Trayvon Martin Million Hoodie March in New York City was one of many such protest marches conducted in reaction to the shooting of the teen by a neighborhood watchman in Florida. (Photo/Frank Daum)

Periodically, racial tensions that have simmered beneath the surface bubble up, some Christian leaders note, illustrating just how far-removed modern America is from the “beloved community” envisioned by Martin Luther King Jr.

“We can legislate fairness, but we cannot legislate love. That is up to us,” said Mark Croston, pastor of East End Baptist Church in Suffolk, Va., and president of the Baptist General Association of Virginia.

Christians must lead by example to improve race relations, he said.

“I believe that all truly Christian churches must be open to racial inclusion and human compassion. We sing, ‘Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. …” This is true, so we must, too,” said Croston, an African-American.

Croston points to the vision in the New Testament book of Revelation of people representing every nation, tribe and language worshipping Christ. If Christians are serious when they pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” he said, they must “with intentionality work toward this reality.”

But the heavenly vision seems remote for many, and racial divisions remain a clear and present problem, some observers noted sadly.

Predictable pattern

When stories about racially inspired violence capture public attention, events follow a predictable pattern, said Alan Bean, executive director of Friends of Justice.

Inspired by preachers like Martin Luther King Jr., African-Americans in the early 1960s marched to secure civil rights. But some social observers note King’s dream of the “beloved community” still is far from reality, as evidenced by the recent rhetoric surrounding the Trayvon Martin shooting.

“When the status quo is threatened by systemic racial bias, the propaganda machine goes into overdrive. This normally involves the assertion that a liberal media is making excuses for thuggish behavior. If the folks on the receiving end of unjust treatment can be redefined as one of ‘those’ people, the horrific details no longer matter,” Bean, an American Baptist minister in Arlington, wrote in a recent column for Associated Baptist Press.

As the stories gain media attention, he continued, “America quickly divides into protestors claiming that the narrative du jour is a prime example of systemic racism, and debunkers insisting it is nothing of the kind.”

The church’s role

Historically, African-American churches have played a central role in providing a voice for people who have felt victimized and for exposing racism. In many cities, a particular church or a few churches continue to play a key role as ombudsman in the African-American community, said Michael Bell, pastor of Greater St. Stephen First Baptist Church in Fort Worth.

“It’s where people go for direction when they are seeking resolution of difficulties and solutions to their problems,” said Bell, a past-president of both the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Texas African-American Fellowship.

More specifically, African-Americans know which churches are able to do something substantive about their problems, he noted.

“They go to a church where the pastor has a reputation as being a prophetic voice,” Bell said. “My church expects me to speak up. I have never received a negative email, text or letter from a church member complaining that I was too involved in community issues outside the church.”

Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, is pursued by a mob outside Little Rock’s Central High School. (UPI Photo/Library of Congress)

However, in many—perhaps most—predominantly white churches, pastors do not feel that same degree of freedom, he added.

The African-American church has become even more relevant and gained increasing influence as racial tensions have heightened in recent years, Bell insists.

“Distrust and suspicions that had been under the surface have bubbled up. Racism has become more overt and evident in in the last few years,” he said, comparing racists to “roaches so bold they don’t run from the light anymore.”

A cloud of suspicion

Relations between white and blacks, even among Christians, suffer from a failure to address deep-seated issues such as the way African-Americans often are viewed with suspicion—a matter brought to the forefront recently when George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., he observed.

“It’s like putting cold cream on cancer. Unattended, the malady will intensify, because it hasn’t been addressed. We try to move on without really dealing with it,” Bell said.

“We (African-Americans) have a historical memory informed by a hermeneutic of suspicion. Periodically that will come to the surface, and the obvious issues will be addressed. The symptoms will be addressed without dealing with the disease. We won’t go beneath the surface. …We fear it will take too much out of us.”

Some African-American ministers note the fear young men in their communities feel about being stopped by police for “DWB—driving while black.”

White citizens rally at the Arkansas state capitol, protesting the integration of Central High School in Little Rock. (U.S. News & World Report Photo/Library of Congress)

In a video on the American Baptist Home Mission Societies website, Executive Director Aidsand Wright-Riggins appeared in a hoodie to tell stories from his own experience about the cloud of suspicion under which African-American young men live.

Wright-Riggins recalled how he was stopped by police officers—once while knocking on the door of a white church member and once while approaching his own home. He also told how his son was pulled over twice driving between his parents’ home and his university dormitory.

