KIM LAWTON, correspondent: On Sunday mornings at New Orleans’ Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, Pastor Fred Luter Jr.’s outgoing personality is on full display. At worship services such as this one that begins at 7:30 am, Luter greets almost everyone in the congregation. And with some 5,000 people attending every week, there’s a lot of greeting.

REV. FRED LUTER, JR, Franklin Avenue Baptist Church: I love what I do. I love pastoring. I love pastoring. I love pastoring this church.

LAWTON: Luter, who is 55, has been the pastor here more than 25 years. Under his leadership, Franklin Avenue has become one of the largest Southern Baptist churches in the state. That takes many people by surprise, because Franklin Avenue is predominantly African-American, and the Southern Baptist Convention is about 80 percent white. The fact that Luter is likely to be elected the next president of the SBC is even more surprising.

LUTER: It’s a new day in the Southern Baptist Convention. Our doors are open to each and everybody: African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, no matter the color, no matter the creed, no matter the background, this convention doors are open and our churches are open to whosoever will, let them come.

LAWTON: At one time, Franklin Avenue was an all-white Southern Baptist church. But in the 1970s, whites moved out of the neighborhood, and the congregation changed. A New Orleans native, Luter grew up in a black Baptist denomination. When he arrived at this church in 1986, there was some debate about leaving the SBC. He convinced the congregation to stay.

LUTER: I knew this convention had a heart for evangelism, had a heart for discipleship and had a heart for reaching people in, in difficult times, and I felt this is the right place for us. Not even knowing what would happen years later.

LAWTON: The SBC was formed in 1845 after a north-south split over slavery, and the SBC long supported slaveholders and segregationists. In recent years, the convention has adopted resolutions of apology for those stands.

LUTER: I have a past, you have a past, everybody has a past. This convention unfortunately has a past that we’re trying to move forward from and, and that’s how I look at it. There was apology made, and so it’s now time to move on and that’s why I’m excited about this opportunity.

LAWTON: Still, Luter acknowledges that racism is an ongoing issue that needs to be addressed, in the denomination and across the nation. For example, he says while he doesn’t agree with all of President Obama’s policies, he has been troubled by what he sees as a lack of respect for the president in many quarters.

LUTER: A lot of the things that this president has faced has not necessarily been because of his politics or his decisions, but unfortunately it’s just only been because of the color of his skin. And that’s what lets me know that we have a long, long way to go in America as far as racial reconciliation.

LAWTON: Ongoing tensions over race, he says, can’t be ignored.

LUTER: As long as those kind of things keep happening and the Trayvon Martin thing in the Florida situation like that, we have to deal with it. Even some things maybe within the convention that we need to talk about and address.

REV. DAVID CROSBY, First Baptist Church, New Orleans: I’m not pretending like Fred’s election to the convention now is going to do away with all racial tensions in the Southern Baptist Convention or anywhere else. That’s not going to happen. But it is going to be a step, and I think a major step, in the right direction.

LAWTON: At the SBC annual meeting next month, Rev. David Crosby will be the one to officially nominate Luter as president. Crosby is pastor of a predominantly white Southern Baptist Church in New Orleans, First Baptist, and has become close friends with Luter.

CROSBY: I trust him. His presidency is not going to be about him. It’s going to be about the health of our convention. And we need his help. We need his perspective. We need his wisdom.

LAWTON: The two pastors’ friendship was forged in the difficult days after Hurricane Katrina. Franklin Avenue Baptist Church had been devastated by the storm. Months after Katrina struck, volunteers in protective suits were still trying to clean out the sanctuary.

LUTER: To come here and see this, this church that God allowed me to pastor, we built this church and—beautiful–and then coming here, and we see pews thrown all over, the mud thick, the smell, the stench, it just, I just, I cried like a baby.

LAWTON: The church had to be completely gutted and rebuilt. Most of the 7,000 congregation members had fled from New Orleans, but the remaining 50 or 60 needed a place to worship. First Baptist, which had sustained much less damage, opened its doors, and the two congregations shared the space for nearly three years. The two pastors, who didn’t know each other well before that, ended up partnering on several projects, such as a 2006 visit to New Orleans by Billy and Franklin Graham.

CROSBY: It broadened our perspective of our own faith, broadened our perspective of the church of Jesus Christ and how we can work together, helped us understand across ethnic and cultural lines who we are together as brothers and sisters.

