Pastor Fred Luter 4.25.13
Pastor Fred Luter, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, preaches at West Mastin Lake Baptist Church in Huntsville, Ala., on April 25, 2013, as the guest of Pastor Willie Hinton. Joining him on the platform is the Rev. Dr. Julius Scruggs of Huntsville, president of the National Baptist Convention. Huntsville City Councilman Dr. Richard Showers Sr. proclaimed Luter an honorary citizen of the City of Huntsville. (Kay Campbell / KCampbell@al.com)
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – Pastor Fred Luter Jr. is one of the people on the speed dial of national reporters and broadcasters, one of the obvious invitees to the president's prayer breakfast or any national gathering of religious leaders.
A fiery street preacher, Luter built Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans from a faltering, aging downtown congregation of about 50 in the mid-1980s into a multi-campus mega-church.
Luter also swept to election in June 2012 as president of the Southern Baptist Convention with no opposition. He is widely expected to be re-elected for a second one-year term this June when the SBC meets in Houston for their annual convention.
Luter is the first African-American to take the lead of that 17-million-member network of Baptist congregations – an achievement made especially notable because of the SBC’s historic support, back in the day, of both slavery and segregation.
But ask Luter himself to describe himself, and he moves into an exaggerated New Orleans accent: “I’m just a country street preacher from Naw’leans.”
In the few minutes between when Luter arrived in Huntsville Thursday afternoon to speak at West Mastin Lake Baptist Church, 4705 Mastin Lake Road in Huntsville, and the beginning of the evening's one-night revival, he sat down with The Huntsville Times for a quick interview.
Q. It's been a rough couple of weeks in America, with the bombings in Boston, the explosion in West, Texas, and now the flooding threatening along the Mississippi. What do you, as a person of faith, have to say to those affected by this?
A. "When tragedies like this strike with so many deaths and injuries, my mind always goes back to Hurricane Katrina. That experience affected me like nothing else.
(Luter's church in the Ninth Ward was flooded with 9 feet of the Hurricane Katrina storm surge. It took two years for the congregation of 8,000 then, many of whom were scattered across the U.S., to rebuild. More than the water in the church was the loss of life his congregation had to deal with.)
"My first reaction is a sense of sadness for those families, for the lives tragically taken. I remember how distraught I was after Katrina – I was in a bad way. And it was the prayers of the saints of God that got me through. So, in my church, we are praying for the folks in Boston and in Texas. Prayers can help."
Q. Both suspects in the Boston bombing incident identified themselves as Muslims. Do you think Islam teaches Muslims to be violent?
A. "No. You can’t say that. You can’t say all Muslims want to kill us. That’s like saying all policemen are crooked – or that all preachers are crooked. Unfortunately, we will always have a handful of people that, unfortunately, are up to evil. It can happen in any country, in any religion. But you can’t paint with one whole brushstroke a whole nationality or religion like that for what two guys did.”
Q. You've been on the job as president of the Southern Baptist Convention for a year. What do you think is the main thing you've been able to accomplish?
A. "I think what I’ve done is to blend this Convention so that it looks more like what Heaven is going to look like. I’ll be honest with you – some of our meetings have been almost all white. But I’m seeing more African-Americans, more Hispanics, more Asians in every congregation – more of a mix.
"As one of my prayers when I was elected that more ethnic groups would feel comfortable becoming part of this convention. The fact that I ran unopposed, which never happens, tells me that there were many others that felt like it was time."
Q. In the last year, you've met a wide array of national leaders. What stands out for you?
A. "I have been most blessed. My wife and I were invited to meet Billy Graham. We got to sit with him at his kitchen table for about 45 minutes. That was like going to the mountain to meet Moses. That was undoubtedly a high point.
"But I tell you something else I’ll never forget was meeting people after one of the state convention meetings. There was this long line of people, and an elderly woman worked her way up in the line. When she got to me, she put her hands on each side of my face and looked at me with tears in her eyes.
“'I have been waiting for this moment all my life,' she said.
"Whooee! I tell you, I didn’t want to wash my face for a week.
"I have prayed to see the walls of racism that divide us would come down. I believe those prayers are being answered."
In this very short excerpt from Luter's April 25, 2013, sermon from John 10:10-12 at West Mastin Lake Baptist Church, Luter reminds the congregation that without the abundant life Jesus promises, nothing else matters --
Kay Campbell, religion reporter for The Huntsville Times and
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