DURHAM, N.C. — James Forbes, a homegrown pastor now emeritus from the Riverside Church in New York City, called for jobs and sustenance for all and a new spiritual awakening in the United States during a sermon at Watts Street Baptist Church in Durham, N.C., Jan. 15 in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Before Forbes began his guest sermon at the filled church, he recognized those in the pews who are important his life, including his wife, sister, brother who is also a pastor, and Bob Seymour, who was pastor of Olin T. Binkley Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, N.C., in the 1960s, when Forbes, who is African-American, served as an intern at the white church. It was a time when Forbes was rejected from Duke Divinity School because of his race. Years later he was invited to speak at Duke Chapel.
James Forbes, shown in a 2006 photo, was pastor of Riverside Church in New York until his retirement in 2007. (Wikipedia photo)
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Today, Forbes is a pastor emeritus from the Riverside Church and former professor of preaching at Union Theological Seminary, also in New York City. He is founder and president of the Healing of the Nations Foundation.
Forbes preached that in the aftermath of 9/11, the search for bodies moved on to the removing of rubble.
“One Sunday morning, out of that vast graveyard, a white pigeon flew up,” Forbes said. The white pigeon — a substitute for a dove — was God’s way of saying he would bless America if there is a spiritual awakening and renewal, Forbes said.
He referred to his Pentecostal roots and the focus on the Holy Spirit. It’s one thing to have the spirit inside you, he said, it’s another to show it through your behavior and policies. Forbes said the location of Martin Luther King Jr.’s last speech is a clue to what will bless America.
King was in Memphis to help the sanitation workers, he noted, because the workers tried to establish their own union, wanted dues deducted from paychecks, and wanted trucks repaired, especially in the wake of a worker being killed by a garbage truck.
“In God’s image, people are capable of loving, and also creatures who make stuff,” Forbes said. To be fulfilled as a human being is to be a worker, he said, to do something that contributes to other people.
Nobody God has made should be denied work, he said. If churches take King seriously, they should call for everyone to have a job, Forbes said. If people can’t work, the rest of us have the responsibility to make sure they have basic sustenance: bread, clothing and shelter.
Forbes said he sees a growing pattern in America today of violence, intolerance, powerlessness, paranoia, tribalism, anemia of purpose and loss of connection between freedom and responsibility.
God is not people’s primary influence, he said. He sees fear, anxiety, loss of clarity of what we want and self-interest.
“Human beings are in bad shape if they’ve lost their purpose,” Forbes said, and if they’ve lost interest in the community.
The key to liberation is spiritual revitalization, Forbes preached. The spirit tends toward love, the common good, and community, he said.
Forbes said he plans to be discontent as long as any child or person does not have work or sustenance.
“Have you heard the spirit’s call?” he asked.
Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan is a reporter for the Durham Herald-Sun, in which this article originally appeared. It is used by permission.