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Show DAILY Sunday, May 25, 2008 HERALD All MnON&WORLD 2mtyflcral& 'Do you even know why you feel Ms way about me? Shelia Byrd THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ful place and such a completely heartfeft place." In the year since he's been pastor, Cribbs has stretched the congregation on topics of 4kt 'I social justice and race relations. That's something choir member Holly Ann Burns hoped for when she voted for Cribbs and it's a perspective she feels will help her understand a hurtful story from her own past. As a child, Burns' church youth group from the Cincin4 nati suburbs visited a youth church group from an in the inner-city- . "I was all open and excited and the first thing out of this one girl's mouth was, 'Don't feel like you're doing us a favor by coming down here and visiting us and acting like you care,"' said Burns. "That put a stop to that conversatioa" Burns, 56, still thinks of the experience. "You're getting judged by what you look like," she said. "It really kicked me m the gut. I was really trying to make an effort to understand." Cribbs doesn't shy from stories like Burns' and sometimes v I. brings up his childhood spent in a housing development in Rogello V. SoilsAssociated Press Watts. San Marino's Bible ABOVE: New Hope Baptist Church Deacon Jesse McGee, study group is now called Soul Food, Cribbs wears an African foreground, and his wife Warine, second from foreground, attend services, Sunday. LEFT: New Hope Baptist Church jacket instead of vestments and Deacon Jesse McGee believes his Bible class studies have the choir dances in the aisles. And the congregation? It's helped him handle the subject of interracial marriages. grown by nine. - Jesse McGee points to tro- phic he won in local mara- thons. He mentions his work with youth and volunteer school programs. He praises his church's efforts to deliver scripture lessons to inmates. For more than an hour, the church deacon, who is black, chats about his life, largely ignoring the subject at hand: racism. It isnt until his wife, Warine, sheepishly shares that their son's wife is white that McGee offers a confession: He had been uncomfortable with the ununion for nearly 30 years til his Bible study class offered .A" i r s .enlightenment. His story represents a snapshot of how America's racial landscape is navigated daily, often with religion as guidance. The issue of race drew sharp focus as Barack Obama's contentious split with his longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, played out in a national glare. In response, the United Church of Christ and National Council of Churches USA called on 10,000 ministers to initiate a "sacred conversation on race." "The realities of race have not been addressed adequate'. ly," says the Rev. John Thomas, president of the UCC. "Racism continues to demean and diminish human lives in this country." To listen in on that conversation, Associated Press reporters across the nation engaged L pastors and parishioners about their individual experiences with racism. They talked with a choir soprano whose faith fueled her defiance of racist laws, and with members of an 1970. From the beginning, Mccongregation that took the of move Gee was beset with unease. a black hiring risky "I had to work on that one. I pastor. They interviewed rninisters who act as a conduit was raised here, and that was I know what would between the alienated and those a no-nwho would judge them. happen to you here if you just looked at (a white woman)," They found personal stories, like McGee's, where religion McGee said. "I've gotten past can soothe a painfully sensitive that now. When we started dialogue and help summon mustudying about 'one blood' that was a big help." tual respect. The conversation, which At New Hope Baptist Church, Bible study classes grew loud and rancorous around the Wright episode, have been reading about the started long before and conconcept that all God's people tinues afterward, but in softer are connected. In small groups, tones that show the faithful hovering over Bibles, members were taught that mankind is want to be constructive, want descended from Adam and Eve to make progress, want their and that blood shed by Jesus voices heard. Listen. Christ is a means to salvation for everyone of every race. The spiritual revelation has The picture on the fireplace not, however, erased the root of McGee's concera mantel at McGee's home in "In the South, the white man Jackson, Miss., shows a young man whose cream-coloreskin and white woman have always hints at his mixed-rac- e heritage. had more freedom than the black man and the black womIt is far more than the likeness of a grandson the an," he said. of fspring of the union between Jean Brooks understands her McGee's black son and white feelings. "He's a For this grand- wonderful, remarkable human daughter-in-lafather, the picture also is a being. If you think of his life reflection of a black man's spiri- experiences: ... he's been to war tual journey through the painful in World War II as an past of a Jim Crow society to "He's had his share as a acceptance and love that ended with race. I think at a church altar. their concern about my race It was 1972 when McGee's son, James Brooks, told him he had done something that was unfathomable in the older man's mind. Brooks had married a fellow graduate student at the University of Michigan a native New Yorker, and she was white. The young couple moved to f f Mississippi that year to teach at what is now Jackson State University. The campus had been the site of racial violence that left two black men dead in '' f . o. , d father-in-law- 's African-America- . i .v.