BOB FAW, correspondent: Ernest Gaines is older now, 78, and hobbled by a bad back, but as he slowly makes his way to the church where as a boy he rang the bell at funerals he will not, indeed, cannot forget the debt he owes to his ancestors in this Louisiana bayou country.

ERNEST J. GAINES: Without them, buried back there under those pecan trees, I would not be the writer today, if I would be a writer at all.

FAW: For more than 50 years, he has brought them to life in short stories and novels, some made into major films. Perhaps his most famous novel, “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” charts the dawn of the civil rights movement from her days as a slave.

From “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman”: “I’ve been carrying a scar on my back ever since I was a slave.”

FAW: Miss Jane Pittman was inspired by Gaines’s Aunt Augusteen, whom he calls the greatest influence in his life.

FAW: She could not walk.

GAINES: She could not walk. She crawled over the floor all her life, but she did everything in the world for me.

FAW: She could not walk, but you say she taught you how to stand.

GAINES: Right. By her action, by her overcoming all the obstacles.

FAW: Gaines remembers his aunt and other forebears as he sits in the church which he has restored on plantation land where he once picked cotton.

GAINES: When I’m sitting in the church alone, I can hear singing of the old people. I can hear their singing and I can hear their praying, and sometimes I hum one of their songs.

FAW: And Gaines feels so indebted to his elders that on his own property he has also lovingly restored and now maintains this cemetery where many of those elders are buried.

GAINES: I’d always go back to the cemetery and sit on one of those tombs back there, and I felt more at peace at that time than any other time in my life. I could feel their spirit there with me.

FAW: That connection helps explain why Gaines writes so passionately about the people and places in his past—because he worries that past is facing extinction.

From “A Gathering of Old Men”: “That tractor was getting closer and closer to the graveyard, and I got scared that that tractor would plow up them graves and get rid of all the proof that we ever was.”

GAINES: All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.

FAW: John Lowe, professor of literature at Louisiana State University, is an expert on Ernest Gaines.

PROFESSOR JOHN LOWE: He’s writing for his people. You know, there’s an old African proverb that says no people should be hungry for their own image. That world was missing, and he’s put that world on the stage now.

FAW: There is in that world darkness, then hope. In “A Lesson Before Dying,” an innocent man, Jefferson, will be executed. But before that he learns to face death with dignity.

From “A Lesson Before Dying”: “Good-bye, Mr. Wiggins. Tell the children I’m strong. Tell them I am a man.”

LOWE: His works radiate that spirituality that Gaines has always seen as part of the human condition—that man has to believe in something bigger than himself, and it might be religion, it could be any number of things. Jefferson does walk to the electric chair as a man, because he has come to understand that his life has meaning for other people in the community, and it makes a big difference to them how he handles that situation, and so he does, indeed, endorse something bigger than himself.

FAW: Through Jefferson’s transformation his teacher, Grant Wiggins, also grows and emerges stronger.

From “A Gathering of Old Men”: “Ain’t going to be no lynching tonight.”

FAW: And in “A Gathering of Old Men” an entire community, long beaten down, finds self-respect.

MARCIA GAUDET: There is a sense of hope.

FAW: Marcia Gaudet is the director of the Ernest J. Gaines Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

GAUDET: It may not be perfectly optimistic hope, but there’s certainly the possibility of hope, and that’s a much more realistic thing.

FAW: Raised a Baptist, Gaines attended Catholic school for three years. He doesn’t want readers to overstate religious symbolism in his work, but many scholars find it there—from Miss Jane Pittman’s religious conversion to the Christ-like figure of Jefferson in “A Lesson before Dying.”

LOWE: Gaines was raised in a religious tradition, and this is a pretty religious state even today, and it’s quite understandable that his work would be permeated everywhere, you know, with this kind of religious symbolism. In the South, our great mythology is the Bible. It’s not Greek or Roman myth like it is in Europe. It’s the Bible.

From: “A Gathering of Old Men”: Go home, Jameson. I don’t want to have to tell you anymore.”

FAW: Black clergymen in Gaines’s novels are sometimes portrayed as sanctimonious and ineffectual. When in “A Gathering of Old Men” a group of black men stand up to white oppression for the first time in their lives, the minister tries to stop them.

