By way of the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal via the Carpetbagger Report via the Daily Kos, the Fellowship Baptist Church in Saltillo, Mississippi, voted not to approve blacks as members during a scheduled Sunday night business meeting Aug. 6. A 12-year old boy of mixed race who was converted in the church at a revival sought to become a member, but the church was afraid that he might come with his people, and they couldn't have that. The pastor, Rev. John Stevens resigned that night in protest.

When I was in high school in Jackson, my church, Central Presbyterian on West Capitol Street, was the target of a civil rights effort to integrate white churches in the city. I remember that my father, one of the leaders in the church, argued in favor of seating them when they came, but he was overruled, so when they arrived, accompanied by a crowd of reporters and photographers, there was a solid wall of elders and deacons across the front of the church that refused to let them in. It was not our proudest moment. They were refused by nearly all the churches in Jackson. St. Andrews Episcopal Church seated them, but they left almost immediately.

The Bible makes it extremely clear that the kingdom makes no distinction of persons. At Central we frequently sang from the Presbyterian Hymnal the hymn "In Christ there is no East or West," but I guess people didn't bother to think about what they were singing. That very hymn is undoubtedly contained in the hymnbook that sits in the pews of Fellowship Baptist Church. The story of Philip and the Ethiopian is contained in their Bibles, just as it is in ours. Acts 8: 27-39. Given sufficient emotional (and financial) investment, however, the human mind can easily convince itself that fair is foul and foul is fair.

So the stench of bigotry hovers through the filthy air.