Coming up next on American Black Journal, our series on the Black Church in Detroit, examines the impact of COVID-19 on ministers and on their congregations.

We're gonna hear the stories of loss and grief caused by the pandemic and talk about vaccine hesitancy in the African-American community.

Plus a look at the black churches role in alleviating this public health crisis.

Don't go away, American Black Journal starts right now.

WOMAN: From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

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MAN: Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

WOMAN: The DTE Foundation proudly supports 50 years of American Black Journal in covering African-American history, culture and politics.

The DTE Foundation and American Black Journal partners in presenting African-American perspectives about our communities and in our world.

MAN: Also brought to you by AAA, Nissan Foundation, Impact at Home, UAW Solidarity Forever, and viewers like you, thank you.

(soft music) Welcome to American Black Journal.

I'm your host, Stephen Henderson, and as always, I'm really glad you've decided to join us.

Today we're continuing our series on the Black Church in Detroit, which is produced in partnership with the ecumenical theological seminary and with the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

Today, we're looking at the impact of COVID-19 on the black church and the role of faith leaders during the pandemic.

The coronavirus has really devastated communities of color with a disproportionate number of black and brown people dying from this horrible disease.

In addition to comforting their parishioners, many faith leaders have also had to face their own personal grief and loss.

Producer Marcus Green has the story.

Faith is the thing.

I always reflect on like what the Apostle Paul talks about this weight of glory that is like on the inside.

Like, I feel like that has been the thing which is really faith.

The faith that we have in terms of greater is he that's in us.

That has been the thing that really has allowed me to put one foot in front of the other ever since April 9th, which was the day my mom passed away.

I preached the funeral for the daughter of one of my neighbors at a local church.

The funeral her was packed.

And at that time we were told by the White House that and other authorities, wash your hands, don't touch your face and that was it.

Somewhere along that line, I caught COVID and I wasn't quite sure what it was, but what happened was my wife who was caring for me she also caught it and on April 9th of last year, she died from it.

My daughter and I were not able to attend my wife's funeral.

So when my wife was taken by ambulance to sign at Griffin hospital, I never saw her again.

She left the house, I was sick.

I crawled to the window to see the ambulance taking her away, and I never saw her again, never talked to her again.

You know, when you minister to other people when they go through challenges, when they've lost family members.

Well, this time around it was, I was that person in that seat.

And so I still am but even during those times, those months after my mom passed, there was still a congregation, that we had to minister to and yet we were still grieving.

When you preach faith for 40 years, and you encourage families who have lost loved ones, you encourage families through tragedy.

You encourage families through their difficulties in the black church, the gospel and the good news and the comfort of the word of God and the comfort of the Holy Spirit.

You use that as a pastor, as a shepherd.

When it hits you like it hit me last year, it really pushes a reset button that will determine the fact that my life will never be the same.

What I went through with my wife probably went through and the days that I couldn't move, the days I couldn't eat, the days that I was totally helpless, you know.

When I think about this, I get kind of emotional, because I think about what we have gone through.

I cannot describe the hate this as a Christian to call it a nightmare, but a year removed from all of that.

Now I am revisiting all of that.

There're still so many people who suffered from COVID major losses.

I know especially in the black church, there were many leaders that we lost.

There were many black families who lost family members in the church.

I'm preaching the gospel.

I'm president of a seminary training, and this hits me and my family, why me?

And the Lord allows us to ask those questions.

But He'll also answer those questions too.

Is it because of your mind?

And I'm trying to say something to the world, through people like you, that I'm a God who even when a tragedy hits your life, I'm doing it for your good, so that you might lift up my name and let the world know about a faith that looks on the bright side.

I'm sad and I'm not blaming God because she belonged to him and she's where she wants to be.

And he left me here because he has a purpose for me.

And so through all of this, all of this pain and agony and so on and so forth, my faith is greater than it has ever been.

But that also comes out of the crucible of suffering that is traditional in the black church.

And so we have the light of the world with a salt of the earth.

