Some background about Pearlington and the Mississippi Gulf Coast might help you appreciate this story.
Pearlington has seven churches. It has a Southern Baptist church, an African-American Baptist church whose sanctuary we have worked on, and who serve Pearlington volunteers (all volunteers) lunch. The pastor of the church is Rev. Rawls. His wife and our volunteers from our village have cooperated to serve lunch virtually every day since volunteers began coming to Pearlington in 2006. Besides these two, there is a United Methodist church, a Catholic church, a church which until recently was a Mennonite church and two more African-American churches; Seven churches in all.
Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States of America purchased a modest mansion in the area of Biloxi for his retirement. The house, originally called Orange Grove and then Beauvoir, was completed in 1852 by a wealthy plantation owner. Davis rented the house in 1877 and two years later negotiated its purchase. The structure withstood hurricane after hurricane until Katrina destroyed it in 2005. Recently it was reopened in a fully refurbished condition with the dedication "to preserving the legacy of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, and the Southern soldier."
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This weekend I caught up on news from our Village Manager in Pearlington about the Easter weekend. She and a volunteer attended an early sunrise service at the former Mennonite church and then went to the Southern Baptist church on MS 604, a few hundred yards north of our village for the morning service. Prior to the service they engaged a woman member of the church in a conversation.
“It is really something remarkable about a community as small as Pearlington to have a faith community consisting of seven Christian churches.”
Almost before the volunteer had completed his statement the woman quickly corrected him.
“Oh no, that isn’t right. There are only four Christian churches in town, we have our Southern Baptist Church, the Catholic Church, the Methodist Church and the Mennonite Church.”
The black churches somehow conveniently dropped of the face of the earth. Nevertheless, they sat through the service at the church but left quickly afterwards.
The village manager continued to tell me their story.
“The pastor never mentioned Jesus’ rising. In fact, the word ‘Easter’ was mentioned not one time in the service. The service seemed to be a Good Friday service.
“If the service bulletin had not had ‘Easter Service’ printed on it you would never know you were attending an Easter service.
“ I had to look in the pew rack to confirm that they used the Bible.”
I can only wonder about this myself, remembering the debates of my childhood in my old Southern Baptist church about what to do if a black person tried to worship in our church. I have always thought, and hoped, that kind of thinking had breathed its last.
I guess I’d surmise the theology of that Pearlington church comes from Beauvoir, a couple or three score of miles east near Biloxi. I thought the distance in time though, one hundred thirty years, would have healed that wound.
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