From: “A Gathering of Old Men”: “Reverend Jameson, nobody listening to you today. You old bootlegger, shut up.”

LOWE: Gaines understands the importance of the church, particularly during the civil rights movement. But at the same time he’s also aware because of the way the white community imposed it on the slave community to keep blacks in line. I think he has a very mixed attitude about the church.

FAW: For the black church, Gaines is awed by its role as a sanctuary.

GAINES: What I miss today more than anything else—I don’t go to church as much anymore—but that old-time religion, that old singing, that old praying which I love so much. That is the great strength of my being, of my writing.

FAW: Do you regard yourself as a religious person?

GAINES: I think I’m a very religious person. I think I believe in God as much as any man does. I don’t only believe in God, I know there’s God.

FAW: Gaines wrote the first draft of all his novels by hand. While he isn’t writing much now, he still remembers 1948, when he first left the plantation land around False River, carrying with him an imaginary block of wood.

GAINES: The old people told me that okay, you can leave us, but you would carry this, this symbolic big piece of wood that I must struggle with for the rest of my life until I’ve completely finished that wood, which I doubt that I ever will. But there will always be something to chip away and to carve into something nice and beautiful.

FAW: Ernest Gaines—honoring the past, making it come alive because he must.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly this is Bob Faw in Oscar, Louisiana.

Tweet

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: About 20 minutes outside New Orleans, worshippers gather at First Baptist Church in Chalmette, the largest city in St. Bernard Parish. It’s a pretty typical Southern Baptist Sunday morning service.

REV JOHN DEE JEFFRIES (Preaching at First Baptist Church, Chalmette, Louisiana): Lord, what’s going on? Lord, why?

LAWTON: But that belies the incredible journey this congregation has made since Hurricane Katrina. More than half of the churches in St. Bernard Parish still haven’t come back, and most of them probably never will. First Baptist is not only back, but reinventing itself to help a community still struggling to recover.

REV. JOHN DEE JEFFRIES (First Baptist Church, Chalmette, LA): The church is up. She’s not yet standing on her own two feet, if I can say it that way, but the church is here, and the church now has a hope and a future.

LAWTON: Hours before Katrina hit, Pastor John Dee Jeffries and his wife, Genny, evacuated to their daughter’s home near Baton Rouge. They expected to be gone a couple of days.

JEFFRIES: The hurricane had passed through, all seemed to be well—the initial reports, and then suddenly everything turned topsy-turvy.

LAWTON: The levees were breached, and within a half-hour St. Bernard Parish was inundated with water. The damage was incomprehensible, and First Baptist Church didn’t escape the destruction.

JEFFRIES: The church—the church was a heartbreak. It was as if everything that had substance, value, meaning, purpose, the things that form the backdrop of your life suddenly ripped apart, shredded before your very eyes.

LAWTON: The Jeffries’ home was also among the thousands destroyed.

GENNY JEFFRIES: That’s when I cried. I only cried one time, and that was when I saw my home.

LAWTON: They ended up living in a FEMA trailer near their daughter, 85 miles away from Chalmette. Jeffries started thinking about rebuilding.

GENNY JEFFRIES: Wasn’t a real long time before he decided he was going to come back.

LAWTON: Did you think he was crazy?

GENNY JEFFRIES: Mm-hmm. I mean, the church was devastated. We were devastated. Every house, everything in Chalmette was destroyed. Everything.

JEFFRIES: I certainly have no negative feelings about ministers who felt that they could not come back. But there was something inside of me that could not accept that as my future.

LAWTON: And slowly a plan started coming into focus. Then Jeffries connected with a faith-based ministry called Builders for Christ.

JEFFRIES: And the sound of them, their leaders standing and saying, “We have decided to build your church.” I can still feel that in here.

LAWTON: It was a huge project that still isn’t completely finished. More than 3,000 volunteers from 34 states and the District of Columbia helped out. Flags at the back of their new sanctuary serve as a constant reminder.

JEFFRIES: Every denomination imaginable including Jewish people have come and worked on our project—Assembly of God, Baptists, Presbyterian, Methodists, Catholics. They’ve all been here.

