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A Broader Sense of Justice

Rev. Pitts-Murdock’s trajectory reflects the rising acceptance of women as senior pastors in the Black Church at a moment of profound changes and challenges.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic delivered one shock to the status quo. That was followed by the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the rise of racial justice protests, and the Trump administration’s recent pushback to “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives. Meanwhile, the long-term decline in religious affiliation continues in both the United States generally and in the Black Church. In 2007, 85% of Black Americans identified as Christian; in 2024, only 73% did.

Some far-reaching effects of these events and trends are already discernible. For example, the Black Church is less visibly engaged in political organizing than in the civil rights era. There are exceptions, but, as Politico has noted, racial justice organizing is now less tied to churches and church leaders than a few decades ago. Instead, it is diffuse and informal and demonstrations “tend to find their center on social media, in the homes of allies, or on the streets themselves.”

At the same time, the push for justice in race relations has led to a focus on the depth of the Church’s own commitment to equality. Professor Cornel West of Union Theological Seminary, for example, has critiqued the disparities in the Church’s focus on racism and its tolerance or outright embrace of other varieties of discrimination.

The Black Church, West argues, has been “magnificent” in opposing white supremacy, “but male supremacy, homophobia, and transphobia are evil too. They’ve got to hit those with the same level of intensity as they hit white supremacy. That’s the challenge and the test for the Black Church these days.”

The Black Church and Same-Sex Marriage

At Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Noblesville—about 30 miles northeast of Indianapolis—Rev. Mindy Mayes is grappling with this challenge. As the pastor of the only African American church in a town whose population is about 85% white, pushing for racial equality is one important part of Rev. Mayes’ role. But she is concerned, as well, with equality in a broader sense.

Like Rev. Pitts-Murdock, Rev. Mayes grew up in the Baptist tradition. In graduate school, she and a friend took a chance on an AME congregation with a female pastor, and she never really looked back.

“The first sermon that she preached was about pains and people going through pains,” Rev. Mayes says. Her sister had died just before Mayes moved to Indiana for graduate school, “and it was what I needed to hear at the time. I didn’t even want to come to school. And her sermon just spoke to me in so many ways. I grew up in a very traditional Baptist family where [the rule was] you didn’t question God. God makes no mistakes. And I still believe those things—just from a different viewpoint now.”

Rev. Mayes earned a Master of Public Health from Indiana University (2009) and a Master of Divinity from Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis (2013). For the past decade, her career has been a balancing act between practicing public health as an educator in health and human sciences with Purdue University Extension and pastoring. In 2018, Mayes became senior pastor of Bethel AME.

From its origins in the early 1800s, the AME Church was ahead of the curve on racial and gender equality. Its founder, Richard Allen, was a freed slave and circuit-riding preacher who believed Black Christians should have a separate space where they could worship freely. A woman ordained in the AME Church’s early years, Jarena Lee, wrote in her journal in 1849 that “as unseemly as it may appear now-a-days for a woman to preach, it should be remembered that nothing is impossible with God.”

The AME influence is one reason gender equality has gained traction in the Black church broadly. There is historical precedent, even if female preachers have been rare in most denominations. If that question is settled, though, other dimensions of equality are still fiercely contested.

As a minister in the AME Church, for example, Rev. Mayes cannot perform weddings for same-sex couples. The Church’s rules say that “unions of any kind between persons of the same sex or gender are contrary to the will of God.” At the AME’s General Conference in August 2024, delegates voted to continue that ban. At the same time, they voted to continue the work of the Sexual Ethics Discernment Committee, which recently released a report about biblical approaches to issues of gender identity and sexual orientation.

At its own General Conference in April 2024, the United Methodist Church (UMC)—which the AME is in full communion with—reversed its ban on ordaining LGBTQ+ clergy and on clergy officiating same-sex weddings. Prior to the vote, about 7,600 congregations—or one-fourth of the total membership—broke away from the UMC over the issue.