- to sitting at the table to hear a different narrative," Salguero - was mostly concern about their son. They didn't want their son to get injured by being seen with me," she says. said. "Listen." "Escucha." Salguero, who has relatives on the police force, negotiates the minefields of racial injustice and reconciliation with thoughtful diligence rooted in experience. He, too, has been stopped for "driving while brown." Members of his Lamb's Manhattan Church of the Nazarene climb three flights of stairs in a building that once housed a library to hear the bilingual bers and was losing some of its most steadfast congregants to old age. San Marino Congregational needed a Moses. What it found was the Rev. Art Cribbs a Baptist raised pastor from South Central Los Angeles. He soon became the church's only black member and its spiritual leader. It was an unorthodox choice for the Christian church, a tiny, congregation tucked into the quiet, opulent Los AnRacism "prevented him from geles suburb of San Marino a move so risky, the selechaving opportunities," James tion committee polled the conBrooks adds. "Racism is institu- sermons, a feature introduced tionalized in Mississippi" by the Salgueros. The diversity gregation about Cribbs by seThe McGee family embraced goes further: Salguero brought cret ballot despite the church's liberal reputation. The vote was in Pastor Shih Fong Wu, who Jean Brooks, and they began where differences should begin: on the first floor simultaneously unanimous. "When we brought it to the with consideration and respect. leads Sunday services in Mandarin to accommodate the large congregation, we were definitenumber of Chinese immigrants ly very concerned because we didn't know, we really didn't in the Lower East Side neighborhood. The victim was an unarmed know," said Donald Shenk, a black man shot 50 times on the Outreach ministries at the pastoral assistant who chaired the selection process. "Those eve of his wedding. The police church, which catered mostly race questions are often things detectives acquitted in the New to the homeless when it was that when people are given the located in Times Square, now York case: black, Hispanic counsel a group that contends chance to be anonymous about and white. Like so many who with legal, cultural and financial it, the truth comes out." questioned the outcome, the Before the 1960s, it was Rev. Gabriel Salguero wasn't hardships and alienation daily. common for properties in San "When we come to church, asking surprised by an Marino to have a legal stipulawhat he had to say about racial we do not ignore those realition banning sales to blacks and ties," Salguero said in his serinjustice. mon. "Justice demands that His reply, profound in its Jews, and until 1989 the city was national headquarters to we recognize that people are brevity: "Love." Salguero shared his response oppressed and that the gospel is the ultraconservative, John Birch Society. the liberating message." with the multiracial congregaYet among the 145 applicants tion he has served for nearly for the job, Cribbs could not be three years. His wife and ignored. His audition tape was When San Marino Congrega- so powerful, it made Shenk cry. Jeanette, translated his every "It just blew me out of the tional Church launched a search word periodically switching water. I was sitting there and I between English and Spanish as for a new pastor, it had only one requirement: The candidate just remember thinking, "Who her husband did. is that? I had never heard anyfollowed askneeded to fill the pews. The Another California church had body talk like that," Shenk said. ing what the pastor meant. "He speaks from such a truth- "It means you are committed struggled to recruit new mem Awaken Your PaUte M the ,231 MrVo LVJ it, iCt kH v.- - yu LauNJfcy IIM I ; SLC - 2731 m . Vsrkxi's Wsv DINNER HOVRS: 4:00 pm -- 10:00 jim Mom - SM 0 mi ft UIJ Experience the open-fi- t difference. The INTUIS integrates select key technologies in reliability and quality. With proprietary technologies to protect from ear wax, sweat, and moisture, as well as manufacturing innovations to ensure long-terperformance, no other comparable solution offers as much as INTUIS. V parishioners. Pillar of Love Fellowship Church was founded in 2003 by his aunt's partner, the Rev. Phyllis V. Pennese. Sunday mornings find Taylor Sides transforming a room in Chicago's only gay community center into a sanctuary for the 40 to 120 members and visitors, many of whom fled churches that condemned their sexuality. "A lot of people have long-tergenerational ministry; we're first generation," Pennese said. "We're still stuck on getting people to understand that God loves them the way they are." "My very creation was in order to be a bridge" uniting the races, she said. 677 voii'ro hoarinn in a fich hrml? LAM wrong." Taylor Sides, now 21, eventually embraced the message of acceptance that resonated as he discovered his own sexuality. 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