LAWTON: The outpouring was a huge inspiration to longtime members like Michael “Slim” Gillette, who’s the chairman of the deacons.

MICHAEL GILLETTE: The more the church was built, the more healing took place for me.

LAWTON: They held their first service in the new church in September 2009, four years after Katrina hit. Before the storm, about 400 people attended on a regular basis. Now they’re averaging about 150, but the numbers are steadily rising, with more than 90 new baptisms in the past year. Ninety-seven percent of the people who came to First Baptist prior to Katrina haven’t returned. There’s a new cultural diversity, with growing numbers of African Americans and Hispanics attending, and many of the new people didn’t previously attend church at all.

GILLETTE: We don’t have a church congregation now like we used to have. They don’t know the hymns. They don’t know the difference between Mass and worship service. We’re learning together what their needs are, and they’re learning what we have to give.

LAWTON: One of the new members is Leola Thomas, who, like most people here, lost everything in Katrina.

LEOLA THOMAS: When I came in and saw and heard, you know, how he teaches about Jesus and his love, and the love they showed to me, I said this is the place that I want to be in.

JEFFRIES: There’s something happening inside of the hearts and minds of people that has brought us all together, and it’s strange to see how God is making us the one body of Christ. There are challenges in that, but it’s happening.

LAWTON: And it’s happening in a community that still hasn’t fully recovered from Katrina. This neighborhood used to be a pretty typical middle-class subdivision with lots of houses close together. Now there are a lot of empty lots where houses have been torn down. Some homeowners have returned, but a lot of houses are still standing unrepaired and empty.

The financial stresses of Katrina, along with the recession and now the Gulf oil spill, have generated a severe economic crisis across St. Bernard Parish. About 40 percent of the First Baptist congregation is unemployed. First Baptist partnered with the nonprofit group Second Harvest to create a food pantry which distributes almost 20,000 pounds of food every month.

JEFFRIES: I’m absolutely astounded at how powerful this ministry is with so few people manning it.

LAWTON: First Baptist has set up a daycare center and after-school program to help working parents, and there’s also a Christian addiction recovery ministry, which is close to the heart of Tina Rivera. After Katrina, she, like so many, sought to numb the pain.

TINA RIVERA: A lot of people, we just started drinking, doing drugs. The pain was just too overwhelming, and for me, I got in a car accident, a head-on collision, and two people got killed.

LAWTON: She ended up in jail and rehab and turned her life around. Now she’s helping First Baptist organize ministries for other troubled women.

RIVERA: I talked to my church family and said, look, these are mothers and aunts and grandmas that are in our community, come from good families, and we just have to stay on top of them. We’ve got to get them back to where they were before the storm.

LAWTON: Another goal of First Baptist is to help repair the sense of community that was broken by the storm. A women’s group called the “Domino Divas” meets every week for lunch, Bible study, and yes, some aggressive domino playing. These women were all displaced from their homes, and not all of them have been able to rebuild. They talked to me about the storm with a touch of humor.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Katrina wasn’t totally bad, because she moved us and we didn’t have to pack. We didn’t have to pack a thing. We just threw it out of the window.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I told my kids they ought to be thankful for the storm, and they said, “Mom, are you crazy?” I said, “Well, now when I die you don’t have all that junk to go through.”

LAWTON: But they’re all too aware of the pain that still lingers.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Your house is gone, you didn’t get money for your life, all your stuff is gone, all your people are gone. It’s hard.

LAWTON: Genny Jeffries, who is a family therapist, says the emotional and spiritual trauma from the storm is deep-seated.

GENNY JEFFRIES: Katrina will always be in the back of our hearts, but we’re getting a little bit past it. But still there’s a lot of people, and a lot of circumstances that are there that really cannot, we can’t put it away, just can’t put it away yet.

LAWTON: First Baptist is doing what it can, but there is a shortage of established members who can lead the ministries, and because of the economic situation there’s also a shortage of tithes and offerings.

JEFFRIES: In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the great challenge was to survive. We have survived. The church is here and will continue to be here. Five years later, the great challenge is to sustain ourselves.

LAWTON: The Jeffries have had personal stresses as well. Their home also had to be rebuilt through donations and volunteers, and shortly after Katrina, Genny suffered a brain aneurysm and then a post-surgical stroke.

