No one would be stunned to learn that the Spanish Action League, leaders of the Near West Side Initiative and the parishioners of St. Lucy’s would be meeting with city and school district officials to plead the case for the survival of Blodgett School.
What did surprise many was the presence of a leader of a suburban, evangelical megachurch at the center of the storm. The Rev. Joe Coudriet of Abundant Life Christian Center was the most vocal and visible leader of the effort, writing letters to newspapers, assembling a coalition of supporters and attending meetings with decision makers. The Rev. John Carter, the lead pastor at Abundant Life, spoke from the altar beseeching his congregation to attend a street rally on Nov. 11 to save the school. “If you have plans for that night,” Carter said bluntly, “change them.” Coudriet (pronounced “Coo-Dray”), who serves as outreach minister of the church, has been credited by many with keeping the needs of Blodgett before the mayor, the Common Council and the school board.
According to Carter, who founded Abundant Life in 1990 in his Westcott Nation apartment, no one should be surprised to see his congregation getting involved in issues that affect the Near West Side. Abundant Life, which draws people from as far away as Rochester, has been involved with the poorest Syracuse neighborhood for 10 years, distributing food, supplying smoke detectors and conducting prayer services. Most famously, the congregation spearheaded the construction of a $400,000 library for the school after Carter learned that the children did not have one.
Religious experience: A typical Sunday morning at Abundant Life Christian Center brings congregants to their collective feet in a show of spiritual solidarity, helped along by the Rev. John Carter’s animated sermon (below).
“What got us to Oswego Street was the diversity of our congregation,” says Carter in an interview conducted in the Velocity Center, a portion of the church campus dedicated to working with young people. “We come from so many backgrounds. We have teachers from Blodgett in our congregation. We have people in our congregation who come from that neighborhood.”
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For him, the Blodgett question was simply a moral issue. “It’s fundamentally wrong to promise things to community members in the poorest community, using them as a poster child to secure money, and then take it away. Those who were last should be first. You have to find a way to do what’s right.”
Abundant Life Christian Center, that big purple-roofed complex just to the west of Interstate 481 and south of the Thruway, may be at the forefront of major changes in the relationship between religion and politics in America. The megachurch that recently welcomed its 3,000th member and just launched its first weekly television show has taken a high profile in public debate on local school closings. Its pastor, who acknowledges that he once “wondered if one could be saved and vote for the Democratic candidate for president,” spoke movingly to his flock about tears he shed on election night as Barack Obama and his family took the stage in Chicago to claim victory.
The following week, the staff and many members of the congregation stood outside Blodgett School on Oswego Street to stand up for poor children whose educational needs they feared might be neglected.
Warmup act: The Rev. Joe Coudriet prepares the way for lead pastor, John Carter. Coudriet led the charge to save Blodgett School, into which the church had poured $400,000 for a library.
Carter and Coudriet carry a corporate management style into everything the church does, including its charitable works, which they have spun off into a nonprofit corporation called Mercy Works, which Coudriet serves as executive director. Mercy Works led the effort to build the Dream Center, the stunning library and media center at Blodgett, and their newest venture, the Vision Center, on the corner of South Salina Street and East Raynor Avenue, which, among other things, helps inner city youth acquire job skills.
Asked if he was concerned about the church getting too involved in politics, Carter offered this: “We want to hold their feet to the fire. We try to maintain relationships with politicians that help to serve people. Politicians come and go—the church is supposed to last.”
Keeping the Faith
Given the high profile of many prominent evangelicals who have for decades equated New Testament faith with Grand Old Party politics, a casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that the political involvement of evangelicals has forever been limited to opposing abortion and equal rights for gay people.
But that “white right” evangelical political movement—Carter’s term for the movement publicly associated with pastors such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and James Dobson—may have seen the apex of its political influence with the George W. Bush presidency.
This year the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate was seen by many as an attempt to retain the loyalty of conservative evangelical Republicans who did not view McCain as reliably on their side of “moral issues.” McCain’s defeat raises the possibility of realignment in the Republican Party that would diminish the role the religious right has played for three decades. This realignment, according to Carter, has already taken place within his and other congregations around the country.