And so this pandemic gives an opportunity too for the Lord to showcase his grace and his mercy and his power of love and a very, very, very dark time.

The stories of loss and lonely goodbyes as a result of COVID-19 are the focus of a television and radio vaccine campaign from the Michigan department of health and human services.

Three Detroit area pastors are featured in the spots and they share their personal experiences with grief and offering reasons to get vaccinated against the virus.

Here's a look at one of the television spots followed by my conversation with two of the pastors, Reverend Charles Williams II, and Dr. John E. Duckworth.

Some of the reasons why persons are hesitant, they don't know what's the long-term effects of the vaccine.

They don't trust it.

Given the history of Tuskegee experiment.

I also was hesitant.

Then I began to do the research behind the vaccine.

Do your homework.

stay off social media and talk to your family members that are ready got the shot.

We need to do this.

We need to get vaccinated.

There's no invincibility to COVID-19.

If it hits you and it hits you wrong, you're gone.

I wanna to start with the way that I have been greeting everybody right now and that's just with the simple question, how are you doing?

How are you managing through all of this?

And I know that for both of you, that's not just a personal question.

It's also about your churches, but I really would love for you to start with the personal and then get to how things are going in your churches.

So Reverend Williams, I'm gonna start with you.

Yeah, I think the pandemic has taken quite a toll on us, in terms of our mental capacity and then even just thinking about the work that we do.

I have walked families down the aisle at funeral homes where they were facing two caskets.

I have now began to have to code through the messages of what happened and here there are individuals that are still dying because of COVID-19, but they have not vaccinated.

You know, I spend a lot of time as a pastor talking to the congregation via a little red dot on the camera versus getting the opportunity to hear that called on response that is so significant and so crucial to the aesthetic of the black church.

Dr. Duckworth, tell us how you're doing and how things are going in your church.

I have learned to embrace this situation and try to find out what lessons does the Lord want me to learn personally from this.

I have a set of 10 and a half, almost 11 year old triplets and so when this thing shut down, my home, my wife and I instantly became principals.

And we opened up Duckworth academy.

For the whole year we had our children and we kept them here in the house.

They gone back into the building now only because they're going to middle school next year.

So that was an adjustment.

And then there was just a personal adjustment of how to navigate everything and try and keep things calm for them.

But also I've seen some red lines.

It gave me an opportunity to spend quality time with my family than I often did not get a chance to do because I was all so much out with everyone else and helping their family.

So it gave me a perspective of taking care of home first, then going outward.

Following that the church it has been as pastor Williams have said, it's been challenging to have loved ones those youth pastored for years, and for them to lose loved ones during this pandemic, to this virus and not be able to be there as we normally would.

Sometimes I couldn't go to the hospital.

Sometimes I could even go to the funerals because the individuals may have passed from the virus, and so I had to do some funerals from a cell phone.

I had to do some funerals through the eulogies via Zoom and some grave site.

So it has definitely stretched my ministry as relates to things that I had never thought I would have to do, but it has also opened up new challenges in ministry going forward.

So I've tried to look at the positives and find the lessons in the midst of this pandemic.

Yeah, I also wonder whether either of you who've been in this space for a long time, I've ever experienced anything quite like it in terms of the impact on your congregation.

No, absolutely not.

There has never been a time like the time that we're experiencing in the midst of this pandemic of COVID-19.

I mean the greatest generation had world wars to deal with.

The baby boomer generation had Vietnam to deal with.

Our generation gen X millennials, we're dealing with a pandemic.

On top of maybe some of the racial upheaval around some of the civil rights issues of today.

On top of going through four years of a president that unsettled many people not just in the country, but across the world.

And so the time that we're in right now, where we're seeing ecological challenges that we've never seen before, where New York is flooding and Detroit is flooding and water and drainage supervisors and elected officials are saying, "The system was never built to handle these types of things."

I mean, the time that we're in right now, which is, I'm glad, it's a very timely question is unlike anything that we have ever, I have ever experienced in my lifetime.