LAWTON: After years of construction, Franklin Avenue moved back into its rebuilt church in 2008. But the relationships between the pastors and the congregations continue, such as a recent joint mission trip to Africa. Crosby says while Luter’s preaching skills are lauded across the SBC, working so closely together showed him that his friend’s gifts extend beyond preaching.

CROSBY: He’s able to articulate a vision and present it to the congregation or to people in such a way that they buy in. In every aspect imaginable, Fred Luter is qualified to be president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

LAWTON: If he indeed becomes president, Luter says in addition to encouraging the establishment of new churches, one of his goals will be to support local congregations that are struggling to survive.

LUTER: We really have to work with a lot of the churches who are already existing but are hurting. They haven’t baptized in a while. They’re not reaching people, and we need to go into these churches and find out what can we do as a convention to help you get back on your feet?

LAWTON: As president, Luter would also help give voice to the SBC’s often-conservative stance on public policy issues, such as opposition to abortion and gay marriage. He says that’s something he doesn’t shy away from.

LUTER: We’ve always been out there on the front lines and we don’t mind that. We don’t mind because we believe in standing up for what we believe in and so there’s some things out there that’s going to have to be addressed. My mindset and my lifestyle is driven by what the Word of God says. If God says it’s wrong, then it’s wrong.

LAWTON: He’s aware that as the first African-American up for the SBC presidency, he’s disproportionately in the spotlight.

LUTER: You know whenever you’re the first at something you’re going to be scrutinized more. It comes with the territory. My wife tells me, ‘Watch what you say. Watch what you do. Watch where you go.’

LAWTON: He says it’s Elizabeth, his wife of 31 years, who helps keep him spiritually grounded.

LUTER: I call her the love of my life, the apple of my eye, my prime rib, my good thing, that’s how I introduce her. She has a very unique relationship with God that I envy and admire, and she is one that keeps me level headed, she keeps me from getting a big head, but also she keeps me connected to God. She’s, she’s my accountability partner. And there are people that I maybe can fool and get over on, but I can’t with her.

LAWTON: As the convention meeting approaches, Luter says he’s praying more than ever for wisdom.

LUTER: Cause I’ll be speaking on behalf of a denomination of 15 million members. 15 million people of over 45,000 churches, and so I want to make sure that I represent not only them well, but most of all I want to represent God well.

LAWTON: He says what he wants people to know him for is helping the SBC live out the teachings of Jesus.

LUTER: My number one hope is that they, when this is all said and done, that they can look at the fact that here was somebody that brought this convention closer, not necessarily just whites and blacks, Asians, Hispanics, but, but the young and the old, the yuppies and the buppies, that we can all come together and say let’s get back to making the main thing the main thing.

LAWTON: I’m Kim Lawton in New Orleans.

Rev. Fred Luter, Jr., pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, is expected to become the first African-American president of the Southern Baptist Convention this June. R & E managing editor and correspondent Kim Lawton will be doing a profile of him in the next few weeks. During her interview with him on March 24, she asked Rev. Luter, specifically in the wake of the Trayvon Martin case, how he assesses race relations in America. Here is an excerpt from their conversation:

KIM LAWTON: How do you look at the state of the racial situation in America?

REV. FRED LUTER: No, you wouldn’t have thought that when President Obama was elected as president of the United States of America, you would have thought that that would have ended the racial divide in our country. But unfortunately what it has shown is that in some cases it’s widened the racism in our country. There are a lot of situations just happened here not too long ago here in the Louisiana area of, there was an art project at a local school, and they have these pictures of hunting season, and there was a duck on one side, I think a deer on one side, and in the middle was a picture of President Obama with a hole in his head. And that was in a local high school. And stuff like that just shouldn’t happen. And you know I don’t agree with all the president’s politics, I don’t agree with all the decisions that he made, but one of the things that bothers me as Americans is that the disrespect that this president has had to deal with. It should not be. It should not be. You know, we’ve had presidents, you know, from Reagan to Clinton to Bush Sr. to Bush Jr., to Clinton, we don’t always agree with them. I mean, that’s just a given. But there has always been a respect for the office. This is the first time that I can remember a president was giving a speech, State of the Union speech, and someone shouts out from the gallery “you lie!” That has never happened, never with all the presidents, with all the lies that all of them have told. That has never happened. But it’s happened with this president, and so things like that reminds me that, you know, we’ve come a long way as a nation where there’s a racial issue, but we still have a long, long, long way to go. A lot of the things that this president has faced has not necessarily been because of his politics or his decisions, but unfortunately it’s just only been because of the color of his skin, and that’s what lets me know that we have a long, long way to go in America as far as racial reconciliation.

