Voice of Calvary

Posted on April 10, 2015 by PLT Staff

Lecture given by Chris Rice at the second meeting of the Lived Theology and Race Workgroup in Oxford, Mississippi. Rice discusses racial reconciliation by focusing on the events he experienced from 1981-1998 at Voice of Calvary church in Mendon Hall, Mississippi. The congregation of Voice of Calvary was a racially and economically diverse body that underwent the struggles of racial reconciliation within both the context of their own community and in that of the greater American South.

Excerpt: “My first memory of Spencer, John’s son, was when he stood up in a meeting and asked the question, ‘What are all you white people doing here?’ It was a very confusing question to me, because it seemed kind of obvious to me why we were there: to help the poor! But I found out in 1983 that it wasn’t only Spencer who asked this question. There were a number of African Americans who began to speak up in our church and talk about where the racism that we need to deal with is… right here at Voice of Calvary!”

This document is published by the Project on Lived Theology (PLT). For any questions related to its use, please contact PLT (https://www.livedtheology.org//contact/). Copy available for use subject to Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution required, Non-Commercial use, No Derivatives, 3.0, Unported.