Originally published April 20, 2010

BENYAMIN COHEN (Author of “My Jesus Year”): I grew up in the heart of the Bible belt in Atlanta, Georgia, one of eight children, the son of an Orthodox rabbi. I’m the only one that didn’t go into the family business. They are all rabbis or married rabbis.

I was always jealous. I grew up across the street from a Methodist church, and literally my bedroom window looked out at the church parking lot, and every Sunday morning I would see it was packed, and living in the Bible belt there are churches on every street corner, and their parking lots are full every week. Maybe I could go to church—not to convert to Christianity. I wasn’t interested in that. I wanted to go to find out what got people excited about worship, what got people excited about their religion. Maybe I could go and tap into that spirituality and find out the secret that I was never taught growing up, and maybe I could bring that back and apply it to my own Judaism.

Here’s one thing that I learned. I haven’t even walked into a church, and here’s already one thing I could write down and tell my rabbi—first-time visitor parking. I’m not talking about bringing Jesus into the synagogue. It wouldn’t hurt, it wouldn’t kill you to put a little first-time visitor parking sign in the parking lot.

I didn’t know going to church that they talk about the Old Testament. I assumed Jews have the Old Testament and Christians have the New Testament. I didn’t realize they have both, and this pastor got up and started giving an Old Testament sermon, and the way he was describing his interpretation was completely antithetical to what I had learned growing up. What came out of that moment was that I didn’t realize I cared so much about my own Bible.

At this Episcopal church they had a ritualistic service every week, and they had these nice traditions, and I was like that’s such a nice, sweet thing to have traditions and ancient rituals. I was like that sounds familiar. We have that in synagogue, and it kind of made me look at my own rituals with a new, fresh perspective.

Orthodox Jewry and Mormonism have a lot in common. We are both minorities in America. We both have special dietary—they can’t drink caffeine, and we have to keep kosher. They wear special undergarments, we wear special undergarments. There’s a lot of laws that dictate all their lives, and so for me I felt a real kinship with the Mormon community, and I went knocking door to door with these two female Mormon missionaries, and their conviction, these are girls 19- and 20-years-old, and their conviction for their religion was just awe-inspiring to me. I’m sure the woman whose house we were visiting, I’m sure she’s wondering why the Mormons brought their accountant with them. You know, what is he doing here?

I was feeling guilty at the end of the year that I kind of strayed from my own religion, and so I wanted to cleanse myself of that guilt, so I did what any good Jewish boy does, and that’s go to confession. I asked my Catholic friend, Vince, if I could do this, and he said, “No, only Catholics can go to confession, but I will sneak you in.” It was a very meaningful spiritual experience, and an interesting postscript to that whole episode is that the priest, now that the book has come out, the priest actually knows that I went to confession with him, and he called me and thanked me. He is so happy that I had a meaningful experience with him.

I for one feel a lot closer to a religious Christian than I do a non-religious Jew, because we have so much in common. People ask me if I found Jesus in church, and I personally did not, so to speak, find Jesus, but what I did find was true spirituality. That’s what I found in these places: the lack of cynicism, the openness to the experience, and the belief in God, whoever that God may be.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: The reaction for and against the law has reverberated from Main Street through the halls of government to the sanctuaries of churches. This is Bishop Kirk Stevan Smith of the Arizona Episcopal diocese.

BISHOP KIRK S. SMITH (Episcopal Diocese of Arizona): Along with many other religious leaders I think it’s a terrible law. Legal things are important, political things are important, but people’s basic human rights are the most important thing, and that’s where the churches have an obligation, in my way of thinking, to stand up.

SEVERSON: But even among the clergy there is a divide. Religious leaders like the Reverend Tim Smith of Scottsdale, Arizona, support the law. Smith was a nondenominational pastor for 30 years, now a spiritual advisor.

REVEREND TIM SMITH: I think it’s a cry for help from the legislature, from the governor.

Bishop Kirk S. Smith

SEVERSON: Arizona has become ground zero for illegal immigration. It’s estimated that there are nearly 500,000 illegal residents living in Arizona and more streaming in every day. The federal government has dramatically increased the number of border agents, but not enough to stem the flow. Congress has yet to agree on a comprehensive solution. Reverend Smith says that the Arizona law only supports what was already on the books.

