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NEW YORK, Jan. 26, 2021 /PRNewswire/ A group of the nation s leading Black clergy led by Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Calvin O. Butts, III kicked off its nationwide Choose Healthy Life (CHL) initiative yesterday to address health disparities in the Black community through the Black Church by hosting its first COVID-19 testing event at historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, N.Y. The Choose Healthy Life Action Plan will provide services including COVID-19 testing, vaccine awareness and preventative health education through 50 churches across five cities in a historic partnership with United Way of New York City, Quest Diagnostics and America s leading public health experts.
ATLANTA (AP) For decades, the red-bricked Gothic Revival church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached has been a monument to the history of Black Americans’ fight for civil rights and the legacy of an activist icon.
It took a high-stakes Senate race and a Trump-era cultural debate to thrust Ebenezer Baptist Church into the center of the current political debate.
Its senior pastor, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, is running for the Senate in one of two runoff elections that could decide which party ultimately controls Congress in the first years of the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden. But Warnock’s preaching has become a focal point in the debate about race and justice in the election.
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Ebenezer Baptist Church, the historic congregation in the heart of Atlanta, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached, sits at the intersection of national politics and the culture war
His opponent, Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler, has run attack ads using snippets of sermons Warnock preached from Ebenezer’s pulpit to accuse him of being a far left, radical socialist who doesn’t support police officers or military service members.
For King’s former church, the intense spotlight isn’t new. Its 6,000 members are accustomed to standing-room only Sunday services, due in large part to the out-of-town visitors who flocked to the church. Still, Loeffler’s criticisms have renewed attention on a pillar of Black life in Atlanta and a tradition of political activism it represents.
“The Republican attack is not just against Warnock, it’s against the Black church and the Black religious experience,” said the Rev. Timothy McDonald III, pastor of First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta who served as assistant pastor of Ebenezer from 1978 to 1984.