“I appeal to all of us, as we look at the millions of persons around us, and particularly those of color—particularly black boys—that we don’t make an automatic assessment because they might be dressed differently or look different or somehow feel that they are out of place in our society,” he said, “that we relegate them to the margins or, even worse, that we assign them to the morgue.”

A troubling divide

The Trayvon Martin case illustrates “a troubling divide in public perception,” Bean wrote in a recent blog on the Friends of Justice website.

“On one side of the fault line, people identify with George Zimmerman’s suspicion of young black males wearing hoodies. On the other side, folks identify with a victim of racial profiling and vigilante justice,” he wrote.

The 1963 March on Washington for civil rights featured blacks marching alongside Christians and Jews. But some social observers note the dream of the “beloved community” still is far from reality, as evidenced by the recent rhetoric surrounding the Trayvon Martin shooting. (RNS FILE PHOTO)

In his opinion column written for Associated Baptist Press, Bean noted: “Real-life narratives are messy because life is messy. Victims of injustice get caught up in the mess. They don’t play their roles with the disciplined panache of a Rosa Parks. They talk back; they fight back; they come out swinging. And that’s when bad things happen. That’s when the tragedy quotient gets high enough to catch the media’s attention.”

“Why did George Zimmerman feel called to defend his neighborhood from intruders?” Bean continued. “Why did he see Trayvon Martin as out of place, an anomaly. Because he was wearing a hoodie? Because he was walking with a particular gait? Because he appeared overly interested in his surroundings?

“Eliminate Martin’s blackness from the equation, and it is impossible to imagine Zimmerman reacting as he did. Zimmerman defined criminality in racial terms. Who, or what, taught him to think this way? … Our national conversation will continue to revolve around messy narratives.”

The Church at Clarendon sits in the heart of one of the most densely packed neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. (PHOTO/Courtesy of Church at Clarendon)

• Understand the context. “Learn your community and fall in love with it,” said Tom Ogburn, pastor of First Baptist Church in Oklahoma City. Remaining downtown “is not a death sentence. It’s a gift of life.”

• Describe the community’s strengths from the pulpit, said Bill Shiell, pastor of First Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tenn. “I’ve found that inviting community leaders to the church, telling stories and finding great visible examples become a way to help baptize the imagination with possibilities.”

• Maintain excellence. “In most large cities, whatever a person is interested in is being done at a world-class level,” said Steve Wells, pastor of South Main Baptist Church in Houston. Churches should aim for the same standard, he said.

In downtown churches, which often have a long history, that high standard often is reflected in its music, said George Bullard, strategic coordinator for the Columbia Partnership, a church consultancy. “Because of their heritage, they tend to have an excellent music ministry, which they work hard to sustain,” he said. Musical excellence may be enhanced by a downtown church’s sanctuary, which may be 50 years old or more, acoustically strong and include a pipe organ.

“The default standard in worship styles for Baptist churches is contemporary,” said Wells. “Because of our architecture and the size of our city and our location in it, we do things a little differently. We have a robed choir, a pipe organ and instrumentalists. We’re pretty traditional, and the caliber of music we do is high.”

• Partner with a nonprofit. Both First Baptist in Knoxville and Third Baptist Church in St. Louis found value in collaboration with Dallas-based Bucker International. “They gave us tools and resources we didn’t have before,” Shiell said. “They taught us and trained us in asset mapping, community resourcing and becoming more focused on the needs of the community.”

“We did an extensive community needs survey with the help of Buckner,” said Warren Hoffman, pastor of Third Baptist. What emerged was a much clearer understanding of potential ministries in the church’s neighborhood.

• Treat facilities as essential ministry tools. “We have intentionally paid attention to the needs of our public spaces,” said Hoffman. “Several years ago, many areas of our building looked tired and haggard—a little like Macy’s clearance basement. We invested in not only beautifying but intentionally developing ways for the spaces to work for outreach and for use in the community.”

Black church music chronicles the African-American experience, and veteran minister George Harrison wants to see that heritage preserved and passed along to the next generation. (PHOTO/Ken Camp)

The end of Jim Crow laws that dictated “separate-but-equal” schools, services, facilities and public accommodations for black and whites opened up opportunities for African-American advancement—and for whites to benefit from the contributions of black Americans, he noted. 

“Desegregation was good for the nation. … Desegregation had great value in terms of opening up opportunities to learn about other cultures,” he said.

Even so, Harrison acknowledged, segregation created a unified—albeit restricted—black community with the church at its center. When black children saw the same people in their schools, neighborhoods and churches, they developed a clear—if confined—sense of communal and individual identity, he noted.

“There was a richness in the close-knit community,” he said. “You can’t gain without losing. You can’t lose without gaining.”

