Taking ‘Bold Political Stances’ To Fight Injustices

It didn’t take long for the new Greater Kansas City Pastors Association to spring into action.

As The Kansas City Star reported in early September, just one “day after thousands of people descended on the Missouri Capitol to demonstrate their outrage over congressional maps aimed at minimizing Kansas City’s voting power,” the new pastors’ group held a press conference to add its voice to those outraged by the gerrymandering work being done in Jefferson City.

The lead voice that day was the Rev. Emanuel Cleaver III, pastor of St. James United Methodist Church and vice president of the new group. He’s also the son of Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, a Democrat who represents Missouri’s 5^th congressional district in Congress and whose re-election the newly rigged boundaries have put at risk.

But in an interview later, Cleaver III said he wanted to make sure that people knew that his leading the press conference was “bigger than an attempt to save a job. It’s truly about representing people of the 5^th district. In fact, it will impact all of Missouri.”

Beyond that, speaking up on this issue is in harmony with the new association’s primary purposes as described by the group’s president, Bishop Ben Stephens, pastor of Trinity Temple Church of God in Christ: “The goal is to speak to the civic, social, and political dynamics of our community.”

A document the group created to outline its purposes and procedures says its mission “is to unite pastors across denominational and cultural lines to collectively impact our region through prayer, advocacy, leadership development, community engagement, and Kingdom collaboration.”

The first members of the new association are pastors of Black churches, but the plan is to invite other senior pastors who share the goals to join and perhaps even to work with non-Christian leaders when possible.

“This was an initiative started by Bishop Mark Tolbert along with Pastor John Modest Miles,” Stephens said in an interview. “These are the visionaries. It was also started by their connection with and commitment to the late Dr. Wallace Hartsfield.

“Bishop Tolbert was in the post office,” Stephens said, “and they had a picture of Dr. Hartsfield there, and he felt that Dr. Hartsfield was saying to him, ‘Man, I’m gone, but what are y’all doing?’ He said he felt compelled to honor his legacy and life.”

(Tolbert is pastor of Victorious Life Church, Miles is pastor of Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church, and Hartsfield was pastor of Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church.)

It will take some time until the new association is fully formed and engaged, but the plan, Stephens said, is to be a visible and healing presence throughout the community.

“Ultimately,” he said, “this will be a collaborative effort of various congregations. We recognize that there are certain congregations that have strengths in various areas. Our platform will need to engage those congregations.”

The association won’t be a forum for debating fine points of theology, and it won’t be leading alternative worship services.

“Our goal,” said Stephens, “is not to be caught up in denominational rhetoric. We all have our polity and denominational preferences. We’re not going to get into those semantics. We really have to maintain a focus.”

The Rev. Darron LaMonte Edwards, pastor of United Believers Community Church, agrees with that approach: “Church is church,” he said in an interview. “We’ve got pastors that can handle the spiritual and theological components of ministry. But we really need more engagement in the political, civic, and social context as it affects Kansas City. And this organization is going to be a leader in doing that.”

Edwards brings to that task his own trying experience several years ago of attempting to work with the Kansas City Police Department to improve communications between police and predominantly Black neighborhoods.

To do that, he founded an organization called Getting to the Heart of the Matter, but eventually encountered resistance from police department leadership.

Today, Edwards said, the divisiveness within American society is “getting scary. And we’ve got to learn how to speak to it without igniting” things and making it worse.

Cleaver III sees the new pastors’ association as an opportunity for church leaders to get back in the public arena: “Perhaps a few decades ago, you did see a lot of pastors, especially in the Black church, who were active. But the landscape of church has changed over the years. This is just a way to get people back involved.

“And because at least the pastors involved in this so far are Christians, we just follow the example of Jesus, who said that what you do for the least of these you also do for me.

“So when you follow the ministry of Jesus, he’s feeding the hungry, taking care of the poor, healing the sick. But he also took some bold political stances where there were injustices taking place. Jesus said we’re supposed to love like he loved. And when you follow the example of how he loved, it comes in the form of justice and mercy and forgiveness.”

Stephens, Cleaver III, and others in the group say they don’t want the new association to compete with what other civil rights and community organizations are already doing.

“Our goal,” Stephens said, “is how do we affect homicides, how do we affect suicides, how do we affect the poverty line, how are we going to look at some of the current challenges (such as voter registration)? And how will we speak to the education and the academic systems?”

Christian pastors from various traditions and denominations don’t always have the same individual freedom in what they do outside the pulpit. Some are bound by denominational rules that require them to share responsibility for church leadership with elected lay members of the congregation. And some can make more decisions about how the church functions without needing to consult oversight boards on every matter.

Stephens sees this new association having members who, because they are senior pastors, will have more freedom to decide how to be engaged: “We wanted to predominantly keep this as senior pastors. We feel if we’re going to have movement and momentum, a senior pastor at the table has the ability to move a congregation.”

Religion has long been an agenda setter in the Kansas City area, so such voices from faith communities need to be heard. If this new organization can speak coherently, cogently and credibly to the problems metro residents face, it will serve an important and needed function.

Any senior pastor interested in joining the new association may send an email of inquiry to greaterkcpa@gmail.com.

Bill Tammeus, an award-winning columnist formerly with The Kansas City Star, writes the “Faith Matters” blog for The Star’s website, book reviews for The National Catholic Reporter and The Presbyterian Outlook. His latest book is Love, Loss and Endurance: A 9/11 Story of Resilience and Hope in an Age of Anxiety. Email him at wtammeus@gmail.com.