WASHINGTON (BP)–Five members of a Baptist volunteer team being detained in Haiti met with a judge in Port-au-Prince Feb. 2, according to the Voice of America and other news reports Feb. 3.

In all, 10 Baptist volunteers continue to be held by authorities in the capital city over allegations of illegally attempting to transport 33 children from the ravages of the Jan. 12 earthquake into the neighboring Dominican Republic.

Meanwhile, a Haitian pastor who assisted the team has told the Associated Press that the Baptist volunteers had permission from parents of children in the group who were not orphans to transport them into the Dominican Republic.

The pastor, Jean Sainvil, however, described the controversy as a misunderstanding stemming from the volunteers not having the needed paperwork for the children. Sainvil said the Baptist volunteers were acting “with a good heart.”

The five women on the team, members of Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, were questioned by the Haitian judge Feb. 2.

The five men on the team, members of other Baptist churches, in Idaho, Kansas and Texas, were to meet with the judge Wednesday, Feb. 3.

No additional details about the proceedings were being reported in the media as of mid-afternoon Feb. 3.

The Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center will officially open on Monday, Feb. 1 at 10 a.m.
Ceremonies dedicating the facility, located at Joyce Chapel United Methodist Church on West Willow Street, will be held beginning at 10 a.m. Lecia J. Brooks, the director of Montgomery’s Civil Rights Museum and an employee of the Southern Poverty Law Center, will be a featured speaker along with Kathy Horton Garrett, the granddaughter of Judge James E. Horton who presided over the trial of one of nine black teenagers accused of raping two white women while on a train traveling through Jackson County in 1931.

The city and a church are close to a land-swap deal that would give a new home to a congregation displaced by fire, find a use for a former Superfund site and open a prime piece of downtown to redevelopment.
Zion Baptist was organized in 1865 and grew into one of the most prestigious black churches in Portsmouth, VA.

Johnny Lee Clary, right,poses with Bishop George McKinney, who helped ordain him as a minister of the Church of God in Christ.

SAN DIEGO, CA — A former Ku Klux Klan imperial wizard says he was ordained in San Diego so he could serve the nation’s largest black denomination.

Former Klan member Johnny Lee Clary said he was authorized by the Church of God in Christ to take part in the ministry of racial reconciliation and conduct evangelism campaigns, the Tulsa (Okla.) World reported Saturday.

After joining the KKK Youth during his younger years, Clark went on to become the national spokesman for the White Knights of the KKK.

Clary said he began reconsidering his life choices and embraced religion.

The Tulsa World said that new path led Clary to his recent ordainment by the 6 million-member church and a new viewpoint about racism.

“I’ve learned that good friends come in all colors. I believe I have something to contribute in the area of racial reconciliation. I’m going to spend the rest of my life building bridges and bringing people together,” said Clary, who deems racism a cancer on humanity.
source:www.crnewswire.com

photo credit:SAMAD/AFP/Getty

President Obama said: “I could not have more confidence in the Secret Service.
“They do an outstanding job. They have been with me since I was a candidate.
“I trust them 100 percent, not just with me but with my wife and my children.”

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Wendell O’Neal, Sr. expresses his thoughts in an article at www.chicagonow.com

“The high degree of importance of religion among African-Americans in the United States today is dramatic. Eighty-five percent of blacks say that religion is very important in their lives, the highest such percentage in any demographic group analyzed in this research.”…..This many Black people saying that they embrace a religion that is founded upon Love and yet we live in communities where it appears that Love is not so welcome begs the question: Are the churces in the Black community really teaching authentic Christianity or what?

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Photo:Mark Wilson/Getty Images

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Bright Hope Church in Philadelphia Puts all its Money in Black-owned Bank
Business and city leaders gathered in Progress Plaza to hail an investment by one of the city’s prominent black churches in a black-owned bank that serves North Philadelphia and other parts of the city.

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Two Maryland men are being sought in connection with a scheme that bilked 21 black churches across Michigan out of $660000. Churches in Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, Inkster, Ferndale, Highland Park, Port Huron and Ypsilanti were scammed.

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In America’s season of discontent, much of the outrage is trained on President Barack Obama. But division persists over how much race influences the backlash.

WASHINGTON — In the predawn hours of last Nov. 5, while much of the nation celebrated Barack Obama’s election as the nation’s first black president, three white men in Springfield, Mass., doused the partially completed Macedonia Church of God in Christ with gasoline and burned it to the ground.
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