In a closed, segregated society, Harrison got an early start in ministry as a church musician and composer. He began playing the piano at age 3 and wrote his first song, “Flowers in the Spring,” at age 6. After he taught the song to the other children at Macedonia Baptist Church in Belton, where his father was chairman of deacons, the church called him to direct the children’s choir and begin leading music in worship. At age 12 he began preaching.

But without question, Harrison recognizes he gained personally from the changes that occurred as a result of the Civil Rights Movement. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, where he directed the premiere choral group.

After graduation, he worked several years in a significant post with a railroad company that allowed him to enter a master’s degree-equivalency program in engineering. He also served as pastor of other churches. In 1987, he became pastor of First Baptist Church-NBC in Waco.

About that same time, he was named director of cultural affairs at Baylor University and the first director of Heavenly Voices, the university’s black gospel choir.

He went on to serve in several posts at Baylor, returning in 2003 to UMHB, where he is now director of digital media services.
Through it all, Harrison has maintained his love for music—particularly music distinctive to the African-American church. And he has made it his mission to help preserve that heritage.

Harrison produces a local radio program, “Gospel Now.” He also leads occasional seminars that explore the meaning of spirituals dating back to days of slavery, as well as more recent black gospel songs.

“There a rich culture in those songs, and it’s endangered. There’s a richness in our worship, and the new generation has no idea about it,” he said.

Even so, Harrison hopes the black church can regain its central role in the lives of African-Americans and recapture its ability to instill a clear sense of identity in young people. And he wants to teach the rising generation of black church leaders—as well as anyone else who will listen—about the history chronicled in African-American church music.

“The music tells the story,” he said.”

Ethnic labels and segregation at the Lord’s Supper table thwart Christian unity, a Baptist international leader told participants at a  Christian ethics lecture series in the United States.

Neville Callam, general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, delivered the 12th annual Maston Lectures April 16-17 at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon Seminary in Abilene, Texas.

“‘Ethnicity’ … is a term that is used to convey a diversity of meanings,” said Callam, a Jamaican Baptist leader and the first person of African ancestry to head the BWA. The way “ethnic” and related terms are used presents problems for the church, he added.

Neville Callam

To illustrate, he cited occasions when European and American religious groups spoke of “ethnic churches” and “ethnics” to describe immigrants and people who are not part of the majority in those specific regions. 

Sometimes, “race” and “ethnicity” are used almost interchangeably, which is inaccurate and misleading, he said.

“To speak of ethnic groups is to point to constructed identities which often depend on notions of common origins, common heritage and memories of a shared past, which are not necessarily grounded in confirmable historical fact,” Callam reported.

“In popular American usage, as also elsewhere, the label ‘ethnic’ seems to reflect a categorization of people not in order to affirm their common belonging in the species homo sapiens, but to highlight the contrast between them,” he explained.

Recounting the history of the term, Callam noted that by 1940 in America, “ethnics” was used to refer to “Jews, Italians, Irish and others deemed inferior to white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.”

Among Christians, “the use of the expression ‘ethnic churches’ is caught up in the politics of establishing borders, defining separate identities [and] classifying people over against each other, notwithstanding their common bonds in Jesus Christ,” he said. In that context, “the term ‘ethnic’ refers to people who are not ‘white.’”

Callam leans toward the “constructivist” perspective on ethnicity, he said. It is “the belief that ethnic groups are artificial social constructs that have no exact correspondence in actual society.”

“Terms such as ‘ethnic’ and ‘ethnicity’ need to be understood as mythical concepts which play a major role in social differentiation and may actually serve to promote negative stereotypes that should be abandoned,” he said.

“Ethnicity is not about people’s essential being. It is instead about people’s affiliation. It pertains to … their behavior rather than their being,” he explained. “In some cases, it refers to the group to which people assign themselves. In other cases, it refers to the group to which people are assigned by others. In other words, ethnicity may be understood as a sign of a person’s choice of self-recognition or a sign of society’s classification of people.”

Often, discussion of ethnicity establishes “borders of inclusion and exclusion,” he said. Positively, it can provide “understanding, … rootedness and belonging in the context of a multi-ethnic society.” Negatively, it becomes “a device to stigmatize people as belonging to a marginal subgroup of a society.” It also imprisons people in one single, imprecise identity.

Christians much rethink how they use terms such as “ethnic,” “ethnics” and “ethnicity,” Callam urged.
“It is unfair to simply place people into imagined communities and then make sweeping generalizations about them based on the group identity conferred on them,” he said. “Those who do this are guilty of creating caricatures that are capable of providing grounding for just the kind of prejudices that attach themselves to the popular use of the language of ethnicity.”