“Abundant Life was founded around core values that my wife and I were given by the Lord,” says Carter, who regularly shares his conversations with God with his congregation and visitors, “to raise up a church that would transcend boundaries of race, class, geography, culture and politics.” That flock has grown to where the parking lot rivals that of Wegmans, and it takes 60 people to staff the church. His radio program airs every weekend and a Sunday half-hour TV show began airing on Jan. 4 on WSYR-Channel 9 at 11 a.m.
The diversity he speaks of is real, and rare, in local churches. On a typical Sunday at least a third of the people in the 700-seat sanctuary are of color, including some of the leaders and high ranking staff. Carter estimates that more than half of the members are people of color. Consider this: If you visit some of the most traditionally liberal churches in our area you will find congregations that are essentially either all white (May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society, Plymouth Congregational) or all black (Hopps Memorial AME Church). At Abundant Life, a church most people would identify with a conservative movement, you find a congregation that more closely resembles the America Barack Obama personifies.
“The most difficult by far is the political diversity,” says Carter. “On the week after Election Day, most pastors had to do one of two things—to console or to congratulate. I found myself looking out at people who were both mourning and celebrating.”
Chasz Parker is executive director of the Rescue Mission in Syracuse. While he does not attend Abundant Life, Parker is a devout evangelical and a keen observer of the evangelical movement both locally and nationwide. “Evangelicals are all over the map,” says Parker, who moved here to head the Mission in 1998 after 20 years of working among the homeless in Florida. “In the 1980s, people like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed commandeered the movement, or at least the limelight and the microphone. As a result, surveys have shown that most people see Christians as defined by what they’re against. This popular conception has become a misconception.”
Carter shares Parker’s analysis. “As white Christians with traditional values began to raise a political voice,” says the pastor, “up rose secular voices in talk radio. They fed them the Christian voting bloc. In the 1980s white evangelicals wanted to influence politics and they became drunk with power. I felt a pressure—people wanted me to tell them how to vote.”
Carter is part of a movement Parker calls the “emergent churches,” led by a new generation of pastors and congregations made up of 20- and 30-somethings with a craving for social involvement. Doug Bullock, pastor of Eastern Hills Bible Church, sees the demands of this group pushing his own large congregation toward greater social involvement at home and abroad.
In May 2008, a nationwide group of evangelicals published an Evangelical Manifesto outlining their traditional theology and eclectic politics. Among other things, they called for evangelicals to become more vocal on issues of serving the poor and protecting the environment. “Seeing conservative evangelical churches getting concerned with those in need is very welcome,” says Parker. “We are reclaiming the term ‘evangelical’ as a religious rather than a political term. The challenge is to make sure your politics isn’t defining your faith. You have to make sure your faith informs your politics.
“This has opened up evangelicals to ‘care of creation’ {godspeak for environmentalism}. This is a good thing—why would we want to be associated with plundering the earth?”
Carter says one of his inspirations is Rick Warren, though in fact Carter’s work preceded Warren’s. Warren, the best selling author and monster-church leader from California who has made disciples of everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Rupert Murdoch, exemplifies the shift in the evangelical world. In 2004, like many evangelical pastors, he stumped for George W. Bush. In 2008, he invited both McCain and Obama to a forum at his Saddleback Church, inviting the wrath of old school conservatives like Dobson.
Since then, President-elect Obama has invited Warren to offer the invocation at his Jan. 20 inauguration, prompting a firestorm of criticism, especially from gay Americans. They are angry at Warren’s support for California’s successful Proposition 8 initiative denying them the right to marry. Carter speaks reluctantly about homosexuality, but when he does, it is in the same breath as pedophilia, adultery and “other sexual sins.”
Carter does not recall ever preaching a sermon specifically on homosexuality. “I don’t think it’s healthy to single out one particular sin,” he says. “It’s not ‘one size fits all.’ As evangelical Christians who hold the Bible as our standard, we would preach that homosexual behavior is a sin, but no more than any other sexual sin.” He views Warren’s approach to the issue as “compassionate,” and believes Warren is being “unfairly targeted by the gay community.”
He continues: “Rick is a loving man. Traditional evangelicals brought a certain sense of rejection to homosexuals. Rick is trying to pull evangelicals toward a more loving approach. We are responsible for our own choices, but we don’t always choose what issues we are going to struggle with.”
