Alabama pastor fired for inviting black people to his church

Aug 3, 2016

Jonathan Greer used to be a pastor at the Mt. Sterling Baptist Church in Butler, Alabama, but he was unanimously voted out after the church leadership became upset with him for inviting black children to Vacation Bible School and told him to stop.

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“There was pushback about where the types of children we were bringing in, and I was asked to not invite black children to VBS,” Greer said in an interview with WTOK-TV.

After being told repeatedly that black people were not allowed at the church, Greer decided to preach Sunday about racism.

“I wanted the church to know that this is not consistent with the gospel,” he told the news station. “This is not consistent with God’s word that we honor and give dignity to all people. That’s what the Bible teaches us, and all people are worthy and in need of the gospel, and racism denies that to a certain amount of people.”

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Freddie Moore, a deacon at the church, insisted that black people were welcome to join the congregation and that the reason he was voted out was that he had not been working well with deacons or visiting church members.

But Greer insisted that the list of reasons he was given for his firing “were all related to negative things happening if black people started coming.”

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“What they really mean is that someone can wander in off the street and they won’t stop them, but they specifically asked me, explicitly, not to invite black people. I tried to communicate with them that that’s not consistent with Christianity,” Greer said.