LAWTON: And as far as non-African American people are concerned, I mean do you run into white people who want to think, well, it’s all done now? It’s over with? You know, whatever happened in the past is done and don’t really want to confront what might still be bubbling there?

LUTER: Sure, sure, and if that was true across the board then I say fine, let’s do it. But there’s so many instances that are coming up, like yesterday here in Louisiana one of the Republican candidates for president was at a shooting range shooting. I don’t know if you all saw this on the news like that, but as he’s shooting at these targets, someone yelled out from the gallery, “Look at one of them as President Obama.” Come on y’all. This is just, that shouldn’t be. Not in America. He’s our president. I don’t agree with everything he says, don’t agree with all his decisions, but respect the office. And so if we didn’t have those kind of instances, those kind of situations, I would say, yeah, come on, let that go, it’s time to move on. But as long as those kind of things keep happening, and the Trayvon Martin thing in the Florida situation like that, we have to deal with it.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops gathered in Seattle this week for their annual spring meeting. A key part of the agenda was reviewing sex abuse prevention policies they adopted in 2002. The bishops passed minor revisions but said overall the guidelines have “served the church well.” Still, there are lingering questions about compliance and accountability.

Joining me now is Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program. Kim, are the bishops really following those 2002 guidelines?

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: Well, they say the majority of bishops are following the guidelines, but there are a couple who are not, and that has lead to some pretty high-profile scandals—one in Philadelphia, another one most recently that, last couple weeks in Missouri, where the local bishop had to apologize for a priest that was arrested on child pornography charges.

ABERNETHY: And whether a bishop has to follow those 2002 guidelines is up to the bishop. There’s no way that the other bishops can make him do that, right?

LAWTON: Well, they are nonbinding, and the bishops say that they don’t have the authority to discipline or impose penalties, that only the pope can discipline a bishop. So therefore they say this has to be part of the “fraternal correction,” and it is sort of voluntary.

ABERNETHY: The Southern Baptists, Southern Baptist Convention, also gathered this week in Phoenix and took steps to make their denomination more diverse, more ethnic diversity. It elected an African American from New Orleans as a first vice-president, on track to become perhaps the president of the Southern Baptist Convention in a year.

LAWTON: Perhaps.

ABERNETHY: Perhaps. So there’s something going on there.

LAWTON: Well, they are trying to reach out, I think. There has been some apologies for racism in the past. But they are trying to reach out as well. There was some concern that they have been declining in baptisms and even a slight decline in membership. They’re still the largest Protestant denomination, of course.

ABERNETHY: Sixteen million, is it?

LAWTON: Sixteen million.

ABERNETHY: I was thinking about this Libya thing and the Congress putting pressure on the president. There’s a relationship, isn’t there, to a religious tradition?

LAWTON: Well, the political debate is whether or not the president has the authority to authorize and continue the military effort in Libya without congressional authorization, and the just war tradition also says that in order for military action to be just it has to have the sanction of the proper authorities, and so there is that moral connection that the political debate is also sort of tied to, and there’s been another debate in the religious community I’ve been watching as well. I’m seeing increasing numbers of religious conservatives raising concerns about the Libya action. Many of them had been supportive in other military efforts, but on this one raising concerns on moral issues, economic moral issues, raising questions about whether or not it’s moral to spend that much money—over $700 million dollars—on this effort.

ABERNETHY: Kim, many thanks.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: South Africa has spent six billion dollars just on stadiums—money that could have gone to many pressing needs in a poor country. But that debate has been set aside for the celebrations these days. No one, it seems, has escaped World Cup fever—not even Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who came to our interview wearing soccer vestments.

ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: Many of those who are celebrating are the very ones that you would have thought wouldn’t because they are poor. But the scriptures long ago reminded us that human beings don’t subsist only on bread. You need things that lift your spirit.

DE SAM LAZARO: For five decades, Tutu has been one of South Africa’s most prominent voices —a leader in the struggle against the white minority rule of apartheid, leader of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that is widely credited for a mostly peaceful transition after elections in 1994 brought the long-imprisoned Nelson Mandela to power. Now frail, the 92-year-old Mandela makes only rare public appearances. Tutu is also retired, but he keeps a much higher and often outspoken profile.

TUTU: God gave us an incredible start with a Nelson Mandela, and it would be very difficult to maintain that quality of leadership.