Broadly, support for same-sex marriage has risen sharply in the United States in recent decades. In a 1988 survey, just 12% of the public agreed that same-sex couples should have the right to marry. In 2004, 31% agreed. By 2018, 68% agreed.

But support has plateaued at about two-thirds approval over the past few years. And a key factor in the plateau is declining support among many religious people and groups. From 2018 to 2022, for example, support among US evangelicals fell from 45% to 36%, support among mainline Protestants fell from 75% to 67%, and support among Catholics fell from 73% to 68%. Among Black Protestants, meanwhile, support was essentially unchanged—at about 55%. That was lower than any religious group except evangelicals.

The Church with the Cross on the Hill

These crosscurrents are one of the great challenges that Rev. Mayes faces. On one hand, her denomination opposes same-sex marriage; Black Protestants are about evenly split on the issue; and Christians in the United States seem to be retreating in their support. On the other hand, her understanding of Christianity’s core message—and the AME’s own story—is that transformative faith expands the circle of equality and inclusion.

At Bethel AME, one visible symbol of this stance is a large white cross atop a small hill on the church’s property. “We say that we are the church with the cross on the hill, where we love you—and there is nothing you can do about it,” Rev. Mayes says. The hill and the surrounding field are a sort of small public park, used  for various events by both the church and the local community.

In some ways, Rev. Mayes is testing the limits of the spirit of love symbolized by the cross. In March 2025, for example, to honor Women’s History Month, she invited five women as guest preachers, including a friend who is in a same-sex marriage.

“When I say equality for all, I mean equality for all. If I ever lose my ordination, it’ll probably be around that,” she says. “If anyone has listened to my sermons, I do not hold back on where I am and what I believe. I try to be cognizant of my words, but I say things along the lines that people should be able to love who they love.

“I would hope that, even if you and I believe different things, at least we can come to the table and have a conversation—and come to an understanding of each other. So that even if you don’t leave the table changed in your beliefs, I can have an understanding of you, and you can have an understanding of me. So at least we can live together in some kind of [peace]. We don’t live in a world where we will all agree.”

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The Power of Relationship Building

For the past few years, Rev. Pitts-Murdock and Light of the World have focused on creating spaces where such conversations and relationships can develop.

Light of the World’s pastor from 1969 to 2012 was T. Garrott Benjamin, a prominent male leader in the C.L. Franklin mold. The church had about 3,000 members at its peak under his leadership. When Trinity Broadcasting Network added the church’s “Heaven on Earth Ministries” broadcast to its schedule in 1988, Rev. Benjamin reached more than 35 million viewers weekly.

Those days are long gone. Light of the World is much smaller than in its heyday. Yet it is as vibrant as ever, according to Rev. Pitts-Murdock, because it is learning to serve its members—and its community—in new ways.

During the pandemic, Light of the World stepped up its outreach efforts in the same ways that many churches did, such as hosting vaccination clinics and expanding its food pantry. It also built digital wellness groups focusing on different themes and populations. There were groups for seniors as well as singlesas well as those called “I’m home alone,” and “I’m stuck in the house with kids,” and “I’m working from home.” Each was led by a licensed social worker or therapist.

One post-pandemic effect of those digital endeavors has been a strong focus on in-person relationship building. The church reimagined its men’s and women’s ministries as groups that are very intentional about building “spiritual friendships,” according to Rev. Pitts-Murdock.

“There are so many stories in the Bible, across both Testaments, where relationships make the difference,” she says. “And here in the United States, Black Americans—and minorities in general—experience an exclusion from so many life-giving elements of our nation. Access to health care. Access to affordable higher education. Access to affordable housing or housing that has not been redlined. Access to pathways to economic flourishing.

“There are all of these things that minoritized communities in America are excluded from. Relationship building is a survival technique. It’s a survival tactic. There is community in our mutual struggle for liberation.”