JEFFRIES: God and I had some rather serious conversations about that. It seemed that in the midst of losing everything else I pleaded with the Lord. I pleaded for him to spare my wife.

LAWTON: Genny did recover, but Jeffries admits he wasn’t always as strong as he wanted to be in the midst of the crisis.

JEFFRIES: I also know what it’s like to lay in a dark FEMA trailer, hugging your pillow, your wife next to you, terribly ill, recovering from traumatic surgery, not knowing if she’s going to fully recover, and just ask those questions of God that have no answer: Why? Why? Why?

LAWTON: He may not have received answers, but he says he did receive assurances about his belief that God is there no matter what.

JEFFRIES: The real focus has been that the things that I’ve preached and that I’ve taught all of those years are true. You can count on it.

LAWTON: He says he’ll keep counting on it as First Baptist faces all the challenges still ahead.

I’m Kim Lawton in Chalmette, Louisiana.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: It’s sunrise over Louisiana bayou country. Normally, this is when the fishermen here set out in search of shrimp and oysters and crabs. But things aren’t anywhere near normal. Instead of fishing, these men have been hired by BP to look for spreading oil, to document damaged wildlife, and to assist in the cleanup. There’s a safety briefing before they head out, and Pastor John Dee Jeffries opens the meeting with prayer.

REV. JOHN DEE JEFFRIES, First Baptist Church, Chalmette, LA (praying): Father God in Heaven, I pray that you will watch over these men, these women. Protect them today.

Rev. John Dee Jeffries

LAWTON: Jeffries is pastor of the Chalmette First Baptist Church. He’s one of several local ministers who have been coming out to the docks every day to support the fishermen.

JEFFRIES: Can’t solve all of the world’s problems, but sometimes just knowing that there’s someone who’s there who cares is more than sufficient.

LAWTON: Jeffries is concerned that despair is growing across the entire area.

JEFFRIES: Basically what I hear is a lament, a sorrow, because of what was and what now is. It seems to me to be too meager a choice of words to simply say that a lifestyle is at stake here. It is the entire context of a person’s life, the whole backdrop, the fabric, that is being torn asunder by this crisis.

LAWTON: So much in these communities revolves around the seafood industry, and that has been thrown into turmoil, from boat captains who can’t fish and therefore can’t hire deckhands to the mechanics who aren’t being hired to do repairs and the small businesses that aren’t selling supplies. According to US government figures, more than 6,000 vessels and 40,000 people have been brought in to help clean up the oil and deal with the crisis. But many in the fishing industry say they haven’t been able to get replacement work, and they don’t know when they’ll be able to resume their livelihoods.

Byron Encalade

BYRON ENCALADE, Louisiana Oystermen’s Association (speaking at meeting): And I know this is not going to end in one or two weeks, one or two months. May not even be one or two years…

LAWTON: Byron Encalade is president of the Louisiana Oystermen’s Association. He’s become a vocal advocate for the poorest fishermen, especially in remote bayous.

ENCALADE: Why must I always have to go through loops to get you to do the right thing toward my people?

LAWTON: He says after Hurricane Katrina, it was contractors and large, politically connected organizations that received most of the government grants and outside aid. He worries about the same injustices this time.

ENCALADE: If it takes every ounce of my breath, it’s coming out, the truth is coming out. And you’re not going to sit up here and hoodwink the system and think that you’re going to go around and pay your big salaries and all that to the people that works inside your organization and these poor people are suffering.

LAWTON: Many fishermen are having trouble filling out the complicated forms to get compensation from BP, or they don’t have adequate receipts to document their loss of income. People like Errol Battle are falling through the cracks. Battle is a deckhand on oyster boats. He lost everything in Katrina and has been living paycheck to paycheck. Since the oil spill, the boats he works on haven’t been leaving the dock.

ERROL BATTLE, oyster boat deckhand: It really hurts. The oil spill came. It really punished us. It really did.

