Williams brings politics to pulpit

During a church service in South Statesville on Sunday morning - and on into the afternoon - voting was discussed at length, raising questions about the relationship between the pulpit and the polling booth.

“There has always been a connection of the church and politics in the black community,” said Juan “J.D.” Williams, a candidate for the Ward 6 seat and one of the speakers at Sunday’s event. “There is a history between them.”

That history started long ago, back even to the days of slavery. For some, it reached critical mass in the early 1960s. That’s when the city of Birmingham, Ala., infamously earned the two nicknames “Burningham” and “Bombingham.”

The names stemmed from arguably the ugliest period in 20th century America: the fight of Southern blacks for civil rights.

Whites, with racial supremacy ideologies, in Birmingham and other locales in the so-called “deep South,” were setting off bombs and other incendiary devices, or simply burning down African-American gathering places as a means of trying to halt any plans aimed at leveling the playing field.

The primary gathering place in most black communities was the church. And the most ardently sought civil right was the right to vote.

“The church and civil rights have been married for a long time,” NAACP Statesville Branch President Woody Woodard said at a recent group meeting. “The church has usually served the role of town hall in the black community.”

And so it can be said in many cases that houses of worship were the workshops in which the blueprints of civil rights were drawn.

Some might call this relationship an incongruous one. What, with all the talk about the separation of church and state.

But the Rev. Sam Thomas, the pastor of Statesville Covenant Cathedral (formerly Statesville Christian Center), said his talks from the pulpit do not cross that line.

He said does not indorse a candidate or a party or anything more specific than a call on his congregants to “get involved.”

Furthermore, Thomas believes an obligation exists within community and among spiritual leaders to preach a “social gospel” and a “political gospel.”

“What good is getting saved,” asked Thomas, “if all around you is hell an no one is doing anything to change it?”

Williams did a little campaigning during his 20-minute stump speech.

“We all need to get more involved with improving our community,” he said. “You cannot get to this church without seeing some kind of crime. You can’t drive down Wilson Lee Boulevard without seeing drug dealing or prostitution. We need to fight this and when you go into the trenches, you look to your left or to your right and I’ll be there with you.”

But the primary point Williams made was one of trying to shake the all-black audience - and, indeed, the African-American community at large - from what he viewed as a kind of voting malaise and social apathy.

“Everyone of us has a forefather who paid a price - who was kicked or spit on or even killed - so that we would have the right to vote,” he said. “And all we need to do now is to imitate our forefathers. We don’t need to reinvent this. They did it right the first time. We need to honor them by proving their sacrifice was worth something.”

Williams estimated that some 6,000 total people (not just those of voting age) live in Ward 6, but that only about 300 of them voted in the 2003 city council election in which Flake Huggins was re-elected. He also said that approximately 80 percent of the ward’s population is minority.

Tonya Reid, a social worker and South Statesville community leader, also spoke at Statesville Covenant on Sunday.

She called the voting percentage numbers Williams mentioned “horrible.”

“Voting is something we should all be doing,” she said. “We need to vote and we need to know the issues and who the heck we are voting for. This a chance to be heard and when you get a chance to be heard you need to do it and do it well.”

Jonathan Ellis, 23, was at Sunday’s church service. He said he liked what he heard.

“They made politics easy to understand and showed the importance of voting,” said Ellis, who was in town visiting relatives. “I’m glad I was hear and that I heard what I did.”

Tammy Williams, 43, lives in Ward 3, which abuts Ward 6. The seat in that district is also up for grabs on Oct. 9.

Williams, who also attended the Sunday service, said she planned on voting.

“I think politics and city government is a very important thing,” she said. “We need to let our community have a voice in the city and we need that voice to be heard. Voting and getting involved is the only way that is going to happen.”

Posted on 09/24/07 at 06:20 AM
Statesville •City Council •Ward 6 • (0) Comments

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