No ordinary Sunday: Ebenezer celebrates 125 years

By M.B. Pell

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Barbara Smith has attended Ebenezer Baptist Church for the past 52 years. Martin Luther King Jr. baptized her when she was nine, an event she recalls with pride. She remembers sermons by his father, Martin Luther King Sr., and the tragic passing of King Jr.

“After church my father would take us out for ice cream, if we were quiet during the sermon,” she said.

On Sunday, Smith and hundreds of others gathered to worship as the congregation’s members have done more than 6,500 times since the church’s founding in 1886, yet this Sunday also was a celebration of the church’s 125th anniversary.

Ebenezer Senior Pastor Raphael G. Warnock encouraged his parishioners to enjoy the moment, but also to look to the future.

“Part of the challenge of leading a church like Ebenezer, that has a great history, is reminding people that our history should serve as a springboard for more activism,” Warnock said after the sermon.

He wants to motivate a generation that shared in the victories of the civil rights movement to strive for greater social justice. Warnock is uniquely suited to this task, born after the civil rights movement.

He said the church plans to tackle poverty with the same vigor and success that its members attacked racism in the past. The church will serve not just African-Americans and urban residents suffering from poverty, but white and rural residents as well.

The church honored members for their past actions. U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who became the second Ebenezer member awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and Sen. Leroy Johnson, the first African-American elected to the Georgia Senate since reconstruction, were saluted during services.

“Without this church there would be no Martin Luther King Jr.,” Lewis said. “He became the embodiment of this church.”

Lewis was married in the church in 1968 and has been a member since then.

King was the first Ebenezer congregant to receive the Presidential Freedom Award. King was baptized in the church and served as pastor of the downtown institution from 1960 through 1968, until he was assassinated in Memphis.

The church was founded in 1886 on Airline Street by Rev. John A. Parker, who was born into slavery.  Since then, the church has earned a reputation for social activism, evident in its nickname, Freedom Church.

“One hundred twenty-five years is not a history of bricks and mortar; it’s a history of people,” Warnock said.