In an interview Tuesday, Young said he spent most of the four-day meeting solving disputes over the process to determine the candidates for the office of his denomination’s presidency who will be voted on later this year.
“A lot of the misunderstanding is, I believe, related to the fact that not only was I absent, that I was involved in those meetings, and then, of course, the sermon removed from the website,” he said, referring to the denomination’s Facebook page. “Obviously, that itself apparently led some folks to believe that there was something nefarious going on, but I assure that was not the case” on the part of the denomination.
On Thursday morning his denomination’s Facebook page included a post that said the morning service that featured Stewart’s sermon “has been maliciously removed from our page. The video was NOT removed by any of the administrators or the officers of the NBCUSAINC. We have reported the issue and are awaiting the results of the investigation.”
PNBC President David Peoples. (Courtesy photo)
Jerlen Young-Canada, media and press relations director for NBCUSA, said in an interview that videos of the session featuring Stewart’s sermon, as well as other sessions, were aired live and then disappeared for reasons yet to be determined.
“No one on our National Baptist media team have removed videos,” she said.
David Peoples, president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention Inc. who invited Stewart to preach, said the video of her sermon “was always up and never came down” on his denomination’s platforms.
He also confirmed that Young concurred with the invitation.
“All four presidents, all four conventions, we agreed for her to come,” said Peoples in an interview, adding that he considered her sermon to be “moving and inspiring.”
He said he was not personally aware of anyone who chose not to attend the session featuring Stewart because she was preaching. Noting that all four presidents preached during the meeting, he added, “I’m not taking it that people boycotted me because they didn’t hear me preach.”
Young said he could not say whether people did not attend a session because a woman was preaching but he estimated that as many as 500 people were away at the same meeting he attended at that time.
Peoples said the historic sermon by Stewart was not the only notable moment of the National Baptist Joint Board Session’s third meeting — after previous gatherings in 2005 and 2008 — which also featured leaders of the National Baptist Convention of America and the National Missionary Baptist Convention of America.
“We’re also proud about dealing with issues and empowering our people, dealing with voter registration, dealing with legislation that’s on ballots across the country that affect the least, the lost and the left out and marginalized, particularly those in the Black and brown communities.”
In her sermon, Stewart spoke of the courage of Claudia, the wife of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, who after having a dream, sent her husband a message to leave Jesus, an “innocent man,” alone.
Stewart described Jesus, who was ultimately crucified under Pilate, as someone who got in trouble for breaking traditions and caring for the marginalized.
The Rev. Gina Stewart. (Courtesy photo)
“Jesus had a whole theological conversation with a woman at a well who was coming to look for water,” she preached, “and then commissioned this woman to go and run a revival in the city and the folks got saved. Jesus is in trouble. I said, he’s in trouble because he actively sought out and engaged with individuals who were often excluded by society.”
Some PNBC-affiliated clergy watched the sermon online from afar, and at least one, the Rev. Otis Moss III of Chicago, incorporated some of it in his next Sunday sermon cautioning against, as Stewart put it, “using your spirituality as a smokescreen” instead of admitting to racism, sexism or homophobia.
“It was masterful,” said Moss, senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ and a lifetime member of the PNBC. He said he was told “there were individuals who did not attend” it but he considers Stewart to be “one of the most gifted preachers of this generation — period.”