REV. TIM SMITH: Essentially, as I read the law and its amendments, it’s an attempt to enforce what has been a federal law since the days of, I think, FDR.

SEVERSON: Illegal immigration has long been a federal crime. The Arizona law makes it a state crime and instructs local police to check the immigration status of anyone they stop for an infraction and arrest anyone they reasonably suspect is undocumented or illegal. If citizens don’t think the police are being vigilant enough they can sue them in court. Supporters say there are enough safeguards to prevent profiling. Critics say the law makes it almost impossible not to profile.

Arizona police come down on both sides. Some say they don’t have the manpower to enforce the law. Another major issue is what is “reasonable suspicion”?

BISHOP KIRK SMITH: The wife of one of our priests who is of Mexican [descent], she was just driving through the neighborhood and was pulled over by a sheriff’s officer, asked to see her identification—which she had, she is an American citizen and has been an American citizen for 20 years—and the sheriff said to her, “If you didn’t have these paper you’d be taking a quick trip back to Mexico.”

SEVERSON: Supporters of Senate Bill 1070 say its purpose is to crack down on crime, like that experienced by rancher Robert Krentz. He was interviewed in 1999.

ROBERT KRENTZ: You know, we personally been broke into once, and they took about $700 worth of stuff, and you know if they come in and ask for water I’ll still give them water. That’s just my nature.

SEVERSON: In March, Krentz was murdered. His killing spurred passage of the new law because it was suspected that he was killed by an illegal. Now there is evidence that the killer was not an immigrant. Overall, the violent crime rate in Arizona is down, and so is property crime, and census data show that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than legal residents.

REV. RAUL TREVIZO: The legislature would say that this law is intended to stop home invasions, drugs coming across the border, guns being smuggled is absurd. In no way does this law even begin to address those issues.

SEVERSON: Father Raul Trevizo pastors a Catholic parish in Tucson, near the border, of about 4,000 families, many of them undocumented.

REV. TREVIZO: All this law does is put fear in people who are here as economic refugees trying to eke out a living and help themselves and their family back home.

SEVERSON: If it seems that many, if not most religious leaders are opposed to the law, Mark Tooley, a self-proclaimed conservative watchdog, says it’s because they have been the most vocal and, in his view, the most misleading.

Mark Tooley

MARK TOOLEY (President, Institute on Religion & Democracy): They are speaking very dogmatically to a political issue for which there is not direct guidance from the scriptures or Christian tradition, and it really is a political issue that Christians across the spectrum can disagree about.

SEVERSON: But religious opponents of the law say they are simply following the scriptures.

REV. TREVIZO: I believe the fundamental principle of the Old Testament is that we are under full obligation to follow God’s law. Jesus summarized God’s law in the great commandment: love your neighbor as yourself.

SEVERSON: United Methodist Bishop Minerva Carcano has been a vocal opponent of the law, lobbying anyone in Congress who will listen.

BISHOP MINERVA CARCANO (Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church): Scripture is full of references about the immigrant, and the message is consistent and clear. The message is we are to care for the immigrant. Leviticus says that we are to receive them and treat them as if they were native-born, as if they were citizens, and it also says that we are never to oppress them, and so that’s our job as religious leaders, to hold up our faith values.

BISHOP KIRK SMITH: And of course Jesus’ passage at the end of Matthew where he reminds us in the way that we treat the least among us, the way that we treat the hungry person or the thirsty person or the person in prison, is the way that we treat him.

SEVERSON: So you think that obeying the law would take precedence over taking care of the least amongst you?

REV. TIM SMITH: Well, obeying the law is foundational to our society and one of the reasons why the United States has been a haven for people across the years, that there has been a rule of law here and that through that rule of law we can sort out these problems that we have.

SEVERSON: Mark Tooley says scriptures that are often sited don’t really apply to illegal immigration and that religious opponents are not representing the views of their congregants.

TOOLEY: There is a perception that the religious world is for liberalized immigration because those on the more liberal side of the religious world are the most outspoken. So I don’t think that most of these church officials genuinely speak for the constituencies they claim to speak for.

