Making It God’s Country

No town is more emblematic of the South’s segregationist past than Selma, Alabama, where black Baptist clergyman Martin Luther King Jr. led a climactic civil rights march in 1965. But a racial line has now disappeared in Selma, as delegates from 24 congregations in Alabama’s dominant Southern Baptist faith voted to admit the Freedom Baptist Church as the first black member of the city’s Baptist association. Said newly entering pastor Letha Rumph: “I can see that a revival has begun in Selma.” A white colleague, the Rev. Ron Davis, chimed in: “God won’t let us fail.”