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130 Prophetic Ministry, the Prosperity Gospel, and Gentrification Cheryl J. Sanders this is an edited transcript of a public presentation and discussion that took place at the University of Virginia on April 23, 2009, as part of the Spring Institute for Lived Theology. A RECONCILIATION TRIUMVIRATE There is a book that I think many of you are familiar with: Divided by Faith. In that book, Christian Smith and Michael Emerson designate John Perkins as one of the founding fathers of the reconciliation movement in evangelical Christianity, and he is named as one of three black evangelical leaders who formed what I would call a reconciliation triumvirate: those three men are Tom Skinner, Sam Hines, and John Perkins.1 As I address my topic, which is John Perkins and the social witness of the African American church, I want to begin by locating Perkins within this reconciliation movement.Tom Skinner was from NewYork; Sam Hines was from Jamaica by way of Washington, D.C.; and John Perkins was from Mississippi. These were three prominent black leaders who participated in what Smith and Emerson regard as a failed experiment to convince white evangelicals to practice reconciliation. Skinner was the evangelist; Hines was the pastor; Perkins was the witness, the storyteller, the Bible teacher, the community organizer. Perkins is the only one of the three who survives and continues to thrive in reconciliation ministry. Tom Skinner died in his fifties; Sam Hines died at the age of sixty-five. In both cases I think we can say they died prematurely, but all the more reason to be thankful for the fruitful longevity of John Perkins,because he has lived long enough,I think, hopefully to outlive the verdict of Smith and Emerson: that the reconciliation movement failed. prophetic ministry, prosperity gospel, and gentrification 131 I knew all three of these men, but I knew Sam Hines the best, because he was my pastor for twenty-five years, and I succeeded him when I assumed the pastoral leadership of the Third Street Church of God in Washington, D.C. I knew Tom Skinner to be a gifted evangelist, one of the few preachers I’ve ever known who can hold an audience for two and a half hours of preaching, with people at the edge of their seats, as opposed to falling off of their seats or vacating their seats. He addressed the claims of the gospel of Jesus Christ in evangelistic crusades and conventions. He specifically addressed the relevance of the gospel to the call to Black Power and liberation. His testimony was that he had been a gang member—a gangbanger—and he had a conversion experience, and he preached the gospel out of that journey. Hines brought preaching and pastoral care to the work of reconciliation and the context of the local congregation. He excelled. He was an excellent exegetical preacher, but he also excelled in forging relationships and acquiring resources to support urban ministry partnerships. The hallmark of his ministry at Third Street was the urban prayer breakfast, which was a daily program of ministry and outreach among the poor and homeless residents of Washington, D.C. The church is located right in the center of the city. Washington is shaped like a diamond, with the Capitol in the center. We are about one mile north of the Capitol, so we are right in the middle of the city. And there, for about twenty-five years or more, we would have a breakfast outreach ministry from Monday through Friday. At 7 a.m. there would be praise and worship; there would be proclamation of the gospel, a call to discipleship that specifically reached out to the poor. Because the street population ministered to far exceeded the small membership of the congregation, sometimes we had so many people that we would have the fellowship hall on the lower level filled with chairs, and then we would have the sanctuary full of people waiting to come down and be served. There is one thing I can commend: honor the memory of President Ronald Reagan, because during the Reagan years (that was the high-water mark of our ministry),so many people were turned out of mental institutions and other places that had been their place of safety. They were turned out to the streets, and those were the years when we had the highest attendance. It is still a mystery to me how President Reagan gets to be the...

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