BISHOP KIRK SMITH: I find that totally, totally wrong. I mean, these are our parishioners. I have a parishioner who’s undocumented, whose son who is seven years old said to her this week, “Mommy, what am I going to do when they take you away?” Those are my parishioners. I can’t see how somebody can say you’re out of touch with those people. Those are the people that I serve, and those are the people that I care about.

Bishop Minerva Carcano

SEVERSON: Bishop Carcano says many in her congregation oppose the law, but some are very upset with her position.

(speaking to Bishop Carcano): Have you had people leave or threaten to leave the church over this issue?

BISHOP CARCANO: We have, we have. They’ve left. Some of them are people who leave for a season and then return. Others—we will have lost them, and we pray for them.

SEVERSON: Many in the religious opposition say they can’t back away from their moral obligation even if it means harboring an illegal immigrant, even if it means breaking the law.

BISHOP CARCANO: We know that there are moments in history when we are under laws that are not just, that are not moral, that are not right. We’re called to challenge those. Slavery—it used to be a law to have slaves and to treat them in a certain way. If religious leaders had sat back and said that’s alright, we would have been stuck. We would have been at a very different place over the years and today. There are moments when we must challenge the laws of society.

SEVERSON: The state has taken a huge hit economically since the bill passed. Phoenix officials estimate the city has lost at least $100 million just in convention cancellations, and more keep coming in. Bishop Smith thinks the law will eventually be defeated, but not because of moral or ethical concerns.

BISHOP KIRK SMITH: But I suspect that it will ultimately be defeated because people say, you know, this just doesn’t make sense economically. Everybody is going to lose. This is a lose-lose for everybody. Our pocketbooks are going to lose, and our souls are going to lose.

SEVERSON: Unless court challenges prevent it, the Arizona law is scheduled to take effect after July 28.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly I’m Lucky Severson in Phoenix, Arizona.

BENYAMIN COHEN (Author of “My Jesus Year”): I grew up in the heart of the Bible belt in Atlanta, Georgia, one of eight children, the son of an Orthodox rabbi. I’m the only one that didn’t go into the family business. They are all rabbis or married rabbis.

I was always jealous. I grew up across the street from a Methodist church, and literally my bedroom window looked out at the church parking lot, and every Sunday morning I would see it was packed, and living in the Bible belt there are churches on every street corner, and their parking lots are full every week. Maybe I could go to church—not to convert to Christianity. I wasn’t interested in that. I wanted to go to find out what got people excited about worship, what got people excited about their religion. Maybe I could go and tap into that spirituality and find out the secret that I was never taught growing up, and maybe I could bring that back and apply it to my own Judaism.

Here’s one thing that I learned. I haven’t even walked into a church, and here’s already one thing I could write down and tell my rabbi—first-time visitor parking. I’m not talking about bringing Jesus into the synagogue. It wouldn’t hurt, it wouldn’t kill you to put a little first-time visitor parking sign in the parking lot.

I didn’t know going to church that they talk about the Old Testament. I assumed Jews have the Old Testament and Christians have the New Testament. I didn’t realize they have both, and this pastor got up and started giving an Old Testament sermon, and the way he was describing his interpretation was completely antithetical to what I had learned growing up. What came out of that moment was that I didn’t realize I cared so much about my own Bible.

At this Episcopal church they had a ritualistic service every week, and they had these nice traditions, and I was like that’s such a nice, sweet thing to have traditions and ancient rituals. I was like that sounds familiar. We have that in synagogue, and it kind of made me look at my own rituals with a new, fresh perspective.

Orthodox Jewry and Mormonism have a lot in common. We are both minorities in America. We both have special dietary—they can’t drink caffeine, and we have to keep kosher. They wear special undergarments, we wear special undergarments. There’s a lot of laws that dictate all their lives, and so for me I felt a real kinship with the Mormon community, and I went knocking door to door with these two female Mormon missionaries, and their conviction, these are girls 19- and 20-years-old, and their conviction for their religion was just awe-inspiring to me. I’m sure the woman whose house we were visiting, I’m sure she’s wondering why the Mormons brought their accountant with them. You know, what is he doing here?