Christians can demonstrate appropriate behavior by “affirming what they have in common as human beings created in the image of God and as persons being formed in the image of Christ,” he stressed.
Fortunately, Christians can demostrate unity by partaking of the Lord’s Supper, also known as Holy Communion and the Eucharist, Callam said. But unfortunately, they often fail to eat the Supper together, he added.

While they participate in the Lord’s Supper in the present, Christians also identify with past events and anticipate a future for which they long, he observed.

The communal na-ture of the Supper, in which Christians intentionally eat together, projects strong social implications about shared identity and shared values, he said.

Callam quoted British anthropologist Maurice Bloch, who said: “In all societies, sharing food is a way of establishing closeness. … Eating together is not a mere reflection of common substance, it is also a mechanism that creates it.”

As both a symbol and an agent of unification, the Lord’s Supper is “capable of overcoming the boundaries we construct through the use of ethnic categories,” Callam said, lamenting, “It is unfortunate that the Holy Communion has become a compelling sign of the disunity of the church, even though it was meant to be a symbol of the unity followers of Jesus share.”

Because of doctrinal differences over the nature, practice and meaning of Communion, denominations have divided over the symbol of Christian unity. And because they focus on genetics and cultural background, they worship indifferent churches.

“It is regrettable that the separation of people at the table of the Lord is occasioned not only by concern for doctrinal orthodoxy, but also by the distinctions we create among people on the basis of their ethnicity,” Callam noted. “The divisions in the church in the United States appear to be most evident on a Sunday morning when, separated by their ethnicities, many Christians attend their churches where they celebrate the Lord’s Supper without any sense that this reflects a scandalous failure on the church’s part.”

Prisoners at the Vance Unit in Sugar Land celebrate graduation and baptisms along with daily life in the Christian Prison Unit served by Innerchange and Prison Fellowship. (RNS PHOTO/Courtesy Kevin Vandiver)

Those and other findings form a snapshot of religious life behind bars in a report released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life , based on the perceptions of 730 chaplains who serve in the nation’s state prison systems.

As the United States has grown more religiously diverse, the prison population has, too, but often in different directions, said Stephanie Boddie, a senior researcher on the study.

“The unaffiliated is growing in the general population, but it’s decreasing in the prison population,” said Boddie.

“We also have 1 percent of Muslims in the general population, but in some of the prisons we had as high as 20 percent.”

The majority of chaplains reported significant “religious switching,” and said it’s common for inmates to try to convert other prisoners. But Cary Funk, another senior researcher with the study, said chaplains report some of those conversions may be short-lived.

“Inmates can be motivated by things that on the outside we might take for granted but on the inside have a lot more value—things like special food, special holidays,” she said.

“One chaplain put it that they were privilege-based conversions not religious-based conversions.”

While a sizable minority of chaplains says religious extremism is common among prisoners, only 4 percent said it “almost always” poses a threat to prison security. Muslim chaplains were less likely to say they had encountered widespread religious extremism.

Generally, the chaplains were not dealing with what might usually be considered “extremism” by people outside prison walls, Boddie said.

“They don’t talk as much about some of the ways that possibly are more commonly thought of in terms of antigovernment or anti-authority and violence,” she said.

The chaplains described extremism as intolerance of racial or social groups, religious exclusivity and particular requests for accommodation, such as asking for raw meat for a Voodoo ritual.

Close to half said their prisons have consulted with experts about suspected religious extremism or provided extra supervision for religious meetings.

The vast majority of chaplains are Christian, and they are mostly white, male, middle-aged and conservative in their theological and political beliefs. The chaplains often reported tthey had more Christian volunteers than necessary but lacked Muslim, pagan and Native American volunteers.

Tom O’Connor, a former Oregon prison chaplain who runs the company Transforming Corrections, said more trained volunteers are needed to help move inmates away from antisocial behavior. But, he said, he was heartened to learn researchers found Muslim chaplains constituted 7 percent of the respondents.

“More and more, Islam is producing chaplains in America because we desperately do need more of them,” said O’Connor, who advised researchers on the study.

But O’Connor cautioned against lumping too many diverse beliefs together when considering what might be extreme behavior. In the Pew report, Muslims included the Nation of Islam, a movement founded on black pride and racial separation, and pagan and earth-based religions included Asatru, which is sometimes associated with white supremacists.

“I’ve never come across a racially superior-inclined Wiccan,” he said.