I'm glad I was born in 1980 and some may say that that's a pretty short timeframe, but quite honestly, in the last 40 years this is nothing like I would have ever thought.

Look, I grew up in a church where we had revivals and we went to church every Sunday and we had five day revivals.

When I was going to church a week.

When I was coming up we had five day revivals, started on Monday end on Friday, or started on Sunday night and ended on Friday.

That's the experience that I grew up in the black church.

I mean, now we have one minute, excuse me, one hour and 20 minute worship services, and they're broadcast on Zoom and everybody's televangelism and it's something like I've never known or ever thought it would ever be before.

Dr. Duckworth, talk about how this compares to anything else you've experienced.

I've been in ministry for almost 40 years and 39 years coming up on 39 years in January and I have never experienced anything of this nature.

Been pastoring 19 years have never experienced anything of this nature within the church and as pastor William says, eloquently said a lot of things that just blows our mind.

But like I said, I'm learning to embrace it.

And perhaps there were some things that as a church we needed to get rid of and we were hoarders, and sometimes you have to just throw stuff out and not push it to the side for later.

And I think that I do feel that as he mentioned, all of us have come tied evangelists whether we want to or not.

But then there's been the reach of various persons across the country.

We have people tuning in and our worship services from London and places of that nature.

So I never would have even thought about reaching out in that capacity because I'm more concerned about home than I am abroad because I believe charity starts at home and then goes abroad and so often in the missionary, if you will world, people wanna save the world, but don't wanna do anything in the hood.

And so I've taken the opposite perspective of taking care of home first and then going outward.

So yes, this has been a very challenging time and the time I have never seen before in ministry, but the church always is able to adapt because my model is when you are a peer church, you adjust.

So you both are involved in this PSA campaign to convince more people in our community to get vaccinated.

And because, I host a radio show in the mornings and a television show once a week.

I am hearing a lot from people in our community about how they feel about vaccination.

So I know what you're up against.

Every day on the radio show, somebody calls and says, here's my reason why I'm just not gonna do this.

And too often, it's somebody who's African-American.

So I want both of you to talk about why it's important to be doing what you're doing in terms of this messaging, but also talk about the specific challenges you're seeing and feeling with regard to getting people to do this, which is really the only way to save us from this disease.

So Dr. Duckworth, I'll start with you this time.

Well, I will say it is very challenging and it hurts because I have loved ones.

I have family members who are not vaccinated, and I try to find out what's the reason why, and I try to share with them, you cannot let Wikipedia be the reason why you're not vaccinating.

You can not go off of something someone said, and I just try to drive home the point that if you get sick and you end up with the virus, are you gonna turn to the people on the internet who told you not to get the vaccine?

Are you gonna turn to the medical field who you said you don't trust?

And so this is a matter of life and death, because if we're not vaccinated, if we don't protect ourselves, then we won't have to worry about a chip developing from the vaccine and tracking.

And that's probably one of the most insane things I've heard from persons who don't wanna be tracked, but then won't put down their cell phone.

I have nothing else to say so, but I will continue to try and encourage people, our people in particular, because again, charity begins at home, the importance of getting vaccinated.

I was proud to be a part of the PSA, and I'm still beating the drum, trying to convince people I just met.

I had a conversation with my cousin this morning who lost a boyfriend to the virus.

He was not vaccinated.

She is vaccinated.

Her ex-husband had a situation where he got the virus last year and he's dealing with kidney failure and things of that nature in relation to having the virus.

And so we're trying to reach our families, we're trying to meet our loved ones, to tell them the importance of being vaccinated.

And I've even people have come with the church angle and I'm like, listen, if you can trust God during this time with the was no vaccine, trust God with the vaccine.

Yeah, yeah.

Reverend Williams, I think most people who know you know of your deep commitment to civil rights, all of the work that you've done over a long period of time in that space.

And it strikes me that there is a civil rights dimension to this question.

Many of the things that have played out in terms of the inequality that African-Americans have experienced in this country since its founding are playing into the suspicion and the hesitancy that African-Americans have about this vaccine.