I was feeling guilty at the end of the year that I kind of strayed from my own religion, and so I wanted to cleanse myself of that guilt, so I did what any good Jewish boy does, and that’s go to confession. I asked my Catholic friend, Vince, if I could do this, and he said, “No, only Catholics can go to confession, but I will sneak you in.” It was a very meaningful spiritual experience, and an interesting postscript to that whole episode is that the priest, now that the book has come out, the priest actually knows that I went to confession with him, and he called me and thanked me. He is so happy that I had a meaningful experience with him.

I for one feel a lot closer to a religious Christian than I do a non-religious Jew, because we have so much in common. People ask me if I found Jesus in church, and I personally did not, so to speak, find Jesus, but what I did find was true spirituality. That’s what I found in these places: the lack of cynicism, the openness to the experience, and the belief in God, whoever that God may be.

TIM O’BRIEN, anchor: The issue of gay marriage is on the agenda as the US Episcopal Church holds its once-every-three-years General Convention in Anaheim, California.  For years, Episcopalians have been deeply divided over homosexuality.  One proposal being debated at this meeting would allow Episcopal churches to conduct same-sex weddings in the six states that have legalized gay marriage.  Currently, most mainline denominations do not officially allow same-sex weddings.  But the changing legal environment is adding new pressure.  Kim Lawton has our report.

KIM LAWTON: Boston’s historic Church of the Covenant has been an important place for Anne Crane and Sarah Perreault. The lesbian couple had their first date there in the late 1970s, and by the time Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage the two had been active members for more than 25 years, so a church wedding seemed the obvious choice.

SARAH PERREAULT: In particular we wanted to be married at our home church with our community and our family and friends.

LAWTON: But it was complicated. Church of the Covenant is dually aligned with two mainline denominations: the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (USA).  And while the UCC has no problem marrying same-sex couples, it’s against national Presbyterian policy.

ANNE CRANE: Well, it’s painful to know that the church that I’ve been a part of all my life does not recognize our relationship and our marriage as being a legitimate marriage.

LAWTON:  Church of the Covenant worked it out so that a retired UCC minister conducted the ceremony, and the Presbyterian side of the church officially stayed out of it.  Crane and Perreault say their wedding was beautiful and meaningful, but not quite everything they would have planned.

PERREAULT:  I felt badly because there were people that we would have liked to include in our ceremony who could not participate because they were ordained Presbyterian clergy. There was a real loss there.

Man at Protest:  “We are a couple…”

LAWTON:  For decades, mainline denominations have been wrestling over issues surrounding homosexuality: whether to ordain gay clergy and whether to recognize–and bless same-sex unions. Now that six states have legalized gay marriage, those battles are taking on a new urgency. Some church members are pushing the denominations to reassess their policies, while others are fighting to hold the line.

Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, an advocacy group that supports conservative positions within mainline denominations.

MARK TOOLEY:  The church shouldn’t just go along with what the wider society demands of it. But the church is ideally supposed to be faithful to timeless teachings that have been presented to the church through its Scripture and through its traditions.

Minister:  “To have and to hold…”

LAWTON: Currently, while the Unitarians and the UCC conduct gay marriages, mainline Protestant denominations as a rule don’t officially allow it. Clergy who participate in same-sex weddings could face church trials and even risk being defrocked.

Minister:  “I hereby pronounce you husband and husband…”

TOOLEY:  Traditionalists within those churches will strive to help to ensure there is as much fidelity as possible, by the clergy to the official teachings.

LAWTON: In the United Methodist Church, 83-year-old Richard Harding has a long history of activism for gay rights. He helped found Reconciling Retired Clergy, a network of retired pastors willing to perform gay marriages.

REV. RICHARD HARDING: There’s not a whole lot that they can do to we retired clergy, and there’s a whole lot that they can do to active clergy that they can’t do to us. And that’s why we’re stepping in.

LAWTON: Harding says he believes what he’s doing is the right thing, so he’s willing to risk any repercussions.

HARDING: We could be defrocked. I would be now sitting here as Mr. Harding instead of Reverend Harding. And in Massachusetts, a lay person can go for a day to the state house and get permission to officiate at a marriage. So I’d still be able to do it, only I just wouldn’t be a pastor anymore.

LAWTON: At Church of the Covenant, interim minister Jennifer Wegter-McNelly is an ordained Presbyterian pastor. She says her congregation has been put in a difficult position of trying to maintain support for gay members while still respecting the national denomination.