Prisoner requests for religious accommodation reflect a range of faiths. Chaplains said about half the requests tend to be granted for special religious diets and sacred items such as turbans, crucifixes and eagle feathers.

Despite the lack of certain kinds of volunteers and the time spent on paperwork rather than religious services, about two-thirds of chaplains report high job satisfaction.

But they say work needs to be done. Hardly any think the prison system is doing an excellent job on preparing prisoners to re-enter society.

And there is near consensus among the chaplains that first-time nonviolent offenders should be sentenced to community service or mandatory drug counseling instead of prison terms.

The survey was based on a response rate of about 50 percent from 1,474 chaplains who were asked to complete Internet-based or paper questionnaires last year and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

Tadlock tells people his goal is to retire in youth ministry. “I always say, ‘You don’t get it—this is my passion, this is my love,” he said.

 Tadlock is the president of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Youth Ministry Network, a group formed in February to support future and present youth ministers and church youth programs. Presently, it offers youth group access to Bible games and studies and vacation Bible school programs that conform to CBF theology, Tadlock said. It has just under 100 members so far.

 Next up is to apply for non-profit status, to continue amassing online educational resources and to hold a national meeting in February. One day the goal also is to offer certification programs for ministers and youth programs.

But among its grander visions is to change the way individuals and churches view youth ministry, said John Uldrick, minister of students at First Baptist Church in Rome, Ga., and president-elect of the network. “It’s to help people understand that this is a calling and to equip youth ministers so they aren’t just flying by the seat of their pants,” Uldrick said.

The network’s formation is part of a youth ministry movement going back 15-20 years, said Chapman Clark, professor of youth, family and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary. It all began with the advent of mega churches and mutli-site churches, Clark said. He cited Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church and the Willow Creek movement as among the pioneers. What’s developed is an emphasis on involving youth in the life of the church, in worship and other ways, Clark said.

As a result, seminaries are slowly coming around to the demand. Clark said about 110 seminaries offer classes in youth ministry, and about half that number offer majors and minors in it.”There are a lot of seminaries trying to get on that bandwagon,” he said.

Congregations also are coming around, said Tadlock. The challenge is part conceptual, part financial. “Salary is one of the biggest issues because most churches don’t see it (youth ministry) as a long-term investment,” he said. “They don’t see the youth minister as a professional—they are just there to make sure the kids are nice.”

The CBF Youth Ministry Network also wants to eliminate the long-held assumption that younger youth ministers can better relate to their students. “There’s nothing wrong with that 22-year-old (youth minister), but those of us who have been around for a while have life experience and theological depth,” he said. “And our students are better off when we’re not moving around all the time.”

Uldrick said his ministry has changed since he was a young youth minister. Being single and young meant being energetic and available for whatever the kids were doing, in or out of church. Now 37 and married with kids, Uldrick said he now relates to students as family.

Uldrick said he sees the CBF youth network as a chance to convince others that it’s important to “build some continuity by not jumping from one guitar-playing 20 year old to the next.”

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, traditional site of Jesus’ burial.

“The Gospels weren’t really written to record a history,” Mark Morozowich, acting dean of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America, told the PBS program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. “They were written to provide a testimony of faith.”

According to the New Testament, Jesus was crucified at a spot outside Jerusalem called Golgotha, which in Aramaic means “place of the skull.” The Latin word for skull is “calvaria,” and in English, many Christians refer to the site of the crucifixion as Calvary.

The Gospel of John says there was a garden at Golgotha and a tomb that had never been used. Since the tomb was nearby, John says, that’s where Jesus’s body was placed. The Gospel writers say a prominent rich man, Joseph of Arimathea, owned the tomb. They describe it as hewn from rock, with a large stone that could be rolled in front of the entrance.

In the 4th Century, as Emperor Constantine was consolidating the Roman Empire under his newfound Christian faith, his mother, St. Helena, traveled to Jerusalem. According to tradition, she discovered relics of the cross upon which Jesus had been crucified. Early Christians had venerated the spot, and she concluded it was Golgotha. Constantine ordered the construction of a basilica on the spot, which became known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Some Bible scholars believe the Garden Tomb best fits the description in the Gospels of the place where Jesus was buried. (RNS PHOTO/Courtesy of Religion & Ethics News Weekly)

Over the centuries, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was destroyed, rebuilt and renovated several times. There have been numerous power struggles over who should control it, and even today, sometimes violent squabbles can break out among the several Christian denominations that share jurisdiction.