LAWTON: Local faith-based groups have been trying to do what they can to help. Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New Orleans has set up relief centers in churches around the region. At Saint Anthony’s in the fishing village of LaFitte, people packed in the church hall to receive bags of food and gift cards for groceries. Case managers helped people fill out BP claims and apply for government aid. A crisis counselor mingled in the crowd, offering emotional support and referrals for more intensive counseling services. And there were activities to help the children focus on something other than the oil spill. At this center, there was also specific help for the Vietnamese American community, which makes up more than 30 percent of the Gulf Coast fishing industry.

MARGARET DUBUISSON, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans: Those Vietnamese immigrants are a very independent group of people. Their culture is intact. I mean if you go out to certain sections of New Orleans East you’ll see entire neighborhoods where all the signage is in Vietnamese. For them to negotiate with the BP claims process, and food stamps, and a lot of forms that are only in English, and a lot of websites that are only in English, it’s very difficult.

LAWTON: In May, BP gave $1 million to Catholic Charities and the Second Harvest Food Bank, but that money has now been spent, and other potential donors seem to be holding back.

Margaret Dubuisson

DUBUISSON: One of the kind of astounding things that we’ve been hearing is that this is a BP problem and BP should pick up the tab. And you know we’re not here to assign blame, we’re just here to help people.

LAWTON: New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond has been visiting some of the hardest hit fishing communities, sometimes traveling by helicopter to get to the more remote places. On this Sunday, he visited Lafitte.

ARCHBISHOP GREGORY AYMOND, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans: Personally I wanted to be with them in solidarity, and also as the archbishop and their shepherd to reassure them that in times of challenge and difficulty God never abandons us.

LAWTON: Virtually everyone here at St. Anthony’s has been affected by the oil spill. And the archbishop says the situation has been especially difficult coming on the heels of Katrina.

AYMOND: What has happened through this is that all of the wounds and the fears and the discouragement, and the intensity of Katrina has reopened. I can see it on people’s faces, I can hear it when they talk. There is definitely post-traumatic stress, which has not yet been fully dealt with. And then this tragedy on top of that just reopens all of that stress.

Archbishop Gregory Aymond

LAWTON: Still, he says he’s been encouraged by the strength of faith that he’s seen.

AYMOND: They are an amazing people. They are resilient. They get discouraged, but they don’t give up. They become puzzled and questioning of God, as we all would in circumstances like this, but they are people of faith.

LAWTON: St. Anthony’s parishioner Tilden Perez, Jr. says he still trusts God, even though he and his entire family have been devastated financially. Perez says his life, past, present and future, is tied to the bayou.

TILDEN PEREZ, JR., commercial fisherman: I’m born and raised here. My people build boats all their lives. My people come from Canary Islands in Spain, which you know is how we got here in the first place. Because it’s Spanish boats that brought the people here in the first place.

LAWTON: Perez is a commercial fisherman, but he hasn’t been able to get work since the oil spill.

PEREZ: On a regular day, none of these boats would be here. Mostly everybody would be working. I’d love to be in the bayou. I want to be in the bayou, and I can’t be in the bayou.

LAWTON: He takes solace in prayer and worship music. He played us a song he says God put in his heart.

LAWTON: Even as people here try to hold on to hope, worries about the future seem almost overwhelming. In addition to the economic worries, there are concerns about the long-term environmental impact, not only of the oil, but of the chemicals being used to disperse it, chemicals that have been banned by other countries.

ENCALADE: That oil is still there. It didn’t just vanish away like people may want to think. It vanished from where you can’t see it from the TV cameras, but it’s down there, and that dispersement is down there. We’ve been asking from day one, we want to know what’s in that dispersement, we want to know about the carcinogens in it, we want to know. We have a right to know. And the people that’s going to consume this seafood have a right to know.

LAWTON: There are worries about what’s going to happen to the wildlife and the beauty of the bayous.

AYMOND: A part of our faith is that we have to take care of the environment, and the environment has certainly been changed and polluted, and we don’t know how long this will take. Is this going to be a change of environment for two or three years? Is this going to be ten years? Is this going to be twenty years? What will this do to the Gulf of Mexico?

LAWTON: And mostly, worries about what will happen to the people here.

JEFFRIES: Katrina was sudden, it was rapid, everything was gone in an instant. But now this is slow. We have time to build up worries, anxieties, fears. Before we were stunned. Now we’re filled with question marks in our minds.

LAWTON: Questions with no quick and easy answers.

