They are an unlikely pair, chatting up people on porch stoops in the poorer neighborhoods of New Orleans: Bishop Charles Jenkins, 57, the son of white, rural north Louisiana and pastor to 18,000 south Louisiana Episcopalians, and Jerome Smith, 69, black and rumpled, son of Treme, a former Freedom Rider from the civil rights movement.
Before Hurricane Katrina, in the days when Jenkins says he was focused more on the well-being of his predominantly white church than his predominantly black city, they might never have crossed paths.
But since Katrina, they have forged a relationship in which Jenkins, now deep into a profound personal and spiritual transformation, said he has come to love and rely on Smith.
Smith, a sometimes fiery activist in whom Jenkins sees a gentle soul, has become one of the bishop’s principal guides into New Orleans’ poor African-American culture, a landscape Jenkins said he previously glimpsed but did not understand.
“He’s my mentor, you know,” Jenkins said recently. “It is a good day whenever Jerome Smith comes by.”
A good Bishop and former neighbor who I share a birthday together. We both turned 58 on January 10th. I ask God to bless he and Louise as they look forward to retirement.