As a student at Beaumont High School in the 1970s, Mike Higgins “thugged around” the neighborhood, he admitted. But when his friends weren’t looking, he would secretly study and do his homework.
“I was digging a hole out of prison with a spoon, but I wasn’t going to tell anyone,” said Higgins.
Higgins graduated from University of Missouri–St. Louis with a degree in biology, served as U.S. Army chaplain for 30 years, then pursued his masters in theology at Covenant Theological Seminary in Creve Coeur.
On Jan. 17, Higgins began his first day as the dean of students at the seminary, an agency of the Presbyterian Church in America. He is the only African American on staff and one of only 40 black pastors among the domination’s 3,000-some clergy.
Many of his friends and family have asked him why he chose this denomination, especially because he was ordained as a pastor in a predominately African-American church in 1985.
“The songs they sang in chapel were different, but I knew this was where I needed to be,” he said.
“I think that God was trying to say to me that reconciliation not only between races, but cultures and denominations, is at the heart of the gospel.”
The roots of racial division in the Christian faith are deeply embedded in history, he said.
In the past, Southern slave-owning Presbyterian pastors “tweaked the gospel,” he said. They skipped portions of the gospel that seemed to acknowledge black people as humans. For many years, black people were only allowed in the balcony or the back of churches. Soon they began gathering in their own churches.
“When we come together for church, it’s hard to break out of racial and cultural preferences,” Higgins said.
“Now we have black churches who are working in communities, and so when you start talking about reconciliation, they want to know, ‘What’s the problem? It seems like this is what you wanted. Now we all have to get back together?’”
Being a dean at Covenant, working in a predominately white environment, gives Higgins a chance to talk with students one-on-one, where he can make an impact, he said.
“So when people say something really dumb like, ‘You know, I don’t even see you as a black man,’ you can say, ‘What does that mean?’” he said.
“To me, reconciliation is when you say, ‘We need to talk about what you just said,’ in a non-threatening way. I am still your friend.”
The turbulent racial history in the United States does not make reconciliation easy. Had Southern pastors taught the gospel in full, rather than selectively, slavery may have ended earlier, he said.
“The forgiveness of Christ has challenged me to forgive that part of history. I learned from it and study it,” he said.
“I believe that my sins put Christ on the cross, along with those slave-owning guys. It is a forgiveness issue. But even while we are in the process of forgiving, we need to talk about it.”
