Louisville Magazine

FEB 2012

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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"As we walked into the 1979 Southern Baptist Convention (the first year of the conservative takeover), these two were standing outside. For a joke I said to my friend, 'Here, take my picture,' and walked up, stood between them and said, 'Smile.' Turns out they were . . . conservative Presbyterians." loving you no matter what you've done." He ends the service in the crowd, hugging, handholding, asking about a family mem- ber, a Bill Clinton working the rope line. Phelps spies a journalist being bear-hugged by a stranger in the back row. "Hey, man, I'm glad you could make it! What'd you think?" Phelps asks. Te journalist, a cradle Catholic, verbal- Y ou can see your breath, human-engine puffs of smoke, as you cross Cherokee Road and make for the double wooden doors of Highland Baptist Church. You join the other smoke-puffs as they trudge along — hands in pockets, heads down against the cold — to Highland's Friday service. It's a little after 7 on a 26-degree night in mid-January. Friday the 13th, to be precise. Tey come in jeans and work boots. Puffy NFL team jackets and tennis shoes. Sweat pants and oversized coats. Many of the men look as if they've just gotten off work — not the office but the construction crew or the kitchen — and have chosen church instead of a cold one, a sermon instead of a nap. It's a diverse crowd that fills about a third of Highland's 60 rows of pews. Tere are men and women, black and white, Hispanic, mostly young, mostly working class. Many are recovering addicts. Near the altar up front, a man with a gui- tar sings what could pass as a Delta Blues tune. Many in the pews join in. Tey seem to know the words. I'm trading my sorrow I'm trading my shame I'm laying them down for the joy of the Lord. Off to the side, swaying and singing be- neath the stained glass, blue eyes dancing across the room, stands Joe Phelps. If you didn't know better, you wouldn't guess that Phelps, 57, is the pastor of Highland Baptist Church. He wears a beige sweater that zips at the neck, an open-collar shirt and khaki pants. In one hand, he holds a cup of coffee and a copy of tonight's program, the top of [60] LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 2.12 which reads, "Find Peace at Friday Church. No Hellfire, No Brimstone." Te line is vintage Phelps. As stereotypical Baptist preachers go, Phelps is an outlier, if not an outcast. He admits to being a liberal. ("I can't run from that description," he says with a smile.) And he regularly spars with fundamentalist Bap- tists on issues that range from the character- ization of homosexuality in the Bible to the placement of the Ten Commandments in the public square. He's now led two church- es — Highland Baptist and the Church of the Savior in Austin, Texas — that have bro- ken from the conservative Southern Baptist Convention. A few years ago, Phelps even took on Walmart, criticizing the retail be- hemoth about its wages and health benefits. Would Jesus shop at Walmart? Te ques- tion landed him on Fox News and got him branded a "wacko" in the Limbaugh Letter by Rush Limbaugh himself. More recently, Phelps publicly defended the Occupy movement, whose protests against corporate greed and fiscal inequality are, writes the pastor, what churches should be protesting, too. Phelps even visited the Occupiers one afternoon at Founder's Square downtown. Also, in a December op- ed in the Courier-Journal, Phelps, a prolific writer of commentaries for print publica- tion, compared fast-food workers to mod- ern-day slaves, held in bondage by poor pay from companies out to maximize profits. Tonight at Highland, unlike at his sermon the previous Sunday, Phelps doesn't mention the Occupy protests, but he speaks of an in- clusive and forgiving God who "won't stop izes his only thought: "I'm not sure, but I'm glad I came." After the service, parishioner Bill Dinwid- die, 70, slides into an empty pew, rests an arm across the pew back, laces the fingers of both hands together in front of his thick red scarf and tells his story. "I grew up Method- ist," he says, "then joined an Episcopal choir, then took 25 years off. In 2007, I was in the hospital for four months, where I should have died, then moved into a place across the street." He'd heard about Highland Baptist and Phelps, and Dinwiddie wanted to reconnect with something, something besides hospital stays and fighting cancer. So he attended a Friday service. He listened to the addicts line up to tell their stories or read Scrip- ture — Hello, I'm Bill, and I'm an alcoholic. (Hello, Bill!) Today's Scripture is from the Gospel of Mark… — and he saw the group hugs during the offering of peace, and he heard Phelps promise to stay after and talk to anybody for as long as he or she needed. "I said, 'Tis is why I'm alive,'" Dinwiddie recalls. "I'm a retired social worker, 40 years in the field, and this was the first church I'd attended that speaks to the people who've been disenfranchised, who've been — par- don the language — shit on." As Dinwiddie talks, a recovering alcoholic who gave his testimony during the service stops to say goodbye. "Do you recognize his name?" Dinwiddie asks the journalist. No. He notes that the man is from a promi- nent local family, another example of the all- comers credo of Highland Baptist. "Some of these addicts will come up to (Phelps) and say, 'I don't believe in God,'" Dinwiddie says. "And he replies with the most astute answer I've ever heard to that statement. He'll say, 'Tell me about the God you don't believe in, because I may not believe in him, either.'"

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