BOB ABERNETHY: Kim, welcome back

KIM LAWTON (correspondent): Thank you.

ABERNETHY: It seems as if there’s not nearly as much help going from churches and other organizations around the country going to New Orleans as there was right after Katrina, is that right?

LAWTON: Well, certainly after Katrina there was this huge outpouring, people wanted to do things, although in the immediate aftermath of Katrina they were still trying to figure out what to do. I think that’s what’s happening here as we heard from so many of the people we interviewed. This is still unfolding, and you know people aren’t sure what the needs really are, what they are going to be. Also, things aren’t quite as obvious. With Katrina, there were houses, people could really dive in, you know, and with this the people who are cleaning up the oil have to be specially trained, so there aren’t that many hands-on jobs right now.

ABERNETHY: Meanwhile, BP is saying, well, we are going to do it all, we are going to clean up everything. Well, that can be a disincentive for people around the country who might want to help.

LAWTON: Exactly. We heard, you know, BP has the ads saying we are going to make this right. And so we heard from many of the local groups that are trying to give immediate help or intermediate help saying they’re not getting donations from the outside like they did from Katrina in part because there’s this feeling of, well, BP should be taking care of it. BP did give some money to charity, but the Catholic Charities, as we said, they’ve already used it up, and in this intermediate time people still are in need.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton, many thanks.

Q: How key is this moment for the US Episcopal Church?

A: Well, I think it’s obviously a critical moment. It is an important moment. I don’t think there should be a live or die moment, however, for the Episcopal Church in the United States. There certainly are many who want to paint it that way, but I’m not certain I agree with that depiction.

Q: Why not?

A: Well, because I think that here in Louisiana, for example, we have demonstrated that the church can still be powerful in her faith, powerful in the witness, powerful in mission, powerful in changing lives and, I think, standing for the dignity of every human being, even in the midst of our disagreements. I’m tired of the disagreements. I would like to have the disagreements settled. What I’m not willing to do is to settle the disagreements at the price of the mission of the church, because the persons that [are] really hurt in that kind of example, or that kind of a situation, are the poor, and we can’t seek comfort for ourselves at the [expense] of the poor.

Q: How much pressure is the U.S. Church feeling from the rest of the world?

A: I think the larger question is what is the capacity of the United States Church or the Episcopal Church to absorb pressure from others? And some people feel a great deal more pressure than others. I think that if [there is] anything I’ve learned from the last several years of life here in New Orleans it’s been that we have an incredible capacity for others’ anxiety.

Q: What are you hoping to hear from the Archbishop of Canterbury? What does he need to do or say?

A: Well, as bishop of Louisiana I certainly want him, and I’ve made arrangements for him, to come speak to the city of New Orleans and to talk about redemptive suffering, to talk about the work that we’re doing to encourage us and to thank us, and that is very important to me as bishop of this city. I want the archbishop to acknowledge the good work that the Episcopal Church does throughout the world, to acknowledge the importance of mission, and I want the Archbishop of Canterbury to call us all to sacrifice. One of the odd questions that has been posed has been really half a question, and that is upon whose back will this settlement go forward? And there’s violence on both sides of this issue. If the Episcopal bishops make a response too far one way, then we see hand grenades thrown through the door, let’s say, of a Christian assembly in Pakistan. And on the other hand we all know of young men who are beaten and brutalized and tied to a fence and left to die in the American West. I think equal sacrifices [are] what I would have the archbishop call us to, and show us that in so doing as Christians we all win. We all do good, we’re all sanctified and made holy in doing that. I hope that we will find the space, the time, and the freedom to search for more long-lasting and I think creative solutions than we’re able to do in the anxious system in which we live in now.

Q: Some people feel there’s been too much time spent already. Conservatives, people aligning with churches in Africa say it’s taken too long and they are leaving. Others say the rest of the world is pushing the U.S. Church around and they are tired of that. How many people feel caught in the middle?

A: I don’t know how many people are feeling in the middle. I can tell you that I think we need to look at our codependent reactivity. Just because we’re tired doesn’t mean that we give up doing the right thing, or because somebody else is pressuring us that we stop doing the right thing. Nor do I think that necessarily we are compromised by taking a mature look at the situation that confronts us.

