This story was corrected after its original posting
WASHINGTON (ABP) – The Progressive National Baptist Convention celebrated its 50th anniversary with a tribute to 93-year-old Gardner Taylor, widely regarded as one of the nation’s greatest preachers.
On Thursday of the Aug. 7-12 gathering that drew 5,000 delegates to Washington, the retired New York pastor reminisced about a rift that developed among black Baptists during the civil rights movement. He also discussed his new book, Faith in the Fire.
Gardner Taylor
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In 1961 the president of the National Baptist Convention, J.H. Jackson, had denounced tactics like sit-ins and freedom rides endorsed by Martin Luther King Jr. A group of younger ministers challenged the status quo by nominating Taylor, pastor of Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn, as president.
Jackson won the contest decisively and fired King as vice president of the convention’s Sunday school and Baptist training union. A group of pastors met in Cincinnati to form the breakaway Progressive National Baptist Convention that November.
“Unfortunately, in the older conventions they were working on a paradigm from a begotten age of subjugation,” former PNBC president Charles Adams said in a 50th anniversary documentary posted on YouTube. “Silence, go along to get along, keep your mouth shut, stay out of trouble type of stuff. And here we come along and we said: ‘No, it’s a new day. There’s freedom in Africa and there’s freedom in Asia; there’s going to be freedom in our churches.’”
Adams said the white media used the split to play up division among African-Americans and make it appear that King’s own people did not support him. “That’s when we stood up around this country and said: ‘Yes we do. We are with him, we are for him and we will create a denominational home for him,’ and that is exactly what happened,” said the senior pastor of Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit.
PNBC leaders termed it “providential” that the 50th anniversary coincides with completion of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall. Its dedication is scheduled Aug. 28, the 48th anniversary of King’s march on Washington and his “I Have a Dream” speech.
The group invited President Obama to speak at a gala 50th anniversary banquet Aug. 10, the day the White House held its annual Iftar dinner celebrating the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. His substitute, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, described inequalities in public education as a “dividing line” that still separates the haves from the have-nots.
“I absolutely see this as a civil rights issue of our generation,” Duncan said. “If you can’t read and you can’t get a good job, you still are not truly free.”
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Bob Allen is managing editor of Associated Baptist Press.