REV. JENNIFER WEGTER-MCNELLY: We have a long history and we’re very active, and so I think there is a lot of really thoughtful hard conversation about how do we be prophetic and remain faithful and connected to the churches that are our larger community?

LAWTON: So far, they’ve been able to do that by keeping same-sex weddings solely under the jurisdiction of the UCC part of their church. Other congregations don’t have that option. Episcopal clergy also can’t conduct gay marriages. In an effort to be even-handed, many Massachusetts Episcopal churches aren’t doing any weddings, gay or straight. Instead, Reverend Pam Werntz at Boston’s Emmanuel Episcopal Church says they provide a blessing for couples who are married by the state.

REV. PAM WERNTZ:  That could happen separately, it could happen at the courthouse and then a couple comes here for the ceremony, or it can happen in the same ceremony where a Justice of the Peace presides over the first part of the service and the priest presides over the blessing and often a Eucharist celebration.

LAWTON: The compromise may have helped circumvent some of the denominational difficulties, but Werntz says it was still painful for many members.

WERNTZ:  There were people that left the church in feeling a lot of sorrow and betrayal that the Episcopal Church couldn’t move as fast as I think it needed to move when same-sex marriage was legalized.

LAWTON: UCC minister Reine Abele, who does perform gay weddings, say churches need to be better at addressing social concerns.

REV. REINE ABELE: Churches generally are not the leading edge of cultural change in our society. They are often not the engine but the caboose.

LAWTON: But despite the new activism, mainline clergy continue to be conflicted over the issue, and those who support gay marriages still appear to be in the minority.

LAWTON: According to a recent survey by Public Religion Research, mainline clergy are generally more supportive of gay rights than Americans as a whole. But that doesn’t hold true when it comes to same-sex marriage. Only a third of mainline clergy support gay marriage. That number is just about the same for Americans overall.

TOOLEY: Often people in wider society are very surprised to learn that the mainline churches don’t already accept same sex marriage, because typically these churches, at least for the last 50, 60 years or more have been on the liberal side of social issues. But they have hung back on the marriage issue.

LAWTON: For many, it’s an issue of basic theology.

TOOLEY: Typically for Jews and Christians, marriage is a metaphor for faithfulness between God and his people and once you begin to redefine what marriage is you ultimately start to redefine who God is and that obviously and understandably is difficult for Christians and Jews.

LAWTON: In the Presbyterian Church (USA), Reverend Mary Holder Naegeli is among those urging the denomination to maintain its stand.

REV. MARY HOLDER NAEGELI: Homosexual practice is not God’s design for humanity. Not being God’s design for humanity, having these clear prohibitions in the Scripture make homosexual practice a sin. Homosexual marriage makes permanent a situation that God wants to redeem.

LAWTON: But others advocate a different interpretation of the Bible.

WEGTER-MCNELLY: Our call to be inclusive of all people comes from scripture.  It comes from faithfulness to God, it comes from understanding that all people are made in the image of God and it’s essential to support people in their relationships, to bless them and support them and nurture them.

LAWTON: For Wegter-McNelly, the issue also comes down to her pastoral responsibilities to the people in her pews.

WEGTER-MCNELLY:  Here gay marriage isn’t an abstract issue. It’s not a political issue.  It’s very much an issue of the people of the congregation being in community together. To tell people that this community that is the compass for your life is not going to bless and support you in your intimate relationship is kind of an impossibility.

LAWTON: But supporters of traditional marriage say pastors also have a responsibility to their faith and to the wider church.

HOLDER NAEGELI: Why would I, a representative of God, help people make permanent with a vow, I take marriage vows very seriously, but with a vow to make permanent then, seal something that God wouldn’t agree with?

LAWTON: As they celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary, Anne Crane and Sarah Perreault are glad their church wedding worked out.

CRANE: It’s a liberating feeling, and it’s enabled me and us to just, to live our lives honestly and openly, and many people don’t have that opportunity and have to continue living a lie. And that’s the sad thing.

Minister: Those whom God has joined together, let no one put asunder.  Amen.

LAWTON: But given the conflicts within the mainline churches, the situation is not likely to change any time soon.

I’m Kim Lawton in Boston.

 
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.