Still, it’s considered one of the holiest sites in Christianity, a massive place of pilgrimage and intense spiritual devotion. “What more of a moving place, to walk in Jerusalem, the place of the crucifixion, to meditate at Golgotha where Jesus Christ died, the place where he rose from the tomb,” Morozowich said.

But despite the history and devotion, some Christians—including many Protestants—believe Jesus could have been crucified and buried at a different place in Jerusalem known as the Garden Tomb.

“The (Garden) Tomb was discovered in 1867. For hundreds of years before that, it had lain buried under rock and rubble and earth,” said Steve Bridge, deputy director at the Garden Tomb, located just outside the Old City’s Damascus Gate.

Charles Gordon, a British general, promoted the Garden Tomb in the late 19th century, Bridge said. The site includes a rock formation, with two large indentations, which resemble the eye sockets of a human skull. Gordon, and others, believed this could have been the “place of the skull” mentioned in the Bible.

The ancient garden below the rock formation has ruins of cisterns and a wine press, which Bridge said could indicate a wealthy person, perhaps Joseph of Arimathea, owned it. In the garden is a tomb, cut from the rock.

“The tomb itself is at least 2,000 years old. Many date it as older than that. But it’s certainly not less than 2,000 years old,” Bridge said. “It’s a Jewish tomb. It’s definitely a rolling-stone tomb. That means the entrance would be sealed by rolling a large stone across.”

According to Bridge, the Garden Tomb is not trying to set up a competition with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. “There’s no doubt that historically, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, has the evidence on its side,” Bridge said. “What we say we have here is something that matches the Bible description.”

And for him, Bridge said it ultimately doesn’t matter where the actual place was, because he believes Jesus rose from the dead three days after the crucifixion.

Morozowich agreed. His faith teaches that during the Easter season, Christians should focus more on what Jesus did, rather than on where he may have done it.

“We know that Jesus is more than this historical figure that walked the earth. And in his resurrection, he transcends all of that so he is as real and present in Mishawaka (Ind.) and in Washington, D.C. as he is in Jerusalem,” said Morozowich.

WASHINGTON—This year’s Easter prayer breakfast at the White House was a spiritually compelling event, say two Virginia Baptists who attended the April 4 breakfast hosted by President Obama.

At his third annual prayer breakfast held during Holy Week, Obama told about 150 people in the East Room that Jesus’ suffering and sacrifice puts the travails of his own life in perspective, Religion News Service reported.

“In this world you have trouble,” Obama said, quoting from the Gospel of John. “I heard an amen.”

John Upton (center), executive director of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, was among the guests at President Obama’s Easter prayer breakfast.

Among the guests were John Chandler, leader of the Virginia Baptist Mission Board’s Spence Network for Congregational Leadership, and Jim Baucom, senior pastor of Columbia Baptist Church in Falls Church, Va. “You don’t have to agree with every policy decision that comes from the White House, but I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that our president leads from a heart of Christian faith,” said Chandler. “He wakes daily up with ‘the least of these’ on his mind.  It stirs me to work more diligently for the shalom of our nation.”

Baucom said he believes the president hosts the event “as much for his personal spiritual celebration of Easter as for the benefit of those in attendance.”

“He always offers a sermon at the beginning of the event on the power of Christ’s death and resurrection—and yes, it is a sermon—then remains for the entire worship experience and to greet every guest afterward,” said Baucom. “His remarks are personal, profound and powerful, leaving no doubt about his personal conviction.”

Also attending the breakfast was John Upton, executive director of the Baptist General Association of Virginia and president of the Baptist World Alliance.

“It’s only because he endured unimaginable pain that wracked his body and bore the sins of the world that burdened his soul that we are able to proclaim ‘He is Risen,’” said Obama, who grew up in a secular home but joined a United Church of Christ congregation in Chicago as an adult.

Other guests were Julius Scruggs, president of the National Baptist Convention; Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals; Florida megachurch pastor Joel Hunter, a spiritual adviser to Obama; Archbishop Demitrios of the Greek Orthodox Church; Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl; and civil rights leader Al Sharpton.

Also present was Joshua DuBois, executive director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

“I pray regularly for President Obama and for incredible leaders in his office like Joshua DuBois,” said Chandler. “The testimonies of their faith in Jesus Christ at these prayer breakfasts have been clear and compelling.”

“President Obama was the first to initiate this gathering in the East Room of the White House three years ago,” said Baucom. “It is a remarkable event, really a Holy Week worship service in the White House.

“Of course, it’s always a thrill to go to the White House, but I have done that a number of times in various capacities and with various leaders,” he added. “This breakfast is different. I have found it to be one of the most profoundly moving spiritual experiences of my Holy Week.”