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He refers to gay couples with children as doing “noble work. Sexuality is a very complicated thing. I’m very uncomfortable with how some people preach on these questions. I don’t agree with some evangelicals that those children should be taken away. It’s better for the child to be raised in a loving environment.”
While The New Times sought a gay evangelical’s perspective, there appears to be no representative group in Syracuse. The Rev. Craig Schaub of Plymouth Congregational Church—which describes itself as “welcoming and affirming” of gay couples—says he has been “intrigued by Rick Warren’s involvement in issues of compassion and justice, but very disappointed in his leadership on issues, particularly his avid support of Proposition 8.”
Sounding the theological counterpoint to Carter, Schaub adds that his congregation has had “a journey of biblical study and prayer that bears out that we are all created in God’s image, all called into intimate relationships of love, intimacy and faithfulness.”
Altared State
Carter’s own search for God turned serious when he was severely injured in a car wreck in January 1980 that took the life of his older brother Scott, who was driving along Henry Clay Boulevard, and the woman driving the car that hit them head on. The accident, which left him with a noticeable scar on his neck and chin, occurred as he was entertaining his brother by reading aloud from the personal ads in the Syracuse New Times. “Until then all I wanted to be was an actor,” he says.
The actor in him is evident each Sunday when Carter takes the altar. His precisely timed entrance follows a 30-minute warmup from a 25-piece musical group, exhortations and announcements from fellow ministers, and the presentation of the offering, which is central to Abundant Life’s theology and its success. Church members are asked to give the first 10 percent of their income to the church, and judging by the physical plant, many are giving generously.
Central to Carter’s message is the “Pathway to Prosperity.” In his interpretation of the Bible, money in the hands of true believers can be used for righteous work, and the faithful should not shy away from accumulating wealth. Last fall, banners with that slogan lined the driveway leading into the church parking lot, which is filled with late model cars before each of the three services every Sunday morning.
The atrium entrance to the church resembles a small shopping center. At the day care children are checked in and out with electronic wrist bands. The Word bookstore sells tracts teaching financial fitness and wellness titles such as The Biblical Cure for Back Pain and checkbook covers with biblical verses on prosperity. The scent of coffee from the Sacred Grounds Coffee shop pleases the nostrils as the sounds of the gospel group warming up in the sanctuary start to seep in to the entranceway where hundreds of people gather between services.
Carter’s delivery, the timing and staging of the worship hour are flawless. Worshippers look up at flat screens to the right and left of the altar to keep up with hymn lyrics and Bible verses, while the choir and ministers take their cues from a crew of techies operating the sound board, camera equipment and the all important countdown clock that keeps things moving on schedule.
If you can’t come to services, you can go to the express window and purchase a CD of The Word to Go. Moments after the service ends you can get a copy of the sermon on a freshly pressed CD, for $6.50. The Velocity Center, adjoining the sanctuary, contains a cafe, a dozen PlayStations, Dance Dance Revolution, Noc Hockey and a lounge area for teens. It would be the envy of any private school. A dozen high-tech classrooms and a small concert hall for youth gatherings are also part of the center.
The Need for Creed
While it is in many ways the most impressive, Abundant Life is one of a number of nondenominational churches that have sprung up in Central New York in the past two decades. As traditional Protestant congregations have shrunken and Catholics have left their parishes, these family-friendly Bible churches have attracted them and other hordes of believers. “Denominations have by and large fallen by the wayside,” says Parker. “Movements and associations are much more common.”
Eastern Hills is one of the oldest, with roots going back to the 1950s. Faith Chapel, on West Seneca Turnpike on Onondaga Hill, has nearly 150 members, though the number of attendees at services appears to have declined in the past four years, according to the church’s annual report (churches are not required by law to make their financial records public). The Pompey Community Church, closely allied with Eastern Hills, was bursting at the seams until it started construction last year on a new sanctuary which they hope to have completed before next Easter. Believers Chapel, with locations in Cicero, Fulton and Canastota, claims a following of 3,000 churchgoers.
Like most white evangelical churches nationwide, they have been identified with conservative social movements concerned with abortion and gay rights. In reality, says Parker, the religious right, or what Carter refers to as the “white right” political evangelicals, never held much sway here locally. “We never had that as much here.”
