with Martin Luther King Jr., he pushed the black Baptist establishment to get more involved in the movement. When that didn’t happen, the two helped found a new denomination, the Progressive National Baptist Convention.

Taylor and King were close friends, often vacationing together. But Taylor says King never really talked about his personal struggles.

Rev. TAYLOR: I did not realize — I should have, I’ve felt guilty about that — I did not realize the pressures this man was under. He was not universally supported by blacks. There were threats on his life constantly. He lived under that shadow day by day. And as I look back upon his years, I wonder how he managed.

Dr. LISCHER: Gardner C. Taylor was King’s role model of how one employs the Scripture in order to use its great themes to preach the gospel of freedom for all humanity.

“I did not realize the pressures this man was under.”

Rev. TAYLOR (Preaching): And so a people marched out singing, “Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

LAWTON: Taylor remained involved in social issues. Looking back, he admits at times he may have been too involved with Democratic Party politics. But he also worries that many contemporary churches have lost their prophetic edge, focusing more on personal prosperity than on issues like poverty and injustice.

Rev. TAYLOR: I think the church today in America partakes of the contemporary American disease of “Let me alone! I want to get along and I don’t want to be bothered with too many things.” And I think that’s in the churches. When a pulpit becomes an echo of the pew, it loses, I think, almost all of its reasons for existence.

Rev. TAYLOR (Preaching): You will discover, if you live long enough, that almost all of those people around you disappear one by one.

LAWTON: Taylor says as he’s aged, his preaching has begun to reflect more about the frailty of human life.

That was tragically brought home in 1995, when Laura, his wife of 55 years, died after being hit by a truck. He has since remarried and moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, where he can often be found playing golf.

Rev. TAYLOR (Practicing Golf): I wish I could do that on the golf course!

LAWTON: This spring, Taylor taught a preaching class at nearby Shaw University.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1 (Preaching): That way, that path and that truth, is Jesus, for John 14 and 15 says, “I am the way.”

LAWTON: As part of the course, he critiqued students’ sermons.

strong>UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #2 (Preaching): But my mama used to tell [me] that everything that feels good to you is not good for you.

Rev. Taylor receiving the Medal of Freedom in 2000.

LAWTON: And he didn’t hold back with his comments.

Rev. TAYLOR (To Student): I think you’ve got talent, but I think you want discipline. You just — you wear people out. You don’t want to do that. You want to carry them with you.

LAWTON: He also offered encouragement.

Rev. TAYLOR (To Class): You do not want to strive to be known as a great preacher. You do want to strive for people to feel when you have tried to preach what a great gospel it is.

LAWTON: Taylor keeps busy, but in recent years, he says he’s begun to practice what 19th-century British pastor Alexander McLaren called “sitting silent before God.”

Rev. TAYLOR: This is not praying, it is not reading, it is just opening oneself. It’s a mystic kind of thing. But we do so little of it, and we who preach are likely to engage ourselves in so many things and to neglect that aspect of being open to what God has to say. And I wish to heaven I had practiced this more early on in my ministry.

LAWTON: He says the older he gets, the more he relies on God’s promises of eternal life.

Rev. TAYLOR: I’m 88, and I lean much more upon the promises. Because I need them; I guess I always needed them, I shouldn’t say that. But I feel the need of them more.

LAWTON: Which of those promises are the ones you’re leaning on?

Rev. TAYLOR: That he will see about me. And I do not know what, but that I will be in a better condition than I am now, and I think that’s at the heart of the Christian gospel.

(Preaching): Sickness and sorrow pain and death are felt and feared. God shall wipe away ALL! ALL! ALL! All tears.

KIM LAWTON: The role of pastor may be one of the most overlooked sides of Martin Luther King Jr. but it was one of the most important aspects of who he was.

Professor LEWIS BALDWIN (Professor of Religious Studies and Director of African American Studies, Vanderbilt University): Many labels were attached to him during his lifetime. He was called a civil rights activist; he was called a social activist, a social change agent, a world figure. But I think he thought of himself first and foremost as a preacher, as a Christian pastor.

LAWTON: Vanderbilt University religious studies professor Lewis Baldwin writes widely about King’s spirituality. He fears King’s pastoral side is being forgotten, and he says the nation should develop an appreciation for it.

Prof. BALDWIN: The pastoral role was central to everything, virtually everything, Dr. King achieved or sought to achieve in the church and in the society as a whole.

Professor Lewis Baldwin

LAWTON: King was 25 and finishing his doctoral dissertation at Boston University when he was appointed to his first job as a local pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Baldwin says in many ways, King was simply carrying on the family business.

Prof. BALDWIN: His father was a pastor. His grandfather had been a pastor. His great-grandfather had been a pastor.

LAWTON: Dexter Avenue Baptist Church was founded in 1877 in a former slave traders’ pen just down the street. At the time, it was called the Second Colored Baptist Church. They bought this lot in 1879 and built the church a few years later. Martin Luther King Jr. was the 20th pastor here.