DE SAM LAZARO: After 16 years, the verdict on South Africa is decidedly mixed. It still has the modern infrastructure, built for its affluent 10 percent white minority. What’s new are places like this glitzy mall in the historically black township of Soweto. Not long ago, the only blacks in places like these would have been cleaning them. Today, few people can match the consumer appetite of people like Tim Tebeila, part of a new class of black industrialist. He recently came to the site of a multimillion-dollar home he’s building near Johannesburg.

CONTRACTOR (speaking to Tim Tebeila): We’re still waiting for the Italian chandelier to come in that you chose. I think it weighs, what, one-and-a-half tons?

DE SAM LAZARO: Tebeila was a young member of the African National Congress, or ANC, that was banned for fighting apartheid, which officially excluded the 85 percent black majority from all but the most menial jobs. All that changed after ANC leader Nelson Mandela’s election in 1994.

TEBEILA: My business career in 1994 I can say has improved dramatically.

DE SAM LAZARO: Tim Tebeila is a natural salesman who quickly found success in the insurance business. By 1995 came more opportunities.

TEBEILA: I then established a company called Tebeila Building Construction. Now that was also in response to a new trend in government in terms of trying to empower the blacks.

DE SAM LAZARO: Tebeila is one of the most successful beneficiaries of new, sweeping policies to increase black participation in the economy: more ownership of shares in industry, affirmative action in hiring, and more government contracts. The problem, many experts say, is that such success stories are all too few. The new policies have many more people feeling hurt rather than helped. Coenie Kriel has spent four months scouring the Internet for a new job.

COENIE KRIEL: A lot of the adverts are stipulating AA. That stands for affirmative action, meaning that they prefer the AA candidate.

DE SAM LAZARO: The 45-year-old mechanical engineer was laid off from a mining company in February. Four years ago he left a previous job after being passed over for a promotion. In both cases, he says, affirmative-action considerations may have hurt him, even though he’s not entirely opposed to them.

KRIEL: You get in these phases up and down, and you feel why me? But then you realize that’s basically life, and between myself and my wife we believe that it’s the way of the Lord.

DE SAM LAZARO: And overall Kriel has reason to be optimistic and confident. Despite government programs, white South Africans are doing well. White unemployment is just five percent, and given the shortage of engineers, Kriel is confident he’ll soon land a job.

That confidence is hardly shared by blacks. Although living conditions have improved somewhat among black South Africans, black unemployment is officially 25 percent. In reality it’s likely much higher. Unlike their parents, young blacks like Nonthokozo Kubeka can visit shopping malls, but many can do little more than visit.

NONTHOKOZO KUBEKA: I think that the problem in South Africa is that we have the most brilliant policies, but they’re on paper.

DE SAM LAZARO: She got a government loan to attend college—the first in her family ever to do so. But the 24-year-old political science major hasn’t found a job 16 months after graduating.

KUBEKA: The situation is you are more likely to succeed if you know the right people, if you were in the struggle for some reason even. I’m too young to have been in the struggle.

DE SAM LAZARO: South Africans of all races complain about corruption, about high crime rates, about an education system in decline. Amid all this—amid political scandal surrounding the extramarital affairs of current president, Jacob Zuma, the ANC has continued to win elections, still trading, experts say, on its reputation as the party of Mandela. Archbishop Tutu says it will soon have to respond to growing discontent among voters. He’s urged the government to harness what he calls unprecedented national unity leading up to the World Cup.

TUTU: I haven’t seen so many people displaying our flag on their cars and every conceivable place. It’s just a fantastic thing, and we’re enormously grateful that it is there.

DE SAM LAZARO: Are you optimistic that it will reenergize South Africa? And if so, what gives you that optimism? You’ve expressed some reservations about the ability of this government to deliver the goods.

TUTU: I’ve always said I’m not an optimist. I’m a prisoner of hope, which is a different kettle of fish. Optimism is too light. Now to come to your question: I think that they do have amongst the cabinet people who are strategizers, people who are aware that there has been a kind of disillusionment among the people. I mean they’ve seen the protest demonstrations because people are upset at the slow delivery of services.

DE SAM LAZARO: Do you worry about the aftermath of Nelson Mandela’s passing?

TUTU: It’s going to be a horrendous moment in the life of our country. But human beings do have a capacity for adjusting. I mean we’re going to become a normal society, and we will not always be looking to Colossus to lead us.

DE SAM LAZARO: At the end of the day, Tutu said, he pins his hope for South Africa and for the world on what he calls humankind’s intrinsic goodness, the subject of a new book he coauthored with his Anglican priest daughter, Mpho Tutu. They argue human beings are hard-wired to do good.