 That question has spurred centuries of debate, perplexed theologians as learned as St. Augustine and prodded some Protestants to advocate editing the Apostles’ Creed, one of Christianity’s oldest confessions of faith.

Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and most mainline Protestant churches teach that Jesus descended to the realm of the dead on Holy Saturday to save righteous souls, such as the Hebrew patriarchs, who died before his crucifixion.

An altar reredos at All Souls College Chapel in Oxford, England, depicts Jesus freeing the Jewish Patriarchs in hell. (RNS photo courtesy courtesy Lawrence Lew)

The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the descent “the last phase of Jesus’ messianic mission,’’ during which he “opened heaven’s gates for the just who had gone before him.” 

An ancient homily included in the Catholic readings for Holy Saturday says a “great silence” stilled the earth while Jesus searched for Adam, “our first father, as for a lost sheep.”

Often called “the harrowing of hell,” the dramatic image of Jesus breaking down the doors of Hades has proved almost irresistible to artists, from the painter Hieronymus Bosch to the poet Dante to countless Eastern Orthodox iconographers.

But some Protestants say there is scant scriptural evidence for the hellish detour, and that Jesus’ own words contradict it.

On Good Friday, Jesus told the Good Thief crucified alongside him that “today you will be with me in paradise,” according to Luke’s Gospel. “That’s the only clue we have as to what Jesus was doing between death and resurrection,” John Piper, a prominent evangelical author and pastor from Minnesota, has said. “I don’t think the thief went to hell and that hell is called paradise.”

First-century Jews generally believed that all souls went to a dreary and silent underworld called Sheol after death. To emphasize that Jesus had truly died, and his resurrection was no trick of the tomb, the apostles likely would have insisted that he, too, had sojourned in Sheol, said Robert Krieg, a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame.

“It helps bring home the point that Jesus’ resurrection was not a resuscitation,” Krieg said.

Belief in the descent was widespread in the early church, said Martin Connell, a theology professor at St. John’s School of Theology-Seminary in Collegeville, Minn. But the Bible divulges little about the interlude between Jesus’ death and resurrection. Churches that teach he descended to the realm of the dead most often cite 1 Peter 3:18-20.

“Christ was put to death as a human, but made alive by the Spirit,” Peter writes. “And it was by the Spirit that he went to preach to the spirits in prison.”  The incarcerated souls, Peter cryptically adds, were those who were “disobedient” during the time of Noah, the ark-maker.

Augustine, one of the chief architects of Christian theology, argued that Peter’s passage is more allegory than history. That is, Jesus spoke “in spirit” through Noah to the Hebrews, not directly to them in hell. But even Augustine said the question of whom, exactly, Jesus preached to after his death, “disturbs me profoundly.” 

The descent might not have become doctrine if not for a fourth century bishop named Rufinus, who added that Jesus went “ad inferna”—to hell—in his commentary on the Apostles’ Creed. The phrase stuck, and was officially added to the influential creed centuries later.

But changing conceptions of hell only complicated the questions. As layers of limbo and purgatory were added to the afterlife, theologians like Thomas Aquinas labored to understand which realm Jesus visited, and whom he saved. 

Other Christian thinkers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin disagreed on whether Christ suffered in hell to fully atone for human sinfulness. That question, raised most recently by the late Swiss theologian Hans ur von Balthasar, stirred a fierce theological donnybrook in the Catholic journal First Things several years ago.

Wayne Grudem, a former president of the Evangelical Theological Society, says the confusion and arguments could be ended by correcting the Apostles’ Creed “once and for all” and excising the line about the descent.

“The single argument in its favor seems to be that it has been around so long,” Grudem, a professor at Phoenix Seminary in Arizona, writes in his “Systematic Theology,” a popular textbook in evangelical colleges. “But an old mistake is still a mistake.”

Grudem, like Piper, has said that he skips the phrase about Jesus’ descent when reciting the Apostles’ Creed.

But the harrowing of hell remains a central tenet of Eastern Orthodox Christians, who place an icon depicting the descent at the front of their churches as Saturday night becomes Easter Sunday. It remains there, venerated and often kissed, for 40 days.

“The icon that represents Easter for us is not the empty cross or tomb,” said Peter Bouteneff, a theology professor at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, N.Y. “It’s Christ’s descent into Hades.”

RICHMOND, Va.—When Grayson “Sonny” Miller was just a small child, his mother left him in the care of his grandmother. By the time he was 13, he had run away from home, learned how to live on the streets, and knew how make a deal. And his life of crime began.

