(Saturday, May 3, 1997)
"Ministers, Group Crosses City's Racial Boundaries"
By Dan Stockman
Journal Standard Reporter

(Click here for the printable version)


FREEPORT
They don't have a mission statement, or even a name yet.

But the Rev. Stephen Aram thinks the group of black and white pastors that has been meeting once a month has something more important.

"We like to measure things by tangible results and I don't think we have anything like that that you can measure—but I have some new friends," he said. There are some black pastors in the area that I had never even met before, and now I count them as friends."

Informally known as the Ministers Alliance, the group has done little in the way of things normally regarded as progress—but they're working on it.

"We're trying to come up with a greater purpose," said the Rev. Peter Frank Williams, pastor at St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church. "I guess it was the school issue that really galvanized us and motivated us."

The group began when a member of Aram's congregation at Embury United Methodist Church, Freeport School Superintendent Richard Olson, recommended Aram get in touch with Williams to see if a coalition of black and white pastors could be formed to help get the community involved in the effort to increase racial equity in Freeport schools.

Aram said the group is not about black pastors, many of whom are members of Freeport African American Ministers United for Change, presenting their side of the school equity issue.

"We're doing this together," Aram said. "For a lot of people, this seems like a divisive kind of thing, but it's really in a spirit of cooperation."

The group, which tries to meet on a monthly basis, has seen as many as 40 pastors at a time participate. To move the group forward, members have asked Tracy Johnson, president of Martin Luther King Jr. Community Services of Illinois to facilitate the discussions.

"They've gotten the chance to get to know each other," Johnson said. "My role is to take that and facilitate a process for them to decide which things they think are important and help them put strategies behind those."

Johnson said that step will help them form a mission statement.

"Hopefully, they can come out with a lasting direction and bring the community together," Johnson said. "These men and women have a strong constituency, and they can provide the opportunity to bring cultures together. I believe that if the process endures, we'll be able to see that come about."

Aram said Christians don't have a choice about whether to get involved or not. He cited the story of the Good Samaritan, and noted that there was a racial difference between the man from Jericho that fell among thieves and the Samaritan that nursed him back to health.

"My understanding of Christian discipleship is like the story of the Good Samaritan—if you see somebody hurting, you need to stop what you're doing and do something about it," Aram said. "This is what you've got to do." Aram said that while there are cultural differences between black and white churches, those are easily overcome if we are willing to make the effort.

 

  

 


 

 

"There are cultural differences and they can make us nervous of each other and afraid of each other," Aram said. "But if we can't learn to overcome our cultural differences in the church, how can we expect it in the community?"

Johnson said the group's progress is exciting, and that it has the opportunity to bring about many community goals.

"Some of the things they're talking about fall in line with the goals the Crime Coalition set two years ago," Johnson said. "They're breaking down preconceived notions, and agreeing to disagree. It's a chance to do some cross-cultural relationship building."

That relationship building is key to one of the ideas the alliance is "kicking around" for sometime in the future, something called Dinner for Eight, Aram said the idea has been used in different forms at Embury, and is one of the simplest ideas he knows of—but also one of the most effective: Eight people get together and have dinner.

There's no agenda, there's no big goal. Just two white couples and two black couples getting to know each other.

When people are friends, it seems, the big problems have a way of getting much smaller.

But in a society where race is an obsession, can something as simple as making friends really work?

A group in New Orleans, La., thinks it can and has 800 members to back up its claim.

"Erace" began when Rhoda Faust, a white book shop owner in New Orleans, got together with Brenda Thompson, a black copy editor at the New Orleans newspaper, the Times-Picayune. The only idea was to give people a chance to get to know each other across racial lines.

"We don't have big goals, and sometimes we lose people because we don't," Faust said. "But sometimes people are relieved because we can't fail. If we can get people together, that's going to break down barriers."

Faust said that many whites like herself have coworkers who are black or interact with blacks on a daily basis, but they're not true friends. Erace changes that.

"I didn't have friends that were black (before Erace)," Faust said. "I knew a few black people, but not in a peer situation. Erace lets us be together and see that the other color is not the enemy."

Erace's president, Robert Jackson, who is black, agreed.

"I was tired of living a separate life colorwise," Jackson said. "I had worked with people of other colors, but I wasn't friends‚ with people of other colors. This is people talking instead of fighting."

Jackson said that his whole life he'd been taught to distrust whites—that because he was black he would always be different than whites and would never be accepted by them.

"You're doing something you've never done before," he said. "You're learning to look past the color of their skin. I've been waiting to be friends with white people all my life."

Faust said the idea of friendship, while simple, is powerful.

"The feeling is we really are in this fight together," she said. "And knowing we're together makes it a hell of a lot less of a fight."