Looking to Nehemiah

The Black Church of the civil rights era knew the importance of relationship building, of course. The newer model is more a shift in emphasis than a transformation—away from relying heavily on prominent male authority figures to lead the push for change, toward fostering the leadership potential of all community members. That shift is reflected well in the ministry of Rev. Shelley Fisher at First Baptist Church in Gary, Indiana, which is the city’s oldest African American congregation.

Fisher earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Indiana University in education and from 1969 to 2010 she served as a teacher and principal in Gary’s public schools. More recently, Fisher has built a second career as a consultant, writer, and leadership coach.

Since 2022, she has also been one of three interim co-pastors at First Baptist as it seeks a full-time senior pastor. In that role, she preaches occasionally, leads a prayer ministry, and teaches Bible studies. In early 2025, she was elected president of Gary’s Interfaith Clergy Council.

In 2018, Rev. Fisher published I Can’t Come Down, a study of Nehemiah—known in the Old Testament for organizing the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile. Nehemiah’s story, Rev. Fisher believes, contains powerful truths for the Black Church at this moment of transition.

“He was no great leader,” she says. “He was just this servant leader, the cupbearer to the king. You have this one ordinary man, who has this vision to rebuild. He knows how to talk to people. He has a relationship with them. He gains their support, and he uses people from all walks of life.

“It was a sense of community. And that’s what we need today. We have so much strife, so much division, so much hatred—but there’s a common goal, and we can all come together and build and support each other.”

"People Are Waking Up"

The idea of rebuilding has a particular resonance for Rev. Fisher, who has witnessed a decades-long cycle of disinvestment and deindustrialization hollow out the community that she loves and grew up in.

In its heyday through the 1960s and 1970s, Gary was a prosperous, steel-producing city of nearly 180,000 people. But much of the white population moved away as steel jobs disappeared through the 1980s and 1990s. By 2000, the population was about 100,000. It is now less than 70,000. Gary had a poverty rate of 33% in 2023 and a median household income of just $37,000—or less than half the national median of nearly $81,000. About 77% of residents are Black, and 13% are white.

In the 1950s, when Rev. Fisher was a child attending with her parents, First Baptist was a pillar of a solidly professional, middle- to upper-middle class community in the traditionally African American section of the city, Midtown. The church is now much smaller—about 150 people attend an average Sunday service, down from about twice that number pre-COVID—and the membership is less affluent. As a result, First Baptist lacks the visibility and resources that  prominent African American churches of past generations had. For the past three years, it has also lacked a senior pastor.

Which means that it is an open question how First Baptist can help lead a revitalization or reinvention of Gary. But, having grown up in the city’s glory days—and then watched its steady decline through her adulthood—Rev. Fisher’s faith sustains her belief that better days are ahead.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” she says. “I would like to see people bold and courageous—not shrink back and think, ‘Oh, this is an end. Woe is me. What are we going to do?’ Because this is not the end. God has the answer and he moves through people. So my sermons lately have been talking about realizing your authority in Christ. Do you know who you really are? Do you know this authority that you have?”

That is the pressing question for many Black churches in this era of rapid change and profound challenges. As Light of the World Christian Church in Indianapolis reinvents itself from a megachurch to a large but intentionally relational congregation; as Bethel AME navigates traditional views on marriage and sexuality while prioritizing love; and as First Baptist in Gary aims to serve a community brought to the brink by economic decline—how can these churches help members recognize and use their power?

Much depends on the specific circumstances of each congregation, of course. But as women increasingly take leadership roles in the Black church, Rev. Fisher believes that their journey over the past few decades—from the background to the foreground—points to an important truth about the path(s) forward.

“People are waking up, so to speak, and realizing that they do have some power,” Rev. Fisher says. “They do have some authority. To stay within the frame of these four [church] walls—we can’t do that anymore. They’re going to collapse on us. There’s too much happening. We have to get out and be about the father’s business.”

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