The church hired King in 1954. After a time of internal tensions, church leaders said they were looking for a noncontroversial pastor who could help restore morale. King arrived with a 34-point plan for the future. The Reverend Michael Thurman is the current pastor.

LAWTON (To Rev. Thurman): Has this changed much since the time of Reverend King?

Reverend MICHAEL THURMAN (Pastor, Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church): Oh, the sanctuary is basically what it would have looked like during the time of Dr. King’s tenure here. The only thing that is different is that there would have been a row of ceiling fans in the ceiling.

LAWTON: The pews date back to the late 1880s, but the pulpit was King’s addition.

Rev. THURMAN: It was one of his 34-point recommendations that the congregation purchase new pulpit furniture. So this pulpit is actually the pulpit that he spoke from during his tenure here.

LAWTON: Seventy-six-year-old Mary Jo Smiley is an associate minister at Dexter Avenue. She was a young newlywed parishioner when King became her pastor.

Reverend MARY JO SMILEY (Associate Minister, Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church): He didn’t come to Montgomery to lead a boycott. He came to be a pastor for our Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

LAWTON: She says he made a deep and immediate impact on the congregation.

(To Mrs. Smiley): What was it like sitting here, listening to his sermons?

Reverend Mary Jo Smiley

Rev. SMILEY: I tell you what it was like to learn that he wasn’t going to preach some morning — it was devastating, because you sat there awed. You understood every word. And he didn’t — he used words maybe you hadn’t heard before, but somehow you knew what it meant and you felt a closeness to him as he spoke. And you felt as if he was speaking directly to you.

Prof. BALDWIN: He was able to connect with the spirituality of the people there in Montgomery, and I think that’s very, very important when you want to pastor people, if you want to lead people in a social movement.

LAWTON: Smiley says King sought to involve everyone in the congregation. She says she became a minister in large part because of his efforts to give women leadership roles.

Rev. SMILEY: And he, in the church, would engage the women to help him, not just to dust off the pews or keep the utensils clean, but he would engage them in helping make plans for the church, programs and whatnot. I felt something from him to me that said, “You’re needed in the church, too.”

LAWTON: As King was establishing his pastorate, racial tensions were rising in Montgomery. About a year after his arrival, Montgomery seamstress Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to yield her seat on a bus to a white passenger. King began speaking out and leading peaceful protests. From the church, he helped ignite the Montgomery bus boycott. According to Baldwin, King saw this as a natural extension of pastoring his people.

Prof. BALDWIN: Being a pastor for him was being a civil rights leader.

Rev. THURMAN: It was the African-American church that nurtured him and gave him the sense that God was a god of justice, God was a god of mercy, God was a god of reckoning.

LAWTON: Thurman says it was King’s position at the church that enabled him to get so deeply involved with the civil rights struggle.

Rev. THURMAN: Because Dr. King was not directly tied to the white power structure of the city,- he had an independent source of income, meaning from his congregation. They freed him up to do the things that he did for the larger community.

LAWTON: But as King was pulled more and more into the national effort, he became concerned that he was neglecting his responsibilities at the church.

Prof. BALDWIN: He often did not have sufficient time to engage in counseling, to do funerals and weddings, to do the kind of administrative work that comes naturally with the pastoral role.

“The role of pastor may be one of the most overlooked sides of Martin Luther King Jr.”

Rev. THURMAN: [In one of the letters that he wrote,] he really apologizes to the congregation because all of the other overwhelming activities and duties of a larger Montgomery bus boycott had just overwhelmed his schedule.

LAWTON: King resigned from Dexter Avenue in 1960 to devote more time to the civil rights cause. Even though he was now a leader at the national level, he wanted to maintain a pastoral role, so he became an associate pastor at his father’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Prof. BALDWIN: Not only was he a pastor at the local congregational level, preaching to people, responding to the needs of people, but he was also a pastor to the nation, because he was very interested in the soul of the nation, determined to redeem the soul of the nation.

LAWTON: Today King’s old church has officially changed its name to the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, and members are actively trying to preserve King’s legacy with tours and special educational programs. Smiley says she wants young people in particular to adopt a view of the world that she learned from the sermons of the man she called “ML.”

Rev. SMILEY: I never really hurt for the people in India, or stood aghast at the things I saw that were happening in Africa, or wondered or even cared about the friction and violence in Ireland. But after being around ML for some time, I began to open up my own self. I began to care about people.

LAWTON: Baldwin says pastors today can learn much from King.

Prof. BALDWIN: I think Dr. King always felt that a preacher and a pastor had to be relevant. That is, you must speak to the issues of your time, and you must be able to relate the gospel and the biblical revelation to the social issues and concerns of your time.

LAWTON: Baldwin says it’s a message needed now just as much as it was during King’s time. I’m Kim Lawton in Montgomery, Alabama.