New Leader of Largest Black Church Group Plans Activist Agenda

A politi cally active pastor who says the black church should be a force to be reckoned with in Washington was elected to lead the National Baptist Convention U.S.A. Inc. into the third millennium.

The Rev. Henry J. Lyons, who headed the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns in Florida, was elected recently to a five-year term as president of the nation’s largest black church.

At a victory celebration, Lyons vowed to work to increase the political and economic power of blacks.

“Our presence must be felt, must be made known and our counsel sought,” Lyons said. “We’ve got to let it be known we will not be taken for granted.”

Lyons, 52, a convention vice president and pastor of Bethel Metropolitan Baptist Church in St. Petersburg, received 3,545 votes to win the five-man race. The Rev. W. Franklyn Richardson, a pastor in the Westchester County, N.Y., town of Mt. Vernon finished second with 3,014 votes.

Lyons succeeds the Rev. T. J. Jemison, the Louisiana pastor who was prohibited from seeking reelection after 12 years in office.

The election of the convention’s third president in 42 years comes at a critical juncture for black churches that are under increasing pressure to deal more aggressively with AIDS, violence, poverty and the dissolution of family life.

“America continues to look to this group for leadership . . . and we’ve never offered them anything,” Lyons said. “We want to turn that whole image around.”

With an estimated 8 million members in 33,000 churches, the convention says it is the world’s largest black organization.

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Lyons takes over the convention presidency at a time when many black colleges are in trouble, black youths are turning to Islam in significant numbers, and drugs, crime and violence have reached a crisis stage in many communities where the convention’s 33,000 churches are located.

Lyons has said he wants to address issues such as AIDS, economic discrimination and other issues of importance to black Americans.

On the political front, Lyons said the convention will be a more active force in Washington, working closely with the President and groups such as the Congressional Black Caucus.

Lyons said he would like to see the convention take the lead in helping to develop mentoring programs that pair adult church members with youths in the community.

Another priority promised by Lyons is to increase financial aid to struggling black schools.

“Our black colleges are closing at an alarming rate,” Lyons said. “We’ve got to get in and bail those schools out.”

But to finance his proposals and to make the church a major player on the American religious scene, Lyons says, the convention is going to have to reach a lot deeper into the tills of its 33,000 churches.