According to Parker, evangelicals around the nation are swinging back from a period when, as he puts it, “our politics may have informed our faith,” to a time when the opposite is the case. This identification in the public mind of evangelicals with conservative Republican politics has gotten so pervasive that pastors like Bullock of Eastern Hills even shy away from use of the term “evangelical,” because of how it is perceived.
“We are definitely evangelical, a congregation of born-again Christians,” says Bullock, who grew up in the church and returned there to be ordained in 1984. “I never paid a lot of attention to people like Falwell or Robertson or Dobson. This is not an activist church; you could come here for a year and not know that we’re pro-life.” Unlike Abundant Life, Eastern Hills never holds candidate forums, nor do they distribute voters’ guides.
According to the Ventura, Calif.-based Barna Institute, there are more than 101 million born-again Christians in the United States, including 53 percent of southerners (compared to 29 percent of residents of the Northeast). Barna calculates the number of evangelicals, which he defines by adherence to Bible-based beliefs, at 18 million Americans, or 8 percent of the population.
The evangelical movement has always had a liberal or progressive wing, according to Carter. For most of the 20th century that wing was the black church. Black churches were in the forefront of the civil rights movement, the push for the Voting Rights Act, and have been focal points for community organizing in African-American neighborhoods for a long time. “White right evangelicals like Falwell and Robertson were preceded by black evangelicals like Martin Luther King, Jr.,” says Carter. “When you hear evangelical, you think of a suburban white guy listening to James Dobson. But there are a ton of evangelicals—Latino, black, white. What is unusual is to find a mixture of those two.
“When our prayers start sounding like campaign speeches, we have to be careful,” says Carter, who believes that one day God will return to rule, but in the meantime, democracy will have to do. “God is not a Republican. He is not a Democrat. He has his people in all places, including both parties. We don’t know what our nation needs, but God knows. God has children that are Republicans and Democrats.”
The power of Christ: The Rev. John Carter speaks with authority about the role of religion in everyday life.
Purple Reign
I knew something different was happening when the young black woman I met on West Onondaga Street, who was getting out the vote for Barack Obama, began talking about her pastor and her church. I fully expected that she would name one of a dozen ministers in the traditionally African-American churches on the South Side. Instead she referred to a white guy who lives in Baldwinsville, and the church with the purple roof. I decided it was time to pay a visit to Abundant Life.
On Nov. 9, just days after the election of Obama, the Rev. John Carter spoke to his congregation. The man who describes himself as “the pastor of the largest congregation of African-Americans in Central New York, who happens to be white,” and who once believed that salvation and Democratic politics were incompatible, would not reveal to his congregation his choice for president.
He told his congregation that they should remember that Obama “is not our savior, neither is he Satan. He is a man, and for now, he is the man.” He acknowledged his difference with Obama regarding abortion, yet implored the congregation to surround Obama with “a cloud of prayer.”
He spoke of the historic nature of Obama’s victory in terms suggesting redemption.
• “I want to speak to those members of this congregation for whom this election is so much more than a political triumph or defeat. I want to say a few words to my brothers and sisters whose journey as Americans began nearly 400 years ago on ships they did not choose to a land they did not know to a life that could only be described as an unspeakable nightmare. How could anyone fully know what this moment means for the descendants of slaves?
• “After all, the rest of us came from families who immigrated here by choice, who came to this nation in hope, and who still bear last names rooted in the lands of our ancestral home. Our ancestors did not have to endure the indignity of living in a land that officially considered us as only three-fifths of a human being. We do not have to fight the living memories of seeing our people beaten, spit upon, and terrorized for seeking the basic rights to sit were we want in restaurants, on buses, and in school.”
While this “nation has made great strides” the stain of our national sin has remained. That is why this moment “is monumental for every American.” Our nation has repudiated her sad history in the most fundamental American way, in the voting booth. . .
• “On Tuesday night, as the announcement of our new president-elect was made, I found myself unable to hold back my tears. I wept for every black man that ever hung by a noose in the Mississippi moonlight. I wept for every American, living and dead, who ever heard the immortal words of Dr. King, and who believed in a dream where all people—black, brown and white—could live and work and worship as one people. I wept at the joy of being able to lead a congregation that looks like that dream. To men and women of every color in this congregation, politics aside, this is the end and the beginning of so much for us all. Now let’s stand as one and pray for our president-elect Barack Obama!”
—Ed Griffin-Nolan
