ST. PETERSBURG – Addie Williams — Miss Addie, as she’s known by nearly everyone in her predominantly Black neighborhood south of the city’s prosperous downtown — misses her church family.
The 93-year-old has worshiped at New Pleasant Grove Baptist Church just a couple of times since March. She couldn’t sit up front as she has for years due to the social distancing required to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
“They have the seats so far apart, I just can’t hear,” said Miss Addie, who has been sewing masks for her neighbors and making do with a Monday night Bible study by telephone. “I miss the congregation.’’
Churches are often the hubs of civic life in predominantly Black communities, and those neighborhoods have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic. Nationwide, Black people are dying from COVID-19 at 2.4 times the rate of white people. The Tampa Bay Times reported that Black residents in Pinellas County are 2.5 times more likely to contract the virus than white residents, one of the starkest disparities in Florida. And those infections are centered in several neighborhoods south of downtown where most of St. Petersburg’s Black residents live.
The churches have responded to the disproportionate impact of the virus in their neighborhoods in different ways. They share some common approaches, such as providing food, masks and hand sanitizer to residents, broadcasting services online and providing other methods for tithing besides passing the collection plate. But they have taken their own paths regarding in-person Sunday services.
Some churches still have not reopened their sanctuaries more than five months after Florida began shutting down schools and businesses. Mount Zion Progressive Missionary Baptist Church, which drew from 1,500 to 2,000 worshipers to in-person Sunday services before the pandemic, still offers services only online. Pastor Louis Murphy said the church is paying close attention to government guidelines and the advice of doctors and other medical experts within the congregation. He said the church remains focused on its efforts to address racial inequalities, such as reducing poverty through job creation and advocating for better wages.
“I would like the church to have a greater impact in the communities where the percentage of infections are higher,” said Murphy, whose evangelism team heads out with personal protection equipment into the neighborhood. “It coincides with our vision to bring about an effective change within a two-mile radius of the church.”
Other churches have tried different approaches to hold in-person services outside their sanctuaries.
Parishioners in lawn chairs attend Sunday morning church service under the natural shaded canopy of trees at Bethel Community Baptist Church in St. Petersburg on August 16, 2020. The church has been holding outdoor services since Easter Sunday. The congregation migrated from the parking lot to the shade as the weather got hotter. Cars also parked along the periphery can be heard blowing their horns as a shout of approval during the services.
(Photo by Boyzell Hosey)
The Rev. Manuel Sykes, senior pastor at Bethel Community Baptist Church, initially planned to assign certain groups to worship inside the church at particular times. But when there was confusion in Florida about how many people might be allowed inside buildings for large gatherings, the church began holding services outside under its canopy of trees. Sykes and his associate ministers are keeping in touch with members of their large congregation through groups divided by age, a system established before the coronavirus shutdown.
“When the virus came out,’’ Sykes said, “the challenge was, how do we have services in person, because a lot of people need the fellowship…(The outdoor service) really, really has done well for us….There are still a lot of people who don’t come out, who are very cautious and won’t come out under any circumstances.”
Mount Zion Primitive Baptist Church, which was livestreaming its services before the pandemic, switched to outdoor, drive-up services after the shutdown. But Pastor G. Gregg Murray said the congregation is now back in the sanctuary. Pauline Richmond, who has lupus, is often there, socially distanced and wearing gloves and the required mask.
“People with lupus have to be really careful about pretty much everything you do,” she said. “The pandemic for me has been a challenge, but praise God, I’m coming through excellently.’’
New Pleasant Grove Baptist Church has held church services inside throughout the pandemic. Pastor L. Don Middleton said he initially did not know what to do, but ultimately decided to keep holding services inside as schools and other institutions closed. He said the church follows social distancing and other Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and sanitizes the sanctuary after each use. He said no one in the congregation has contracted the virus.
“The Lord never put the burden on me to close the church,” Middleton said. “Of course, that caused some controversy. I am not trying to downplay the severity of people losing their family members. As a born-again believer, I trust in the Lord.”
