March 21, 2024

First and St. Stephen’s United Church of Christ is the second oldest protestant church in Baltimore, MD. Located in the historic Stoneleigh neighborhood, our stone edifice with a magnificent bell tower has stood in its present location since the early 1920’s. We proudly display banners about our welcome and diversity on that tower for the thousands of travelers down York Rd. to see each day.

We have facilitated book groups about white privilege, being anti-racists, and working for a more inclusive community. On MLK Weekend, we remember; on Juneteenth, we party. The church raised funds for legal fees and attended the court hearings for a young man who was arrested while walking black in this neighborhood. We’ve experienced tension over the years with our predominantly white and historically segregated neighborhood. First and St. Stephen’s has been proud of our wokeness. . .that is, until January 21st of this year.

On that day, we were hosting a reception for ninety high school art students displaying an exhibit “Safe Spaces” in the sanctuary gallery. In walked a member of the Stoneleigh community with a copy of our land deed dating back to the 1920’s. She handed it to us pointing out that our church was among the 537 properties in Stoneleigh that had racially restrictive clauses as to who could purchase, own, or rent based on race. “Not us!”

Yes, us. Neglect, oversight, avoidance, apathy, ignorance – call it what you will, but we were part of a system of the very racial injustice we are working to dismantle. But we didn’t have our own house in order. In the seven years I’ve been the pastor of First and St. Stephen’s we have talked about needing to review the deed but assumed it had been rectified decades earlier. Still, we hadn’t been more than talk until January 21st when confronted with our wrongful negligence.

Do you know how the deed reads on your house of worship? …on your home? Hundreds of properties still have antiquated, restrictive language of the sins of our past. It no longer can be enforced due to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, but to ignore making these changes is whitewashing negligence. For more information and understanding, I recommend reading: How the Suburbs Were Segregated by Paige Glotzer or The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America by Lawrence T. Brown.

We signed the necessary documents that day, and now have a clean deed on file with Baltimore County. A small group of determined people are leading the campaign to change one neighborhood at a time towards justice. As of the writing of this article, fifty-five percent of those 537 landowners in Stoneleigh have also petitioned the court to revise their deeds. It only took us ninety-eight years to make the changes necessary to reflect our convictions. “Lord, in your mercy…”