Q: Is it still possible to hold everything together?

A: It is absolutely still possible to hold everything together. I take great comfort in the high priestly prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ in Saint John’s Gospel — that we all may be one as he and the father are one. I think that it’s going to take a bit of creativity, out-of-the-box thinking, and the question is not how little can we do, or simply what can we not do because of our polity of the American church and the canons of the American church, but how much are we willing to do?

Q: Could there be a major realignment? When you talk about creativity, could there still be something that no one has really envisioned before?

A: Yes, indeed. But I don’t know that that would necessarily be a realignment. We certainly envision that time and time again, but I’m hoping and praying for something new and creative. One of the issues that has not been dealt with adequately by brains greater than mine is the impact of globalization, the huge shifts of people around the world and instant communication and urbanization and dwindling resources and the green issues around the environment. What does that have to do with this little conflict that we’re feeling in the Anglican community? I think there’s something there.

Q: What do you have to say to those Americans becoming bishops within the various African communions?

A: Well, my observation is the more bishops we have, the smaller the church gets.

Q: So what message would you have for Episcopalians and Anglicans as they watch all of this unfold? What would you like them to hear coming out of the meetings?

A: Take heart. It is God’s church. We are God’s hands and feet, and I believe if we continue with mission, God will guide us through this, and not just simply help us get through but get through wonderfully and gloriously. So take heart and be strong and trust in the Lord.

 
DEBORAH POTTER, guest anchor: They were once called circuit riders–itinerant preachers who went from town to town in 19th-century America to spread the Gospel. Since then they’ve gone from horseback to automobile, but they’re still around. No one knows just how many there are, but they serve the same purpose they always have–to bring a religious message to people with no fulltime preacher of their own. Lucky Severson reports.

LUCKY SEVERSON: Sunday morning at the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Pastor David Brown had already driven 80 miles in his aging Chevy when he arrived in this old Civil War town, past the cannon, past the graves of the war dead. Bethlehem is a small but proud congregation founded by former slaves in 1866. This is the first stop of what for Pastor Brown will be a very long day.

Pastor DAVID BROWN: Okay, I got three services today. I know I’ve got to go from nine o’clock until nine o’clock. That’s 12 hours.

SEVERSON: The service, which began at 11, won’t end until after 1:00. He’s got two more before the day is done. In all, Brown is pastor of seven churches in Mississippi and Louisiana. On days when he’s not there, they go to Sunday school. But he visits each church at least once month with all his heart and soul.

Pastor BROWN (singing before congregation): Yeah, I been sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but 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. Oh yeah!

SEVERSON: He gets pretty worked up when he preaches, doesn’t he?

MATTIE BROWN (Congregation Member, Bethlehem Baptist Church, Vicksburg): Yeah, he does. He’s a powerful preacher. He’s a God-sent man.

SEVERSON: The tradition of circuit riders, or pastors on horseback, began with Methodist preachers in the early 19th century. After the Civil War, former slaves were allowed to have churches on the plantations. But the congregations were too small and too poor to afford full-time preachers.

Hollywood portrayed the circuit rider as a tough guy who rode into town, took on the bad guys…and lo and behold, he turns out to be a preacher.

CLINT EASTWOOD (from film “Pale Rider”): Good evening. Hope I’m not the cause of all this excitement.

SEVERSON: The reality was not so glamorous. In their lifetimes, the preachers often traveled thousands of miles on horseback from one small town to another. No one seems to know how many circuit preachers there are today.

After lunch at a fast food joint, Pastor Brown is on the road again–30 miles to his next stop across the Mississippi River, back into Louisiana. He was one of 12 children, with preachers and deacons on both sides of the family. He says it’s in his blood.

Pastor BROWN: You think about it sometimes. You get real worn out, and you think about what I could do better. This is what the Lord has given you. That keeps you going.

SEVERSON: His wife Gwendolyn thinks he goes too much.

GWENDOLYN BROWN: He doesn’t say “no” a lot. Sometimes he’s overbooked. But he feels he owes it to the community because God has called him to do a mission.