Middleton said the church has told members to do what’s best for themselves and asked the vulnerable to stay home. Watson Haynes, president and CEO of the Pinellas County Urban League and associate pastor, is following that advice and not attending services. He is in the older age group the CDC says is more vulnerable to severe effects of COVID-19.
“Even with the position that I hold (with the church), I need to fall in line with what the surgeon general is recommending,” said Haynes, who participates in church services online and is a member of St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman’s coronavirus advisory committee.
“Those ministers who decide to hold church, that is their choice,’’ he said. “I know that there are some pastors that say God’s got their back. But God gives me what I call common sense.”
Middleton said his church has been offering another service to grieving families during the pandemic that some other churches are avoiding. It has performed funeral services for at least 10 residents who were not members of New Pleasant Grove. None were victims of the coronavirus.
“Historically, in the Black community, when someone loses a loved one, it is not only a time to reflect and celebrate that individual’s life, it’s also a time when family members and friends can come out and pay their respects,’’ Middleton said. “Not being able to do that doesn’t give closure. Being able to be in a church and go through a church service and go to the cemetery and lay their loved ones to rest, it begins the healing process.”
While the approach to church services has varied in St. Petersburg’s Black neighborhoods, church leaders are united in their commitment to address both short-term and long-term challenges. To meet the immediate need, that’s meant increasing food donations, distributing masks and hand sanitizers, securing financial help for people who normally wouldn’t qualify for assistance, dropping off groceries to the homebound and providing rides to free testing for the virus.
“We try to keep people informed as much as possible,’’ said Murray of Mount Zion Primitive Baptist Church. “A lot of people are fearful that the pandemic is not over.’’
The long-term needs are even greater than the immediate ones.
Like many, Murphy blames poverty for the disproportionate effect of the coronavirus among Black residents. He said access to healthy food, affordable housing and health care is inadequate in these mostly Black St. Petersburg neighborhoods.
“I lived it, and it’s hard for people who haven’t lived it to understand it,’’ said Murphy, who grew up in DeLand in Central Florida. “You have generational poverty and lack of education that impact area ZIP codes where we are seeing those high rates of infections. You have folks that are struggling that are in poverty, but they are working. You have a system that is built on not paying them a livable wage. These people don’t have the education, but they have their jobs, in restaurants, hotels, low-end service jobs, living under the poverty line, but they are trying. They can’t get on a laptop and work from home.’’
Murphy’s church, which has long distributed food to those in need, is boosting its efforts during the pandemic. So is Gospel Ministries in the Childs Park neighborhood. Pastor Fareedah Humphries, who heads the small nondenominational congregation with her husband, senior pastor Alan Humphries, said the church’s Community Service Involvement arm depends on donations to provide the food, toiletries and household items it gives away. It recently distributed donated COVID-19 and hurricane kits.
“It is a blessing to reach out, to go beyond the four walls,” Humphries said. “The traditional church is great. However, what is the church doing for the community?”
Waveney Ann Moore
The Rev. Stephan Brown of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, one of two predominantly Black Catholic parishes in the Tampa Bay area, is going a step further in pursuing long-term solutions. Brown, one of the Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg’s few Black priests, has volunteered to participate in a coronavirus vaccine trial. He has diabetes, one of the underlying conditions that heightens the risk for severe illness from the coronavirus and a chronic condition among Blacks.
“I feel that we, as leaders in the community, we need to both encourage and to try and be part of a cure,” Brown said.
Until then, the spiritual leaders said, Black churches will continue to reach beyond their walls to serve their communities — and to preach to their congregations to keep the faith.
“We’ve always talked about two things, faith and wisdom,” said Murray, of Mount Zion Primitive Baptist. “Yes, God will watch over us, but he also wants us to have wisdom and follow CDC guidelines. … God has allowed this virus. In God’s time, God will give us a vaccine. We trust that even though (the virus) comes from God, we try to be as safe as possible and if that means taking the vaccine when that comes out, then we should.”
Waveney Ann Moore recently retired as a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times, where she reported on St. Petersburg neighborhoods and on religion for decades. This is part of a series funded by a grant from the Rita Allen Foundation to report and present stories about the disproportionate impact of the virus on people of color, Americans living in poverty and other vulnerable groups.
