Fiedler v. Marumsco Baptist Church, 486 F. Supp. 960 (E.D. Va.

Moore, a white man from Mississippi, was opening a meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, with an eminently tweetable, infinitely complicated call to end racial division within the church. Millennials care deeply about race and racial justice, so the church has to care, too. And they are part of a consistent, longstanding effort. Since at least , the church has been publicly repenting for its history of racial discrimination.

The Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church passed a vote to ban interracial couples. By. CHRISTINA NG. December 1, , AM. 5 min read. Interracial Marriage.

The Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church voted 9 to 6 on Sunday to ban interracial couples from church services or functions, with the exception of funerals. Stella Harville, 24, and her fiance Ticha Chikuni, 28, are the couple that prompted the church’s actions. Harville is white and Chikuni is black. The couple met at Georgetown College in Kentucky where both went to school and are scheduled to marry in July Harville is in graduate school in Indiana and Chikuni is working at Georgetown College, but when the couple visits Harville’s parents in Pike County, Ky.

Harville’s parents Cathy and Dean Harville have been church members for decades. Cathy Harville has taught Sunday school at the church and Dean Harville was a deacon there and is currently the church’s secretary. They consider the church’s 42 congregants their family. But after a service in June where Stella Harville and Chikuni participated by singing and playing the piano for a hymn, the family was shocked when then-pastor Melvin Thompson approached them after the service.

We wanted to know why. The next week, Cathy and Dean Harville met with the Thompson and were shocked to hear their pastor say that members of the congregation had said they would walk out if Chikuni sang again.