By Jack Alvey
Jack is the rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Selma.

Before Michael Curry was born, his parents began attending an Episcopal Church in the deep south where blacks and whites drank from different water fountains. During his first worship experience in the Episcopal Church, Michael’s father watched his bride-to-be drink from the same chalice as the white parishioners did during Holy Communion.  Michael’s father was sold on the Episcopal Church. He said, “Any church where black and white drink from the same cup have discovered something I want to be a part of and that the world needs to learn about.”

Earlier this summer, the Rt. Rev. Michael Curry of North Carolina was elected as the 27th Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church in the United States — in a landslide. Bishop Curry’s election comes at a time when race relations in our country are again testing our common life together. In a church where 90 percent of the congregants are white, his election is another reminder that God in Christ is in the business of reconciliation.

On Sunday, Aug 16 at 10 a.m., Bishop Curry will visit St. Paul’s Episcopal Church to preach and celebrate Holy Communion. The last time a soon-to-be Presiding Bishop worshiped at St. Paul’s was at the turn of the 20th century. The Most Rev. John Gardner Murray, former Senior Warden at St. Paul’s, was the first person to be elected as the presiding bishop and the 16th person to hold the office.

Bishop Curry’s zeal for the gospel and his witness to how the love and compassion of Jesus is breaking down walls that divide is infectious. Bishop Curry will be in Alabama’s Black Belt for the 50th anniversary of the martyrdom of Jonathan Daniels who was shot dead by a sheriff’s deputy in Hayneville when he stepped in front of a shotgun blast intended for a young black woman named Ruby Sales. Daniels was 26 years old and a seminarian at Episcopal Divinity School in Massachusetts who came to Selma after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s appeal to the masses.

Bishop Curry’s visit to St. Paul’s in Selma is more evidence that God is up to something special in our churches and our community.  The city of Selma has an amazing amount of promise and potential to witness to the community of God, a community that is marked by works of compassion and healing and reconciliation.  It is my hope that people across the world will look at Selma, a city that bears the burden of being the symbol of racial divide for an entire country, and see a community that they want to be a part of and a community that the world needs to learn about.

I believe that hope is already springing forth fruit through the work of the gospel. Pray that we may have the grace to see beyond all that divides into a reality made available to us all through the mercy of Christ that is given to all.