Miller tells a compelling story of crime, drugs, and jail time, but most of all, he tells a story of a life he is just now beginning to live.

Miller currently serves as church custodian for North Run Baptist Church in Richmond, Va. According to Miller, however, the journey to his “new family” was 21 years in the making.

Sonny Miller’s notes for his sermon at North Run Baptist Church were handwritten on ruled paper.

Miller was 14 when he was arrested for the first time. After that, the arrests and charges came frequently—at 16, 19, 23, 25, 27, 30, and on—with charges ranging from robbery to distribution of cocaine. Miller has spent a total of 21 years behind bars serving various sentences. He has 17 arrests and nine felony convictions to his name. By any accounts, his rap sheet tells the story of a troubled man. 

But Miller would beg to differ. His wake up call from God came in 2006, and he’s been clean ever since. Miller underwent triple bypass surgery in July 2006. He turned to his family and friends for help, but before long, Miller was back on the street. By December 2006, he was back in jail.

“I decided [while I was in jail] to give it all up and surrender. I got in a fight [in jail] trying to help an 18-year-old kid. Guys were going to jump him,” Miller said. “In prison you mind your own business, but I just couldn’t do it.”

Miller sprang to the boy’s defense. Before he knew it, he had a broken right hand and torn ligaments in his right knee. After that fight, he made the decision to start attending Bible study with chaplain Woody Fischer at the Henrico County’s Regional Jail West.

“When I realized how people thought of me, I decided I would never do something to bring shame to myself again,” Miller said.

In 2009, Miller was moved to the Caroline County Correctional Unit #2, a low security prison. There he met North Run Baptist’s prison ministry team, including Dean Wikowsky and Bob Osborne.

“Mr. Osborne told me, ‘If you ever make it out, write me.’ And I did,” Miller said.

Miller was transferred to Henrico’s Regional Jail East, located in New Kent County, where he participated in Rise, a rehabilitation program. Following his release, he lived at Rubicon, a substance abuse and mental health facility in Richmond. It was after his release that he attended North Run for the first time on March 22, 2010.

A month later, Miller shared his testimony.

Pastor Tom Gaskins remembers that day.

“I felt, how could this man have been through all of that and have such a faith and be with us today? How can a black guy walk into a white church and have that kind of faith?” Gaskins said. “He calls us family. I remember a tingling feeling listening to him; it was electrifying.”

Miller continues to share his story throughout the area when asked—including at an upcoming service at North Run. At his home church, he volunteers every Sunday night with the church youth group and can often be found assisting those in need.

“I am blessed,” Miller said. “I made a deal with God when I had open heart surgery and was dealing with being locked up. I promised God that if he gave me the strength to get through this, I would serve him the rest of my life.

“When God done moved in your life, it’s one of the most blessed things you can experience. To know God for yourself, it’s a wonderful thing,” Miller continued. “Things that happened in my life, God is so good! So good to take the crack pipe out of a man’s hand and replace it with the Bible. He took the taste of alcohol and heroin out of my mouth and put his love in my heart.”

Miller credits men like Gaskins and Osborne for being a great influence on his life.

“Pastor Tom is the most humblest man I’ve ever met in my life,” Miller said. “And Mr. Bob Osborne is like a father to me. Everything he’s told me has been the truth. He believed in me when I couldn’t believe in myself.”

Miller also draws strength from the oldest member of the congregation, Dorothy Bowles.

“When I see her at the tender young age of 94, knowing her struggles, seeing her determination to walk without help, I find strength in that drive,” Miller said. “She is a walking testimony. If she can do it, I ought to be here opening the door for her.”

Miller credits God for both his job and for the trust of the North Run family. He believes it is only through the love of God and his love in the church family that the congregation can “trust someone like me with my background.”

March 1 marked a year of service for Miller at North Run. Gaskins reflected on how the job came to be. “I remember it was discussed in the church office. It was a God thing. Several of us felt this would be a marvelous thing to offer him an opportunity to get his life straightened out with employment,” Gaskins said.

Miller can now be found cleaning the church halls instead of running the street. He sings everywhere he goes. His robust, cheerful bass booms throughout the hallways.

He has many reasons to sing, he says. “That my church can trust someone like me with the keys to the church, [that God allowed] my church family to love me as a child of God instead of judging me.

“God is so good. He took a dope fiend, a sleeny, slippery, slimy dope fiend like me and cleaned me up and put me in a church family where the pastor asked me to get a message together and stand behind the sacred desk of God and share it with my church family.”

Miller plans to remind his church family in his message that “God can do for you what you can’t do yourself, but only when you totally surrender.”