Pullen Memorial Baptist Church is an 850-member Baptist church located in Raleigh, North Carolina, US, that has a decades-long tradition of progressive stands on social issues. These have encompassed civil rights for African Americans and other minorities. In 1958, for instance, unlike most predominantly white Baptist congregations, the church stated it welcomed African Americans.
In the last two decades, social issues have included Pullen Memorial's stance on sexual issues. In 1992 the Southern Baptist Convention expelled the church for its blessing a same-sex union. In 2002, lesbian minister Nancy Petty was selected to be co-pastor with Jack McKinney, making Pullen the first Baptist church in the South known to have chosen an openly homosexual person as lead clergy. In addition, the church now performs three or four "holy union ceremonies" a year, which are blessings for same-sex couples.
Pullen's Sunday service was named "The Best Sermon to Hear on a Sunday Morning" by the Independent Weekly, a local progressive newspaper based in Durham.
It is a member of the Community of the Cross of Nails, Alliance of Baptists, Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, North Carolina Council of Churches, and Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, an organization of Baptist churches that welcome members regardless of sexual orientation.
Read more about Pullen Memorial Baptist Church: History, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words memorial, baptist and/or church:
“I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have given themselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
—Bible: New Testament, Ephesians 3:20-21.