TUTU: Fundamentally we are good, for you see a good person make us feel good, too. We felt good just watching a Chinese student standing in front of tanks. I mean knowing that he was not likely to succeed in stopping the carnage, but for a moment he did. He made those tanks swerve, and looking at that image our hearts leapt with an exhilaration. That said, yeah, that is how we should be. That is how I hope I would respond.

DE SAM LAZARO: You’ve written that evil will never have the last word.

TUTU: No. Sometimes it takes long.

DE SAM LAZARO: What is the terminal point where you say the last word is being uttered?

TUTU: For the ones who are suffering, it’s forever it seems, but happen it will. Just ask Hitler. Just ask Mussolini. Just ask Amin. Just ask the apartheid guys here. They used to strut around imagining they were totally invincible. You say, where are they today?

DE SAM LAZARO: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Cape Town, South Africa.

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.

Will historians mark this election as the passing of a generation of American leadership that preferred partisan politics to productive policies? Can the massive and euphoric following of a President Obama resist the temptation to lord it over those who didn’t see their light? Can the idealistic and visionary Obama avoid the missteps associated with the failure of that other new kind of president, the one from Georgia, to master quickly enough the labyrinth that is Washington politics? Will the flawless campaign inspire a flawless first 100 days? Will the voices heard in “the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston” continue to reach President Obama when he resides in the White House? These questions will be answered in short order, no doubt.

With a compelling popular and electoral college victory, Barack Obama can claim a clear mandate to address the economy, to restore the image of America abroad, to bring change and, perhaps much more importantly, to restore hope to a nation and a people desperately in need of it. Perhaps, just perhaps, on November 4, 2008, the nation itself somehow embodied the change we’ve heard so much about. After all, this is the same country where, less than 55 years ago, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King gave soulful voice to freedom long denied, where Emmett Till and James Reeb, so different from one another, were beaten to death for the sins of others, where Selma and Montgomery and Bull Connor and Watts each exposed the ugliness of our American experiment struggling to maintain some semblance of order while unraveling in its inner core. Do you remember the events of Grant Park just forty years ago? On election night 2008, the same park hosted a genuine “rainbow coalition” that elected the nation’s first black president. What does it all mean?

In early May 1955, as the Supreme Court carried on its hearings about how Brown v. Board of Education might be made effective, Reinhold Niebuhr noted Madison’s observation that “it was easier to guarantee liberty than equality by legal means.” In referring to Madison’s insight, Niebuhr drew attention to the fact that liberty and equality were not synonymous; one did not lead automatically to the other. One could have in one’s possession all human liberties as guaranteed by law, while not yet having achieved equality. To have equality, one had to depend upon both the mores of the community and one’s access to a fair share of economic resources, neither being easily addressed by law. Where the mores of the community assume inequality, and the economy is governed mostly by privately held interests, equality is indeed hard for some citizens to come by. That lesson has especially been driven home in recent months.

The problem of racial prejudice has always reached much deeper into cultural life than just the way it has affected the rights and liberties of individuals. The problem facing African Americans in 1955, at the beginning of the civil rights movement, was systemic, deeply woven into the cultural fabric of the nation. One might say, in fact, that racism provided the “tacking stitch” that prevented the various pieces of American culture from moving out of their place. Historically, for the vast majority of American history, it has run through the whole religious, social, economic, and political quilt of American life. For that reason, racism has never been merely a problem solely preventing liberty or rights.

The total eradication of racism and other forms of mainstream cultural hatred has always demanded more than the simple act of imprisoning offending parties or voting out legislators who have kept particular Americans from exercising their God-given rights. American culture itself has always been the culprit. Individuals have only embodied it. To right the wrong of racism and prevent the spread of hate crimes of any other sort, every aspect of American life must be transformed. Only then can genuine equality be achieved for all Americans, those defined by Obama’s victory speech as “young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled.” The election of the first black American president just might signal a significant tipping point in that process. So long, that is, that President Obama himself both remembers and heeds the biblical injunction: “From everyone to whom much is given, much will be required” (Luke 12:48).

– Mark G. Toulouse is professor of American religious history at Brite Divinity School and the author of GOD IN PUBLIC: FOUR WAYS AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY AND PUBLIC LIFE RELATE (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006). Beginning January 1, he will be principal and professor of the history of Christianity at Emmanuel College, Victoria University, in the University of Toronto.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a story today about two young men who grew up together best friends — one white, one black — and then took different religious paths. One became an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, the other a Muslim. Today they argue, of course, but as Betty Rollin reports, they’ve found their theological differences don’t matter nearly as much as friendship and laughter.