SEVERSON: He often works late into the night preparing his sermons, a different one for each church. This is Pastor Brown’s second stop of the day, the Pleasant Grove Baptist Church #2 in Tallulah, Louisiana. The congregation here is very small and would have a difficult time supporting a fulltime preacher. So, for the people here, Pastor Brown is a godsend.

(speaking to Pastor Brown): What are you going to talk about here?

Pastor BROWN: I’m going to talk about “Not without God.” Without God, it’s impossible to do anything.

SEVERSON: Tallulah had seen better days before the saw mill closed and the jobs moved away. But the pastor tells his people not to give up on God.

Pastor BROWN (preaching to congregation): I come to tell you this afternoon the world’s greatest need is God. Not gold, but God. Not silver, but salvation. Not lumber, but love. Not gas, but grace. I come to tell you this afternoon, without God, we just can’t do nothing.

SEVERSON: Brown likely would have made a better living if he had become a mortician as he originally planned. His earnings as a circuit preacher amount to whatever is in the collection plate, which is usually not enough. His wife has cancer. He has high blood pressure, diabetes, and no health insurance.

Pastor BROWN: You’ve got to believe that at the end of the day the Lord’s going to provide enough for me, for what I need next week. When we pray we say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” So I expect him to provide for me and my family what I’m going to need this week. And then next Sunday he’ll provide again for the next week. And it’s always happened that way for 31 years.

SEVERSON: He augments his meager income by selling CDs of his sermons. He also preaches at revivals throughout the region. But his job as pastor demands much more than one day a week.

(speaking to Pammy Hall): If you have need of a preacher during the week, is that a problem if he’s not here?

Ms. HALL: Oh no. If you need him and you call him and he knows about it, he may not get the call when you call him, but if he knows that you need him he will call you back and he will be there.

SEVERSON: During the week, when he’s not preaching, he marries people and buries people, often traveling many miles. On this day he’s making a house call to pray with a man who just had an eye operation.

Pastor BROWN (praying at Mitchell house): We pray for this family. We pray for all who come through these doors. In the powerful name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. Amen.

SEVERSON: At one point he was getting so many speeding tickets the state threatened to suspend his license for seven years. Now he gets along well with the state police.

Pastor BROWN: Most of them knew my car, you know what I mean.

SEVERSON: There goes Pastor Brown, speeding down the road?

Pastor BROWN: Yeah, speeding again. He tells me, “You’d better slow it down, pastor.” Sometimes they pull up alongside, point their finger at me, and stuff like that.

SEVERSON: His third service of the day–back in Vicksburg at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. By now it is late afternoon. As with most churches he pastors, there are fewer members today than a few years.

Pastor BROWN: 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. They have souls that need to be fed, and they have needs that need to be met. And the Word has to get to them. I look at it as a life and death situation.

SEVERSON: And as the churches get smaller, and Pastor Brown gets older and wearier, members get worried.

HOOVER YOUNGER (Congregation Member, Ebenezer Baptist Church, Vicksburg): I told him, I said, I can understand you’re getting old. I done reached old–but still more work to be done.

WILLIE HENRY SMITH, SR (Congregation Member, Ebenezer Baptist Church, Vicksburg): I would to God that Reverend Brown would stay here for a lifetime. But as you know, we’re all going to pass off the scene. After he’s gone, we’re still going to have somebody else here to carry on. But see–because the church must go on. You still got to have somebody else that you can put your trust in and believe in.

Pastor BROWN (singing before congregation): When I come down, down to my last month, come down to my last hour, come down to my last minute, my last second, I want Jesus! I want Jesus! I want Jesus! I want Jesus. Oh, I want Jesus!

SEVERSON: This was his third sermon, and he’s still wound up.

Pastor BROWN: It’s a passion. It’s a love that you develop for the people. This is something you just can’t quit. They say, “Well, how do you get into the ministry?” I tell them that the ministry gets you. You don’t get the ministry. It gets you.

SEVERSON: Finally, another Sunday, done. Tired but satisfied.

Pastor BROWN: I guess this is it for today. Well, I’m going to head back to Monroe.

SEVERSON: It’s 7:30 in the evening, and he still has an 80-mile drive home. The churches count on him to return sometime soon. But someday he’ll cross the Mississippi River, and he won’t come back. Who will take his place?

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson in Vicksburg Mississippi.