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Two former presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention, one Black and one white, are seeking to bridge the racial divide in the Deep South. They've launched gospel-focused discussion groups in cities that were active in the U.S. slave trade. The project is modeled after a group that started in Mobile, Alabama, in response to racial unrest around the country. NPR's Debbie Elliott has her story as part of our series called Seeking Common Ground: Conversations Across the Divide.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Ed Litton.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: How are you, man?
MICAH GASTON: Hey, everybody. Thanks for being here today. And so I'm looking forward to a good conversation as always, and so...
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: This Pledge Group, as they call it, meets twice a month. It's a biracial gathering of pastors, nonprofit leaders, lawyers and businesspeople, all from varying Christian denominations in this Alabama Gulf Coast city. Gaston says the goal is to talk across those cultural differences to better understand one another.
GASTON: If we can do it here in Mobile, in a city that has the scars we do - that the last lynching happened here, the last slave ship landed here - if we can build a movement here of people that follow Jesus well that are not identified with the ideologies that divide but with the gospel that unites, I think there's power in that.
ELLIOTT: The concept grew out of conversations nearly 10 years ago when four local pastors, two Black, two white, were together at an ecumenical function. Baltimore had just erupted in protests after Freddie Gray died after being tossed around in the back of a police van. Joe Johnson and Tim Smith recalled their discussion back then.
JOE JOHNSON: When the Baltimore thing started, the question then became, what if that would happen in Mobile?
TIM SMITH: We spent about an hour talking about the racial divide in Mobile and the concern that we had for it. And as we were getting up from the table, Joe said, well, are we going to leave it here on the table?
ELLIOTT: They did not. They invited community leaders and met a few weeks later in the cramped conference room of a car dealership.
SMITH: It was a fairly tense time because there were completely different political views, social views. And somewhere along the line, Melvin Clark said, wait a minute, guys. Y'all don't understand what it's like to grow up Black in Mississippi and in the South.
MELVIN CLARK: I told a story.
ELLIOTT: Baptist preacher Melvin Clark told a story.
CLARK: Pa was treated as a kid growing up in Mississippi. Really what it felt like, being Black - stuff that we had to tolerate in order to survive - my parents were sharecroppers, so it was many years before we became independent as a family.
ELLIOTT: Jerry Jenkins says it was a powerful moment.
JERRY JENKINS: We all realized, as much as we loved each other, we didn't really know each other.
ELLIOTT: Tackling the racial divide in Mobile is a tall order. There's fraught history here. For instance, this is where the last slave ship was brought illegally to the U.S., and the descendants of those on board are still fighting for racial justice today. There was a notorious KKK lynching in 1981, decades after the Jim Crow era. And the port city remains largely segregated by race. Even in Mobile's celebrated Mardi Gras culture, there are separate organizations for Black and white revelers. The Pledge Group acknowledges the lingering divide.
ED LITTON: Almost as if we live in parallel universes.
ELLIOTT: That's Ed Litton, pastor of Redemption Church in Mobile.
LITTON: And it's to a point where people - we're very much aware of it, but I think we just have learned to ignore it and to isolate ourselves by saying, you know what? I'm not a bigot. I'm not prejudiced. But it's not my problem.
ELLIOTT: Litton is a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and has been active in The Pledge Group since it started. He says it forced him to stop turning a blind eye and see his city in a new light and as a microcosm of the national divide. He thought other places could benefit from this kind of a dialogue, so he called up another former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the first Black man to lead the group, the Reverend Fred Luter.
FRED LUTER: What we're trying to do is bring America together.
ELLIOTT: Luter is the longtime pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans. He's seen a lot since he was first ordained in 1986.
LUTER: We've got to learn, some way, somehow, to live together. Yeah, we may have differences about Democrats, Republicans, independents, but the fact is we're all Americans, and we all live in this country because we love this country.
ELLIOTT: The two have launched the Unify Project to foster church-based racial reconciliation groups.
LUTER: Just to encourage pastors across this country that if anybody should be unified, it should be the church. It should be those in the body of Christ. And so what better opportunity to do that for an anglo pastor and an African American pastor to come together and lead this project? And that's what we've been trying to do.
ELLIOTT: They've developed materials to help pastors start the process, including prayer and discussion guides, and they have a deliberate geographic strategy - starting in cities involved in the slave trade.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Hey, man.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: How you doing?
ELLIOTT: Back in Mobile, Pledge Group participants say they've seen the fruits of their labor. Some congregations have diversified, for instance. New multicultural prayer groups are meeting, and predominantly white organizations have begun to celebrate Juneteenth and Black History Month. Shree Shaw Lovett says they've also expanded, with about two dozen such groups in dialogue around the city. She says addressing racism requires digging deep.
SHREE SHAW LOVETT: My passion is, we cannot reconcile race of a skin color. We have to allow God to reconcile that in our hearts. It's a heart condition.
ELLIOTT: There have been setbacks, too, with people of both races pushing away from the table, unable to work through ideological differences. But like Barry McLean, many here say the most productive outcome has been new friendships across racial lines.
BARRY MCLEAN: When you see a community that's not just a community but a country that's fracturing and pulling apart, the only way that that divide can be brought together is by people intentionally choosing to be part of the solution. And building relationships with that intention I think is what makes the difference.
ELLIOTT: Pledge Group co-founder Joe Johnson says, if people of faith can't lead on reconciliation, the foundation of the gospel, who can?
JOHNSON: You know, this group has helped us to shrink the divide within the body of Christ. We cannot be affected in the world until we can let God be God in the church.
ELLIOTT: They call themselves The Pledge Group because they've adopted a rallying cry which incorporates Jesus' commandment to love your neighbor but also includes a vow to, quote, "reject my own tendency to distance myself from those who are different from me."
ELLIOTT: Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Mobile, Alabama.
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