Charles Williams II, senior pastor of Detroit’s Historic King Solomon Missionary Baptist Church. From Martin Luther King Jr.’s Ebenezer Baptist Church to Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, the black church is intertwined in African American history and the struggle for equality. Mary Frances Berry, a professor, author and former member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, described Cummings as being among the last of the black political leaders to be heavily influenced by a black church. While the church was shaping black politics, Cummings’ journey also was personal, according to Bishop Walter Thomas, his pastor at the New Psalmist Baptist Church in Baltimore. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, Cummings’ actions embodied the black church “at its best.”“The black church at its best has always been a church that when no one else has fought for the black community, the black church has been that voice,” said Douglas, dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

Source: thestar October 23, 2019 17:03 UTC