BETTY ROLLIN: A couple of old friends shooting baskets — and not shooting baskets — in downtown New York City. Charlie Buckholtz and Sedar Chappelle met when they were in grade school in Silver Spring, Maryland. Charlie was not only the new kid in school, but one of the few white kids. He was having a hard time until Sedar came along.

SEDAR CHAPPELLE (to Charlie): You’re a very lucky man.

CHARLIE BUCKHOLTZ: Everyone respected him. He was sort of like the mayor of the school. So the fact that he kind of took me under his wing made it so that I was okay with everyone.

SEDAR: I went to summer camp, and at this summer camp I was the only black boy in this group of strangers, and I was very badly treated. So when I came back to school after the summer camp and meeting Charlie, the first thing that I did, I said, “Okay, this is the chance for me to take care of him, because I know how it feels.”

ROLLIN: The friendship grew, and at Charlie’s bar mitzvah there was Sedar, along with his later to be famous comedian brother, David Chappelle. Sedar and Charlie’s friendship continued throughout high school.

CHARLIE: I think that from the day we met each of us has always had a very profound sense that we have something to learn from each other.

ROLLIN: Then the accident.

CHARLIE: I was in this horrible car accident, and I was, I think, unconscious for a day or two, and I woke up heavily sedated with tubes in my chest.

SEDAR: They did not know whether he would live or die, and so I dropped everything, and I rushed over to the hospital as fast as possible.

MARJORIE BUCKHOLTZ (Charlie’s Mother): He got there, and I grabbed him and David, too, and we were, you know, “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s get in there!” And we were stopped by this enormous battle-axe of a woman who said, “Where do you think they’re going?” And I said, “Well, they’re coming in to see Charlie.” And she said, “Oh, no, no, no. It’s family only.” And I said, “They’re my sons. And, I didn’t think about it, really, but she gave me such an incredulous look, and at which point David looked up and said, “Hey, don’t you watch ‘Different Strokes’ lady?” And she let them in.

SEDAR: It made me feel very warm and very welcomed. It gave me respect for Charlie and his family for the rest of my life.

ROLLIN: Neither Charlie nor Sedar were particularly religious growing up. Not until college did they begin their spiritual journeys.

SEDAR: I was going through this religious revival for Christianity. But the way that — but the racism that was at the Christian camp, it broke my heart completely, and so I was very confused at the church for a number of years. So when I went to college I started meeting Christians and Muslims and Jews, and I began to open my mind to other religions. Charlie was doing the same thing at the same time.

ROLLIN: Charlie’s journey led him to Israel, where he became an Orthodox rabbi.

CHARLIE (Praying in Hebrew): Adonai…

ROLLIN: Meanwhile, Sedar was exploring Islam. At first, there were new conflicts.

CHARLIE: When Sedar first started becoming involved in orthodox Islam there was definitely a feeling — he was very excited, he was a new convert, and he was definitely interested in converting me.

ROLLIN: Well, that could be very annoying.

CHARLIE: It was annoying. It was annoying. I mean, we were such old friends that we were sort of used to annoying each other and taking it in stride.

ROLLIN: There were other theological spats.

CHARLIE: There is a doctrine in his religion which he adheres to. The doctrine is that Islam is the kind of preferred religion. Other religions are acceptable. Other religions should be allowed to exist. But really Islam is the preferred religion.

ROLLIN: But don’t you feel that way about Judaism?

CHARLIE: No, that’s not a position that Judaism takes.

ROLLIN: Sedar also differs with Charlie about the question of the afterlife.

SEDAR: In his worldview, in his values, this world and this life is much more important to him than death or the life after death.

ROLLIN: And is that what’s important to you?

SEDAR: Well, for me, this life is temporary and temporal, and the life after death is eternal.

ROLLIN: Their theological differences, far from separating them, have just given them that much more to talk about.

CHARLIE (talking with Sedar at restaurant): There are still strong voices and strong strains. It seems that like that people are doing very, you know, bad sort of militant actions. Would you disagree with that?

SEDAR: Yeah, I would disagree with that.

CHARLIE: Really?

SEDAR: Yeah, I would disagree with that.

CHARLIE: Really?

SEDAR: To me I think it’s a very small percentage of people. Most Muslims, all they care about is family values.

