I was only a toddler when Martin Luther King gave his “I Have Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial. I wasn’t even born when the Montgomery Bus Boycott catapulted him to the forefront of the Civil Rights movement. But when I see the grainy black-and-white newsreels of King, especially when he’s speaking from the pulpit of a black Baptist church, I am instantly transported to a place that seems far away yet, judging from how deeply his words and cadence move me, is still very close to my heart.
On the occasion of the Martin Luther King holiday, as our nation pauses to consider the indelible mark Dr. King made on our history, I’ve been remembering the First Baptist Church on Cordell Street.
You see, I grew up in a typical Southern town. The year I entered first grade was our school district’s first year of busing and integrated classrooms. But every other aspect of life was strictly segregated, none more so than churches. My family attended the First Baptist Church on Main Street, right at the major crossroads downtown. But, as in many other Southern towns, there was another First Baptist Church – the one for the black folks. Their church was located on Cordell Street, far off any path my family or any other white residents ever traveled.
Our pastor at First Baptist on Main Street, however, had the courage to venture across that racial divide. He was an outspoken advocate of Civil Rights, which frequently put him at odds with the major lights of the community who attended our prestigious church. For 21 years, he labored faithfully in our racially segregated community, never shying away from opportunities to challenge our cultural apartheid with the truth of the gospel. Early in his tenure, he reached out to the pastor of First Baptist on Cordell Street and arranged an annual joint revival. Every August, our two churches shared a revival preacher and met every night for a week, alternating between churches. The choice of preachers to lead the revivals also alternated between Southern Baptist (the white denomination) and National Baptist (the black denomination).
I vividly remember the crowded congregations at “First Cordell,” as we came to call it. Their handsome brick building was was not air-conditioned, so funeral home fans were passed out along with worship bulletins. The sanctuary lamps were dim, but behind the baptismal pool, a large mural of the Jordan River was bathed in light. I remember how different the Hammond B3 sounded from the stately pipe organ my father played at our church. For these revivals, our choirs combined. When the reserved middle-class men and women from our church joined their voices with the jubilant gospels singers of First Cordell, they looked awkward and uncomfortable and could hardly be heard over the members of their host choir. I marveled at the call-and-response sermons, especially in those years when the revival preacher was black. The preacher started softly. Little by little, responses of “that’s right,” “well?” and “mm-hm,” became more frequent. As the preacher warmed to his theme, he was encouraged by his congregation. “Preach it!” “Come on, now!” “Tell the story!” I distinctly remember one elderly gentleman sitting in the back row who, upon hearing a word that spoke to his heart, threw back is head and loudly exclaimed, “Yes, Lord!” This elder’s affirmation invariably touched off a chorus of “amens” and smattered applause. Carried along by the energy of the congregation, the sermon swelled to a crescendo and swept worshipers into a frenzy. By the time the preacher had finished his message, the white folks weren’t quite sure what had happened, but were as thrilled as they were confounded.
I also remember feeling profoundly sad when the services were held in our comfortable, climate-controlled sanctuary on Main Street. Our usual reserved nature seemed cold rather than civilized. The singing felt half-hearted. The Cordell Street members who joined us only nodded their heads and muttered quietly in response to the sermon. They evidently did not feel permission to be themselves. This seemed strange to me, because we sang the same hymns and believed the same gospel. Of course, I didn’t understand then any of the history that had informed the black church experience. I knew nothing of the secret midnight worship services on Southern plantations where slaves had engaged in spiritual catharsis. I was only beginning to learn of how the black church was the source of strength for this oppressed community, and how its worship style had always expressed an unbridled hope for freedom and justice in the midst of great suffering.
But black Southern preachers, including Martin Luther King, in many ways sounded like the white Southern preachers I grew up hearing. Our “call-and-response” was limited to occasional “amens,” but we appreciated sermons that appealed to the heart as well as the mind. We enjoyed being moved to tears by soaring choir anthems. In our segregated communities, neither blacks nor whites knew it, but our common Southern experience yielded similar spiritual impulses. This wasn’t as obvious in church as it was in our music. The blues and jazz that emerged from the black community gave birth to the country and rock music popular among Southern whites. The Sacred Harp collection and black gospel sprang of the same spiritual soil.
So when I hear Dr. King’s speeches, I don’t just hear the soaring words of an American hero or a famous voice from a subculture of America. I hear the voice of a Baptist preacher from the South. I hear the same phrasing, vocabulary and style that often emanated from the pulpit at First Baptist Main Street. King read and quoted the same theologians and biblical scholars that inspired my pastor. In King’s sermons I hear a fellow Southerner who gave expression to the deepest longings and the highest aspirations of people from my native region who claimed the same gospel that saved me. His prophetic preaching floods my mind with images from my childhood. I see the people of First Baptist Cordell Street. I also see the faces of schoolmates with whom I became fast friends, but with whom I was not allowed to play anywhere except on the school playground. I see both sides of the railroad tracks in my hometown – the crumbling streets and simple houses (including many shacks) on one side, the beautiful lawns and attractive homes on the other. The deep wound of racism scarred all of us. It trapped my black brothers and sisters in poverty, but it diminished the humanity of all of us. Everything about life in the South is tinged with the bloody, shameful history of slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation. On one level, our lives were so utterly separated that we had two First Baptist Churches in the same town. But at a deeper level, the visceral, emotive nature of Southern religion reached down below the terrain and bound us together.
It would be wrong to claim that Martin Luther King liberated African-Americans – and King would be the first to say so. He lived the gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, he gave his life for it. The Civil Rights movement was essentially a religious revival carried along by nightly prayer meetings all across the South. The gospel that inspired this movement liberates everyone who responds to it. It liberated me. I believe this is why I am so moved when I hear King today. I hear the gospel being spoken powerfully out of the social, religious, and historical context that gave birth to my spiritual consciousness.
Barely a decade after King’s assassination, the Southern Baptist Convention became the target of a fundamentalist takeover designed to purge its seminaries and (insofar as it was possible) its pulpits of what was branded as “liberalism.” The new fundamentalists rallied around the doctrine of “inerrancy,” the belief that the Bible was completely free of error (not just in matters of faith, but also in science, history, and other areas it does not claim to address). The galvanizing issue of the fundamentalist takeover was women’s ordination, which fundamentalists opposed on the very same scriptural grounds that earlier generations had supported slavery. The so-called “moderates” of the denomination were simply too Christian to mount an effective counter-offensive, and were eventually either exiled or forced into silence. What used to be an eclectic denomination – a big tent of Southern religion –morphed into a bastion of ultra right-wing ideology.
I was one of many young ministers who believed passionately that the Holy Spirit called women into pastoral ministry as well as men. I belonged to a generation of Southern Baptists who took the whole Bible seriously and came to the conclusion that, as King said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” not just for some people, but for all people. Ironically, the Southern Baptist commitment to the authority of scripture led many of us to embrace a theology that made us pariahs in our own denomination.
I know longer feel like an exile. I am very much at home where I serve. But once in a while, I feel the sting of loss. Dr. King’s sermons nearly always move me to tears because they remind me of the spirituality that cradled my earliest faith and even now, years after leaving the South and its religion, still stirs the deepest recesses of my soul. “Yes, Lord!”
Copyright 2012 by J. Mark Lawson
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