Minister calls for black Baptist group to help families

ST. LOUIS -- A black Baptist leader is urging black churches to set goals for reducing by 25 percent the rate of black divorce, teen pregnancy, illiteracy, murder and HIV infection by 2012, and increasing the adoption of black foster children.

The goals are part of the ambitious Save the Family Now initiative that the Rev. R.B. Holmes Jr. rolled out this week as more than 45,000 delegates of the National Baptist Convention USA attended the group's annual Congress of Christian Education.

Holmes said it was time for black clergy to lead a movement, not unlike the fight for civil rights 40 years ago. Ministers must challenge the culture and forces that have hurt the black family and community, including those who "demean, degrade and belittle our mothers and daughters," he said.

"We have to be prophetic, positive, persistent," said Holmes, who is congress president for the several million-member Baptist convention.

Over the last 20 years, the Bethel Missionary Baptist church he pastors in Tallahassee, Fla., has partnered with others to provide senior citizen housing, charter schools, mental health clinics, opportunities for first-time home-buyers, even a restaurant to train people for work.

He wants to identify 25 cities that could duplicate the model for their churches. "That," he said, "is a church ministry."

On Friday, panels of black clergy, mayors and educators from historically black colleges and universities discussed strategies for bolstering the black family.

Holmes said it wasn't enough that critics throttled talk-show host Don Imus for referring to the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos."

"We won't tolerate the N-word, the B-word or the H-word from anybody," Holmes said.

"We can't give Nelly, 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg a pass. We'll take it as far as it needs to go to challenge the music, the lyrics and videos that bring about total devastation of the black family."

Fitzgerald Hill, president of Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock, said he is appalled by the disproportionate number of black men in prison, who suffered from a lack of good role models.

"Until black men recapture leadership responsibility in their families, this generational curse will be passed down," he said.

He said his college started sports and music programs in high schools to recruit children to a better future. The college teaches students to assume leadership and understand "why God put you here. It's not just making money," he said.

Stanley Hillard of Houston, who heads the National Baptist Married Couples Conference, said drugs, AIDS, incarceration and military service have taken fathers out of the home.

"No matter how it's lost, it's lost," he said. "We have to address all the areas."

The church has a couples and singles ministry, and teaches teens about abstinence and safe sex.

A workshop this week preached safe behaviors to 3,000 teenagers to prevent HIV infection. "That wouldn't have happened five years ago," health organizer Evelyn Mason said.