Resilience rarely announces itself. Sometimes it shows up quietly — in the form of an 18-year-old freshman named CoMarion, standing outside Arkansas Baptist College without a car, without certainty, but with a deep desire to learn beyond the classroom. His…
What I learned at a town hall meeting where our elected officials didn’t show up
I went to a town hall tonight in Little Rock. When I walked in about 10 minutes until time to start, it was a standing room only crowd in a church sanctuary that seats 750 people. I leaned up against…
That time Freddie Haynes preached like Jeremiah Wright
Sometimes writing a news story is not sufficient to convey the importance of an event. This is one of those times. The emotion of what I witnessed in Little Rock, Ark., today cannot be conveyed in a cut-and-dried news story….
One expression of faith creates refugees; the other resettles them
Religion remains one of the most powerful forces on the planet, sometimes for good and sometimes for evil. Religion can summon us to our highest ideals, treating each and every person with all reverence due their divine origin. Of course,…
You, too, can stand up for racial justice, Arkansans say
If a predominantly white church can stand for racial justice and inclusivity in the heart of the South, then other Cooperative Baptist Fellowship congregations should try to follow suit, an Arkansas pastor declared during the CBF General Assembly.
Pastor, judge, activist, agitator: As he strives for justice, Wendell Griffen stretches the lexicon of adjectives
Wendell Griffen, 66, is all of these things. But his persona is so large, his reputation so loud, his “rightness” so locked in and eagerly defended, that the man’s depth can be lost in the shallows in which he must wade.
Racially diverse church occupies campus where Baptist pastor once proclaimed racist views
In one of life’s delicious little ironies, New Millennium Church now meets on the campus associated with one of Little Rock’s most ardent racists of the 1950s.
Photo Gallery: Wendell Griffen
View the photo gallery of Wendell Griffen.