“Faith is taking the first step even when we can’t see the staircase,” says the Rev. Bernard Keels, dean of University Memorial Chapel at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. “The staircase is quite evident now,” he says with pride. “People are climbing.”
I have asked Keels to tell me the story of Morgan State. Like many of the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Morgan State has deep roots in the Christian faith. Within a year of Abraham Lincoln’s signing the Emancipation Proclamation, black leaders in Maryland’s Methodist Episcopal Church had already set their sights on both spiritually uplifting and educating their communities. “Pastors began to meet to discuss how the church could be the catalyst for establishing a university,” Keels explains.