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J. Grant Swank, Jr. As a born again teen, I traveled to the Carolinas with a school pal. On Sunday mornings we went to church. I was enriched with the biblical hymns and friendliness. I recall how brightly the sun shone that one particular Lord’s Day morning. It was like a dream. The next Friday evening we both had dates with local girls we had met at church. Innocently—and so utterly naively—I asked one why it was that only whites were at her church the preceding Sunday. “We don’t talk about that!” she snapped. And we didn’t. I thought, “The devil loves to go to church.” That’s when I determined that I would do whatever I could as a white Christian to help blacks. Therefore, when attending Harvard Divinity School, I noted a flyer attached to the bulletin board. Union Theological Seminary was asking student volunteers to be a part of the Student Interracial Ministry. My wife and I signed up, finding ourselves the summer of 1962 in St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church, High Point, North Carolina. We were the only two whites there. We assisted with Vacation Bible School. With the pastor, I visited the sick in local hospitals. White staff stared at me as I walked the corridors with Reverend John Pharr. I joined him in calling on parishioners in their homes. One woman told me she worked for a layer. Again, innocently—but oh so naively—I asked her how she liked being his secretary. She laughed, then corrected me. She was his cleaning lady. With Mrs. Pharr and her son, Sandy, my wife and I decided to treat ourselves to ice cream. I pulled up to a drive-in where attendants came to our car windows to take orders. “When they see Sandy and me, they won’t serve us,” Mrs. Pharr quietly informed me. “Oh yes they will!” I responded with my characteristic forward northern lack of knowing what I was talking about. Miraculously, we four gave our orders and were served our ice cream. Presbyterians there had no Sunday evening worships; but I found a Church of the Nazarene that had them. Just the two of us went to a service. I asked the white pastor if the next Sunday evening I could bring with us friends from the St. Paul Church. He stuttered, blanched and then awkwardly replied, “Well, if you don’t bring too many of them.” That was it. No more Sunday evening worships with a strange kind of “Christians.” When the summer was over, I surely had earned some certificate for passing the test. We had gone there to help and teach. We ended up learning more than anyone could have ever predicted. One lesson was that the devil surely does love to go to church. In that particular summer he was everywhere I could find in the southern white sanctuaries. All of that came to be known nationally as the “most segregated hour of the week”—Sunday morning service in a white church building. Then while attending Harvard Divinity School I realized that the devil resided in some seminaries. When I asked my Greek professor what he thought of God, he answered: “She’s green.” I asked Dean Samuel Miller what it was that I was supposed to believe upon graduation with a Masters of Divinity degree. He said, “You have to plunk yourself down somewhere.” That could be as an atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim or whatever. I concluded that with the devil in that seminary, I had to find my degree elsewhere where Christ was honored as God. Years have revealed many, many sincere biblical believers. I have enjoyed the ecumenical spirit of reaching out to those of all denominations. But what has always been troubling is when the devil shows up in church. Today he is in the theologically liberal pulpit preaching homosexual “marriages” and abortion. In the Black Liberation Theology he’s preaching anti-white racism and black power supremacy. But then I thought back to the Apostle Paul. He wrote thirteen letters lodged in our New Testament. Throughout those epistles he fights the devil’s intrusion in the local church. So what’s new under the sun? Nothing really. -- Copyright © MichNews.com. All Rights Reserved.
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