Abyssinian Baptist Church’s Kevin Johnson has history of following prominent clergy

(RNS) — The introduction to online worship services at Abyssinian Baptist Church still briefly features the church’s previous pastor, two months after a new leader entered the pulpit.

It’s a show of respect for his late predecessor, said the Rev. Kevin R. Johnson, who is set to be formally installed the last Sunday of September at the Harlem, New York, church that marked its bicentennial in 2008. It’s also a sign of the congregation’s continuing grief nearly two years after the death of the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, who served as a minister at the church for 50 years and in the video introduction calls his predominantly Black congregation “Beloved.”

“We’re still going through a healing process here at the church,” Johnson told RNS in an interview Wednesday (Sept. 18). “It says to me that he’s here with us, and at some point we will change it. There have been others who have asked me to change it. But to be quite honest, I love to hear his voice.”

Abyssinian’s storied history has included pastorates by the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. and his son, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Butts succeeded the Rev. Samuel DeWitt Proctor as pastor in 1989, and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, now a senator and the pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, served for a decade as a youth pastor and assistant minister under Butt’s leadership at Abyssinian. The funerals of actress Cicely Tyson and fashion journalist André Leon Talley were held in recent years at the church, of which they were members.

Today, the church has a few thousand members, and Johnson’s arrival in July, after being nominated by a pastoral selection committee that considered more than 40 candidates, is the third time he has been hired at Abyssinian, which is affiliated with the National Baptist Convention, USA, and American Baptist Churches USA. He was first an intern and later an assistant pastor to Butts, whom he credits as a mentor. 

But Johnson’s election has been mired in controversy, with some saying the selection process, which ended with Johnson as the sole candidate on the ballot, was flawed and discriminatory. The Rev. Eboni Marshall Turman, an associate professor at Yale Divinity School who sought the church’s top leadership position, filed a gender discrimination suit — that the church has asked a judge to dismiss. Marshall Turman told RNS she is continuing the suit because it “arises as a result of some of the egregious aspects of Abyssinian’s pastoral search process, which predates the alleged selection of Kevin Johnson.”

Others have claimed not enough members were included in the vote — only 1,208 of the 2,655 “assumed” ballots delivered were counted, of which Johnson gained 55%, according to a certified report. Concerned Members of Abyssinian, an ad hoc group, sent letters, and another, Abyssinians for Pastoral Election Integrity, took out an ad in the local Black newspaper questioning the election process.

LaToya Evans, a spokesperson for the church, said earlier this summer the election “was decided by a majority of those who voted, per the bylaws.”

The Rev. C. Vernon Mason, a longtime Abyssinian deacon who taught new members’ classes for a quarter century, said he has not been attending the church recently and says any past turmoil he witnessed at the church is “nothing beginning to be comparable to this.”

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Johnson is ready to move beyond the election questions.

“What I would say is, I hear you. I want to be your pastor. I firmly believe in our church, I believe in the pulpit search committee, and I want to thank the great members of the church for embracing my family and me,” he said in response to the complaints that have been leveled against him and the church. “The reality is that the election was certified by an outside company, and it was also certified by the church, and now the time is for us to move forward as a congregation.”

Especially in Baptist circles, church experts have long seen disputes that fill and spill out of the pews.

“It’s actually not unusual for churches to have conflicts and splits over issues like new pastor, old pastor, etc. etc.,” said the Rev. Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, professor emerita at Colby College who now teaches at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace.

“The only reason this is so unusual is because the church is so prominent.”

Johnson comes to Abyssinian from Philadelphia, where he most recently founded and pastored Dare to Imagine Church, an interdenominational church affiliated with ABCUSA, and led its community development center. Johnson gives Butts credit for mentoring him in ways that gave him the business savvy to purchase the property for his startup church.

“I don’t know if I would have been able to do that, if I hadn’t learned from Reverend Butts how to raise money, how to engage the business world, particularly banks,” he said.

In its announcement of the upcoming installation-related festivities, Abyssinian described Johnson’s Dare to Imagine Church as “a ministry that started with 20 people in his home and now boasts a congregation of over 1,500 members on a $2.2 million, 6.8-acre campus.”

Johnson also said his interest in community development was influenced by leaders who were likewise committed to civic engagement beyond their pastoral roles, including Butts, who founded the Abyssinian Development Corporation, a not-for-profit that has led to $1 billion in commercial and housing development in Harlem.

Johnson hopes to continue working with the community, noting in a recent sermon that he’s been walking the streets of Harlem to get acquainted with the neighborhood.

“Surprisingly there are some brothers who already know who I am,” he said, and added, “You know it’s really good when the drug dealer gives you a nod.”

The Rev. W. Wilson Goode Sr., Philadelphia’s first Black mayor in the 1980s and ’90s, said Johnson had a positive influence and was a respected leader in the City of Brotherly Love, and his ability to start a new growing church after leaving another has prepared him to pastor Abyssinian.

“I think that he is one of the strongest pastoral leaders I’ve seen in the city, and I would say within the top 15 that I’ve seen in this city, and I’ve been here in church work for 70 years,” Goode said.

After leaving his assistant pastor role at Abyssinian, and before founding Dare to Imagine Church, Johnson became pastor of Philadelphia’s Bright Hope Baptist Church, succeeding the Rev. William Gray III, a onetime congressman.

There was some controversy for Johnson there, too, with news coverage reporting a “litany of complaints” that included questions about personnel changes, financial decisions and his interest in political involvement.

Saying he has been “blessed” to follow in the footsteps of people of the stature of Gray and Butts, Johnson said he has come to a conclusion about leading churches.

“What I would share with you is that in any church there’s always a minority, and sometimes that minority tries to make it seem like that they are the majority,” he said, pointing to an image he posted of his last service at Bright Hope where a packed turnout is shown. “God calls you to churches, and God also calls you to other churches. And I was at Bright Hope for the season the Lord wanted me to be there.”

Johnson voiced a hopeful picture for Abyssinian, which he said has gained 56 new members since he returned, and told RNS he has been focusing on a theme of unity during his first quarter as senior pastor.

He introduced casual “Unity Hour of Power” services that have been held on Wednesday evenings, with prayers for those who raise their hands and request them and participants spending the last 15 minutes walking around the church, entering its balcony, touching its organ, to “sanctify the sanctuary” for the next Sunday service.

His sermons have cited rapper and songwriter Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” a song the artist featured in a recent Compton, California, video shoot with members of the Crips and the Bloods, and, Frankie Beverly of the band Maze’s “Before I Let Go,” an R&B staple at Black family reunions, as examples of why the church should strive for unity.

“It’s so important for us to be united as a church,” he preached on Sunday (Sept. 15), recalling when members of African American families were separated during slavery by those who owned them. “The God that we serve is a God who wants us to have family reunions every Sunday morning here at the Abyssinian Baptist Church.”

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RELATED: Calvin Butts, leader of Harlem’s historic Abyssinian Baptist Church, dies at 73