ROLLIN: The most important part of the friendship, they say, is the wisdom shared from each religion.

CHARLIE: When I’m going through a hard time, it’s not always easy for me to find the wisdom in my own tradition that helps me to get through what I’m going through. But if I talk to Sedar about it and, you know, he’s had a similar struggle or a similar issue, and he looks into it, and he has more clarity than I do about it because I’m suffering at that moment, so he can find something within his own tradition, some piece of wisdom, and give that to me, and it’s really a gift.

ROLLIN: Both friends have had brushes with extremists. Sedar at one point befriended John Walker Lindh before his capture in Afghanistan. And Charlie was close to a Jewish settler on the West Bank.

CHARLIE: One of the guys that I knew that I studied with for a while, and was a very, very sweet person, ended up getting involved in basically a Jewish terror cell and attempting and thank God failing to do a really horrific act. I came to understand that it’s really just a function of isolation. When you isolate yourself from other — from a diversity of people and a diversity of views, then you can just kind of build your own system, and everything is internally confirming, and everything makes sense to you, and it’s just a closed system, and those closed systems can be very dangerous.

CHARLIE (talking to Sedar at restaurant): Well, what do you think would be like a good step towards resolving that?

SEDAR: I definitely think more of this — more dialogue between you and me and Christians and Jews and Muslims and Zulus. More dialogue.

CHARLIE: You really, you feel strong about the Zulus, that they should be involved in this?

SEDAR (Laughs).

CHARLIE: You always mention the Zulus.

SEDAR: Hey man, you know what? This is why I love you, man. This is why I love you.

CHARLIE: This is why I love you.

ROLLIN: For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Betty Rollin in New York.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Next Friday, April 4, is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the age of 39. He was in Memphis helping sanitation workers who were on strike trying to get recognition for their union. If Dr. King were alive today, would he be campaigning for economic justice, or might he be a social conservative opposing abortion, or both? Kim Lawton has our report on the very different ways African-American ministers are trying to carry on the King legacy.

KIM LAWTON: They call him “The Rev.” He’s Reverend Lennox Yearwood, social activist and community organizer. On this day, Yearwood is in New Orleans meeting with young survivors of Hurricane Katrina and talking about how they can be a force in revitalizing their city nearly three years after the storm. At 38, Yearwood wasn’t even born when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. But he says he’s deeply influenced by King’s dream of a better future for America, and Yearwood believes his mission is to carry that dream forward.

Rev. LENNOX YEARWOOD (Hip-Hop Caucus): Our generation at the 40th anniversary, being more years away than he actually lived — it’s something that is a calling for us as we are now the “dream generation” in the 21st century.

Bishop HARRY JACKSON (Senior Pastor, Hope Christian Church, Beltsville, MD, preaching): Lift your hands, and let’s pray for America. Lord God, we ask you to move in our land.

Rev. Lennox Yearwood

LAWTON: Bishop Harry Jackson is also a social activist as well as senior pastor at Hope Christian Church, a megachurch in Beltsville, Maryland. Jackson’s involved in several political causes, among them fighting against abortion and gay marriage. He, too, says King’s ministry has shaped his own.

Bishop JACKSON: King in his public persona, in his civil rights ministry, if you would, in what some would call his prophetic role to the culture, epitomized a Christian answer to civic involvement.

LAWTON: It’s been 40 years since King was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. But African-American ministers across the spectrum continue to invoke his legacy as they work in sometimes vastly different ways to change the world around them.

Professor CHERYL SANDERS (Howard University Divinity School, Washington, D.C): The prophetic mantle of King did not fall on one person. It fell on a community. I think it’s important to keep that legacy alive, not just looking for one person to be the reincarnation of King. Martin Luther King really set the standard for prophetic ministry in these United States.

LAWTON: For Lennox Yearwood that means taking his convictions to the streets, organizing communities and sometimes engaging in protests and other acts of civil disobedience. The nondenominational pastor has been especially active fighting for justice for New Orleans residents in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Rev. YEARWOOD: We’re still dealing with racism. We’re still dealing with poverty — people not looking for just jobs but good quality jobs.

LAWTON: Yearwood has frequently criticized U.S. use of torture in the war against terror, and he’s an outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq.

Rev. YEARWOOD: We’re still spending more money on our military than we are on programs for social uplift, and Dr. King said it best, that if we’re still spending more money on our military than on our programs, then our country is headed toward a spiritual death, and we are.

LAWTON: These battles, Yearwood says, are similar to the battles King was fighting at the end of his life.

