It was the first time the three biggest black Methodist denominations convened in 45 years, and they gathered with a transcendent purpose in mind: to address the plight of the black male, who is disproportionately unemployed and incarcerated in the United States.
The “Great Gathering,” a three-day convention held in Columbia last week (despite a continuing NAACP boycott of South Carolina), drew at least 2,000 members of the African Episcopal Methodist Church, African Episcopal Methodist Zion Church and Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.
Organized by the Rev. Staccato Powell, pastor of Grace Church in Raleigh, the event featured speeches by Children’s Defense Fund founder and President Marian Wright Edelman and social critic Cornel West.
Edelman said the cradle-to-prison pipeline in which so many black men get caught is sufficient reason to start a new civil rights movement.
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Local Paper Faith and Values Section–Churches focus on plight of black males
It was the first time the three biggest black Methodist denominations convened in 45 years, and they gathered with a transcendent purpose in mind: to address the plight of the black male, who is disproportionately unemployed and incarcerated in the United States.
The “Great Gathering,” a three-day convention held in Columbia last week (despite a continuing NAACP boycott of South Carolina), drew at least 2,000 members of the African Episcopal Methodist Church, African Episcopal Methodist Zion Church and Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.
Organized by the Rev. Staccato Powell, pastor of Grace Church in Raleigh, the event featured speeches by Children’s Defense Fund founder and President Marian Wright Edelman and social critic Cornel West.
Edelman said the cradle-to-prison pipeline in which so many black men get caught is sufficient reason to start a new civil rights movement.
Read it all.