Let Resistance Be the Order of the Day: MLK Day in San Francisco, January 19, 2025

A day before Donald Trump’s inauguration and the same day that—thousands of miles away— hostages were released in Gaza, the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco pulled out all the stops to honor the memory and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was January 19, 2025, a day to remember for many days to come. There were sermons and songsful, music on a piano, an organ, and a guitar and praying, too. Amen and hallelujah!

At the end of the morning, a lavish buffet/banquet fed one hundred-plus worshippers who sat down together, ate and talked and laughed and shared personal histories. There was no BBQ but there were salads, pastas, and fried chicken, and tea and coffee and desserts.

Side-by-side, at round tables with linen napkins, there were whites and Blacks, men and women, children and their parents, Jews and gentiles, locals and out-of-towners, Americans born and raised in the South and in northern California, too. There were Black Jews and Arab Jews and Black men and women who looked African and also as white as any white person.

At the banquet the pastor’s words were manifest. He had invited one and all to “make new friends and continue the legacy of faith, hope, and love.”

If anyone wanted proof that the spirit of MLK was alive and well, the Third Baptist Church provided all the necessary ammunition. And if anyone wanted evidence that the alliance between Jews and Christians was alive and well, that was in evidence, too. It wasn’t merely a relic of the civil rights movement when rabbis and members of their congregations joined “Negroes” to call for an end to segregation and an end to discrimination based on color.

Pastor Amos C. Brown from the Third Baptist Church and Rabbi Ryan Bauer from Congregation Emanu-El joined their voices and called for Truth not glitter and community not chaos. “We must raise our voices against hate,” Rabbi Bauer said. He added that “we can have both Palestinian sovereignty and Israeli security.” The audience cheered.

“Church is more fun than a synagogue,” Bauer observed. Indeed, it seemed to be a spectacle and a ritual with colorful characters and a profound sense of spirituality.

Pastor Brown urged the congregation to make “resistance our vocation.” He spoke unequivocally when he said that Donald Trump was “evil” and that for Trump to put his hand on the Bible was “blasphemy.” The Reverend Devon Crawford added his sentiments and invited the congregation “to make trouble in order to survive.”

The Third Baptist Church has hosted an “annual pulpit exchange” with Congregation Emanu-El for the past 38 years. The church was founded in 1852 almost a decade before the outbreak of the American Civil War. “Our two faith communities have joined hands in interfaith and intercultural worship, bound by a shared commitment to social justice, cultural celebration and intellectual stimulation,” Pastor Brown said.

On the way out of the church, I said goodbye to my new friends. “I’m really a heathen,” I told an elderly woman with purple hair and a long flowing gown that was red and black and orange. “Come back again,” she said. Indeed, I might do that. The Third Baptist Church of San Francisco is my kind of house of worship.

Jonah Raskin is the author of Beat Blues, San Francisco, 1955.