By Bob Allen
A pastor and seminary professor who organized a peaceful prayer response in Kansas City prior to the grand jury decision in Ferguson, Mo., last November is now recruiting communities of faith to host “prayer tables” intended to promote righteous racial reconciliation.
“Prayer is a form of activism,” said Wallace Hartsfield II, pastor of Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church in Kansas City and associate professor of Hebrew Bible at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Shawnee, Kan. “It is a powerful, radical action. It creates space for honest perspectives rooted in a desire for change.”
Last fall Hartsfield, who works in Central Seminary’s Urban Missional Institute initiative, helped organize a group called “KC Prayerful Response” as a peaceful protest of racial injustice.
Now the group is asking houses of worship to create space for listening and reflection, discernment about how to address issues before them and public action rooted in their prayers.
“As people of faith, we understand that prayer is a community process that can lead us to a clear path for action,” Hartsfield said. “We pray based on what we are confronted with in real time, always hopeful for the future transformation of our lives and our communities.”
Faculty, staff and the leadership team of Central Seminary recently joined President Molly T. Marshall in endorsing a January 2015 open letter by a consortium of African-American presidents and deans in theological education listing a litany of racial injustice that lingers 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement.
“Central practices racial inclusion as a core value,” said Marshall, a Baptist News Global columnist who also serves the seminary as professor of theology and spiritual formation.
Central Seminary launched Urban Missional Institute in January 2007 shortly after the seminary relocated to Shawnee from downtown Kansas City. The program integrates typical M.Div. studies with church planting and community development skills applied in an urban context.
“When the seminary moved from the city to the suburbs nearly nine years ago, some suggested that we were abandoning our historic commitment to diversity,” Marshall said. “Not so. Indeed, if one examines the demographics of our student body, we are more multicultural than ever before.”
Beyond Kansas City, Central Seminary is sponsoring a “Day of Hope” event in St. Louis on Aug. 3. The event at Third Baptist Church in St. Louis, held almost a year to the day since the police shooting of African-American teenager Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson, will bring people together for worship, encouragement and a screening and discussion about Beneath the Skin: Baptists and Racism, a DVD documentary produced by the Baptist Center for Ethics.
St. Louis site coordinator and soon-to-be D.Min. graduate Terrell Carter, author of Walking the Blue Line: A Police Officer Turned Community Activist Provides Solutions to the Racial Divide, will lead the event.
— Based on a Central Seminary news release.