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Originally published in the Washington Times [more] and the Advocate [here] on January 31, 2005

Four black Baptist groups whose churches were a training ground for prominent civil rights leaders but split partly over how that fight should be waged said Friday they are embarking on a new era of cooperation meant to put the concerns of their community atop the national agenda. They are uniting behind an agenda to end the war in Iraq and refocus the nation's attention on domestic issues.

Together the Nashville-based National Baptist Convention USA, the National Baptist Convention of America, the Progressive National Baptist Convention and the National Missionary Baptist Convention represent 15 million mostly African-American Baptists across the United States.They hope to reclaim their historic role as leaders for broad social change. Among their top issues will be education, health care, jobs, and foreign policy.

They are now positioning themselves collectively as an antidote, not just for blacks but for all Americans, to what they call the narrow moral focus of President George W. Bush and his religious supporters.

Like white evangelicals, black Baptists generally oppose abortion and consider gay sex immoral. In the presidential race, Republicans made common cause with some black leaders over blocking gay marriage, hoping the issue would chip away at the overwhelming black support for Democrats.

However, the Baptist presidents said they would not highlight either issue for now because the topics are divisive and not a priority for their members, who face poverty, discrimination, and other pressing ills.

The denominations of National Baptist Convention issued a nine-point agenda declaring their opposition to the war in Iraq, opposition to the confirmation of Attorney General-designate Alberto Gonzales, proposing a hike in the minimum wage, not making recent tax cuts permanent, more investment in public education, reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, an end of the prison-industrial complex and halting privatization of prison construction, reinvestment in child healthcare and increased global aid to Haiti and the Sudan.

"These are concrete initiatives that we're calling on the president of the United States and Congress to act upon," said Thurston. "And our position will continue to be a position of advocacy for these areas such as the voting rights act that is going to come up for review, the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, areas in public education which we would be network with an agency that's already in that area, the Children's Defense Fund, which is defending 9 million children who are without health coverage, a call to end the prison-industrial complex trend -- that's a growing of the prison complexes that are being built over the number of schools that are being built. These are actions that we are in the process of putting together to continue to raise our concern about."

In terms of Iraq - "We sought to outline it as an exit strategy that would seek to stop the deaths of our own personnel that are in Iraq. Over 1,400 have already lost their lives and they've had the election now, and we really feel we have to get out of Iraq, because of the loss of life and the risk of losing further lives in a war that's taking more money and more of our own lives," the Rev. Stephen Thurston, president of the 3-million-member National Baptist Convention of America and pastor of New Covenant Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago, told United Press International.

"The domestic issues that are here before us are so much more important -- as they are in some of the same crisis modes as President Bush talked about the Iraqis are in."

Thurston said the United States was in a similar situation during the Vietnam War when U.S. armed forces were engaged in a military conflict and the government was thought to have a guns-and-butter economy.

"There were so many who were opposed to the war in Vietnam, including one of our leaders, Dr. King," Thurston said Monday. "We see some of the same similar experiences developing out of this war also."

While their theologies remain similar the mid-winter board session in Nashville last week marked the first time the four separate national Baptist groups have met jointly since schisms divided them over the 20th century.

"We believe, and the numbers show it, that we have the power in terms of black registered voters across the country to make an impact," said the Reverend Stephen J. Thurston of Chicago, president of the National Baptist Convention of America.

Thurston said politics affects every aspect of life of African-Americans.

Speakers including Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund, and Rainbow/Push Coalition president the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, exhorted the conclave to become actively engaged in setting an agenda rather than reacting to faith-based initiatives in Washington.

Jackson asked the ministers, pastors, deacons, lay leaders and Sunday School teachers to pick up where Martin Luther King Jr. left off and conduct mass action to demand an exit strategy from Iraq, revive the war on poverty for jobs and justice, reclaim black youth, end wholesale imprisonment of African-American men and push for extending the 40-year-old federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 with enforcement power in 2007 to prevent disenfranchisement of minority voters.

Jackson said a jail-industrial complex in which black males make up 55 percent of the 2.2 million people incarcerated in the United States has created a neo-slavery institution.

"In many states the jail-industrial complex is becoming the number one industry," Jackson said. "In Illinois, there are 250,000 in the state penal system, over half of which are African-Americans. Those inmates make over 600 products. Upon release there are 67 jobs they cannot do, including barber, beautician and work at hotels. With so few options they contribute to an 80 percent recidivist rate. In Louisiana, the state makes $7 million a year off prison telephone calls. In South Carolina they arrest 100,000 blacks a year."

Jackson challenged the convention to carry on with the fight for social change and educate the next generation about revisionist images that have turned King into a mythic storybook figure in U.S. history.

King was more than one speech, one march and one movement, said Jackson.

"If we truly love Dr. King we must not merely admire him, for there is no risk in admiring him. Admiring him is to have praise in his honor, holding parades and exhibitions in his honor. Dr. King never led a parade. He led demonstrations. He led public uprisings for justice. He rejected loveless power as cruel, and the powerless love is weak and anemic. Therefore there has to be a healthy balance between love, power and justice."

Jackson said to embrace King is to embrace a bigger vision than race and culture.

"Dr. King was the most hated man in America," Jackson told some 10,000 delegates in a keynote address at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center Thursday. "Dr. King's home was bombed. King was stabbed. King was thrown out of his own convention and locked out of pulpits ... King was killed."

Jackson said King spent his last morning alive meeting with inter-racial staff members to prepare for an economic March on Washington to force the government to prioritize the plight of the working poor. His final afternoon was spent discussing the war in Vietnam, which was draining resources from the war on poverty.

The National Baptist Convention, USA was formed in Atlanta in 1895 by black state and regional Baptist associations and splintered in 1915 when the National Baptist Convention of America broke away over political and philosophical disagreements.

The Progressive National Baptist Convention was formed in 1961 and the National Missionary Baptist Convention of America in 1988 in a disagreement over ownership of publishing houses printing church materials and Sunday school literature.

The dominations have not ruled out eventual reunification, although it was not discussed at the Nashville meeting attended by other churches including leaders of the Church of God in Christ and Pentecostals.

"All of us have social justice commissions and arms in our convention that have already been working on these agenda items; putting it all together has just given us more visibility and a voice that we already had in the presence of the American public," said Thurston.