Rev. YEARWOOD: I believe that New Orleans is our Birmingham, and I do believe that Iraq is our Vietnam, and I think that New Orleans and this war in Iraq is our lunch counter moment for the 21st century.

LAWTON: As president of a group called the Hip-Hop Caucus, Yearwood focuses on getting young people involved in advocacy. There was this hip-hop concert, cosponsored by Amnesty International, to raise awareness about people displaced both by Katrina and by the war in Iraq.

HIP HOP PERFORMERS (on stage): Homicide, genocide, suicide. Holler, holler! When’s it gonna stop?

LAWTON: Yearwood often points out that King accomplished everything he did before the age of 40.

Rev. YEARWOOD: For me it was inspiring, because your voice can have a huge impact. The passion and the energy you have, particularly using the Gospel for change, was amazing, and he used that in a very appropriate and a very strategic way.

LAWTON: Bishop Harry Jackson tries to create social change through public platforms, from his pulpit to a broader stage. He’s co-author of a new book called “Personal Faith, Public Policy,” which examines what he calls the most urgent issues of the day, including poverty and racial reconciliation as well as abortion, religious liberty, and the family. He has a daily radio commentary heard across the nation and leads a Christian grassroots group called the High Impact Leadership Coalition.

Bishop JACKSON: I often say that the white-led church in America has been oriented toward righteousness or what I’ll call personal holiness, such as they’re against gambling, same-sex marriage. They’re against things like abortions, etc. But the black-led church, coming from King’s background or his legacy, often has been tremendously mobilized around the issue of social justice, and so what we’re saying is that these two things are being married together — righteousness and justice.

LAWTON: In his efforts, Jackson often partners with conservative white and Latino evangelicals.

Bishop JACKSON: Blacks are only 13 percent of the population at this particular point. But if blacks and Hispanics are working together, and people of faith from the evangelical community, you now have a huge, huge voting bloc.

LAWTON: Jackson says King showed that the most successful social movements have a strong spiritual base.

Bishop JACKSON: I believe that spirituality was at the heart of who King was, and for me that legacy is really, really critical.

LAWTON: As time passes, there is more and more debate about how King’s legacy might look today.

Rev. YEARWOOD (speaking to audience): Dr. King was 26, and, you know, he died when he was 39. He would’ve been hip-hop.

Bishop Harry Jackson

Bishop JACKSON: The foundation of King’s work really was biblical, and there’s been a great affinity with social conservatives with the Bible, values, etc. So I believe King would be a social conservative, but I’m not so sure that he’d let himself be owned by any party.

Prof. SANDERS: You can easily say, “Well, Dr. King would’ve done this” or “What would Dr. King have said?” and “Dr. King would’ve supported this.” So it’s almost, it’s almost like you sort of make up, it’s sort of like, “What would Jesus do? Well, Jesus would’ve done this and Jesus would’ve done that,” without really looking at what did Jesus actually do?

LAWTON: Yearwood fears that King’s more radical comments and activities are being domesticated.

Rev. YEARWOOD: I think, most importantly, I think that what people are getting now is a very much lukewarm edition of Dr. King, this “I Have a Dream” only, and that’s it.

Bishop JACKSON: I don’t share that concern, because at the root of it the radical side of him was the Christ-like side.

LAWTON: If anything, Jackson says, it’s the religious side of King that is being downplayed today.

Bishop JACKSON: I think our lack now in terms of black leadership, especially in our generation, is that we don’t have people as committed to a Christ-like stance, and therefore the power of their words has no conviction.

LAWTON: Professor Sanders worries that King’s legacy is all too often misappropriated by those trying to further their own agendas.

Prof. SANDERS: People who have all kinds of different political views can find something in his legacy that they can honor — if nothing else, the dream. The dream, the vision, is great and important. But the vision is grounded in an analysis of the reality, and that reality is still with us. It’s not 40 years, there’s been a lot of progress. But some things are the same.

Bishop JACKSON: Blacks still are sentenced to heavier time in prison, if they go there, than whites, that there is a problem of racial profiling, many other issues along that nature, along that line, that need to be dealt with, and those are some of the things that we’ve got to address. So King began a good work, but it hasn’t been fully manifest.

LAWTON: Still, these ministers say they are committed to seeing it through.

Rev. YEARWOOD: The dream did not die on the balcony, and while the dreamer was killed, the dream did not die.

LAWTON: Fulfilling that dream, they say, will still take hard work on every front.

I’m Kim Lawton 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.