That's right Steven, and I've said it over and over again and we'll repeat it that there's no reason that I should not take the experiences of African-American serious, who may feel hesitancy because of the fact that this country does have a very checkered past on how it is treated blacks in America.

That's legitimate.

What I don't want to happen though, is for us to utilize that past and not appreciate what's happening in the present.

And the reality is that Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, who is an African-American virologist, who is a chemist, who is a scientist who is now at Harvard University, she was at the National Institute of Health.

She laid out the plan on how to actually deal with this vaccine and she's a sister who happens to go to Friendship Baptist Church, who happens to be a member of the Pastor Frederick Haynes church, who also in his own right is a civil rights activist, as well as a pastor.

You know, that means a lot to me.

That means a lot to me as a black man, means a lot to me as someone who's engaged in the civil rights movement or the civil rights movement work.

I think what strikes me about where we are and what needs to happen most when I think about why there is so much skepticism, is that folks just need to hear plain speak.

One of the things that folks have stopped me in the streets and have said the most is, Reverend, thank you for just breaking it down.

Thank you for just saying it as it is.

Thank you for just saying, if it hits you and it hit you wrong, you're gone, because some people just don't get it.

And some people don't really understand that.

You may be able to roll the dice.

I told my congregation on Sunday, you may be able to roll the dice and it might roll in your favor this time, but there's no guarantee that you will make it out of getting exposed to COVID-19.

But what we do know is that if you have the vaccine and you get COVID-19 that you'll catch a flu or you'll catch a cold, or there'll be a little tussle, but you'll make it out.

And that's what the numbers say.

But I think that folks need to be just alerted to that.

They need to be comforted in that, but they don't need their experiences dismissed at the same time, because yeah, we don't know what's in the vaccine, but we got to remind people just like you don't know what's in the vaccine, you don't know what's in the Faygo Redpop either.

I mean, we're stepping in the same direction here, but at the end of the day, we wanna make sure that you're safe.

We wanna make sure that we protect our community.

Now, the civil rights dimension of this or the economic equality dimension of this, president Biden just came out just a couple of days ago and said, everybody who's working, you're gonna take the vaccine.

That's gonna happen.

OSHA is gonna draft up the rules and those mandates will go out and investigators will start going to shops where there are more than 100 people working and they're gonna make sure that people are vaccinated.

That's going to happen.

So now what happens to all of those who William Julius Wilson calls the underclass.

What happens to all of those who are underserved?

What happens to all of those who are mired in urban poverty and they're African-American?

Where are we gonna just create a tuberculosis sanitariums all over again instead and we'll call them COVID-19 Sanitariums where you don't get a chance to go to the hospital.

You just go to a place where they basically let COVID people to die.

That's what I don't wanna see.

That's what I'm concerned.

That's what keeps me up at night.

What keeps me up at night is people dying unnecessarily and they don't have to die.

What keeps me up at night is the divide that this country is really going to experience when this country becomes vaccinated in a way where that car will really mean something as it is starting to do now.

I mean, they're starting to say, if you don't have a base, you can go to a baseball game or you can't go to a basketball game, or you can't go to a football game, or you can't go forbid when pastors start saying, you got to bring you a vaccination card.

There is gonna be another wedge that's driven into this country where the haves and the have nots and the intelligent, and maybe not the unintelligent or whatever you may wanna say will not have the opportunity to enjoy this society in full.

That's gonna do it for a monthly report on The Black Church in Detroit.

Thanks for watching.

You can find out more about our guests in americanblackjournal.org, and you can always follow us on Facebook and on Twitter.

We'll see you next time.

WOMAN: From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco serving Michigan communities since 1929.

MAN: Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

WOMAN: The DTE Foundation proudly supports 50 years of American Black Journal in covering African-American history, culture and politics.

The DTE Foundation and American Black Journal partners in presenting African-American perspectives about our communities and in our world.

MAN: Also brought to you by AAA, Nissan Foundation, Impact at Home, UAW Solidarity Forever, and viewers like you, thank you.