"The Help" didn't help: Church in Jackson, Miss., refuses to marry black couple

As for anywhere, all it takes is one or two racist knuckle-draggers to drag the whole place down. My guess is they're old, unrepentant fuckers in their late 70s who long for the days of segregation.

 

A very solid take on this from Russell Moore, a noted Baptist preacher/speaker:

http://www.russellmoore.com/2012/07/30/race-and-the-gospel-in-mississippi/

 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-mississippi-weddingbre87516f-20120806,0,3272094.story

The church apologizes, except not really

 

DING DING DING!

 

Googled "racist Baptists" (inside quotes) = 1,810 hits.

Googled "racist Methodists" (same) = 52 hits.

 

Solid like a limp noodle. The church made a mistake and is trying to save face. Sure, the transgression can be forgiven but definitely not forgotten. I don't believe that heaven and hell are segregated. I also believe that everyone in this church was for what happened to the Wilson family.
Best advice would be to take the apology and move on to another church where the color of one's skin doesn't matter.

 

I googled "racist pentecostals"... 5 hits!
Yea me and my religion! We love allsya'll

 

More Mississippi problems. Lauderdale County ran what the feds called a "school-to prison pipeline" where kids received no due process and at least in some cases apparently suffered inhumane treatment:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/10/us/mississippi-juvenile-justice/index.html

 

And for those who didn't know, Lauderdale County is adjacent to Neshoba County where the county seat is Philadelphia. Neshoba County is known as the site of one of the most infamous race-related crimes in American history. In 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered brutally by white supremacists, allegedly including a deputy county sheriff in Philadelphia. The crime and decades-long legal aftermath inspired the 1988 movie Mississippi Burning.

 

Re: "The Help" didn't help: Church in Jackson, Miss., refuses to marry black cou

Actually, Lauderdale County and Neshoba County have about as much in common as Bill Cosby and Tupac Shakur. Neshoba is a typical rural Southern county; Lauderdale is dominated by the city of Meridian, a tough old railroad town with a big-city crime problem.

 

Nothing is "typical" about Neshoba County. Meridian is the county seat of Lauderdale County.

 

Re: "The Help" didn't help: Church in Jackson, Miss., refuses to marry black cou

Drip, Neshoba is more typical than a lot of people would like to admit. There are a LOT of rural, backwoods Southern counties – from Texas to Virginia – that saw some dark, dark deeds during the Jim Crow era. Neshoba just happens to be the place whose dirty deeds became the most publicized and most notorious.