At 3 p.m. on Sunday, January 10, Liberation Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) will install two pastors, Reverend Dietra Wise Baker and Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr. at First Presbyterian Church of St. Louis, 7200 Delmar Blvd.
Pastor Baker is an activist-scholar and founder of Liberation Christian Church (Liberation), while also a chaplain and program development manager at Episcopal City Mission. She is a native of Nyack, New York. Pastor McCune is a professor of Gender Studies and African-American Studies at Washington University. He is also an activist-scholar and author, who is a native of Chicago.
Together, Pastors Baker and McCune bring almost three decades of preaching and teaching experience, with radical commitments to Black Liberation Theology and justice for all. This dynamic partnership promises to produce a diverse set of spiritual experiences within the St. Louis community which are bound to push against the “traditional church.”
Pastor Baker founded Liberation Christian Church in April 2009, the beginning of what she calls a “liberation movement.” Rather than “anything goes,” the principle idea is the church exists to help people become more free, rather than more oppressed. She has long been in the trenches of doing work and advocacy for incarcerated youth, while McCune has been active in the fight for women and LGBT equality, as well as combatting HIV criminalization.
Both Baker and McCune are active in the Ferguson Movement and are community-involved servants, who believe that salvation is necessary for individuals and institutions.
In a statement, they said Liberation is called to focus on the “full liberation of the people,” which means that the church must address these critical foci: school to prison pipeline, anti-black police brutality and community violence, economic inequality, HIV/AIDS, and race/gender/sexuality discrimination.
They said Liberation and its pastors are adamant that “we can’t attend to whole issues if we do not attend to the whole person. Thus, the congregation at Liberation looks like the world: black, white, Latino, straight, queer, same-gender loving, younger and older, middle-class, poor, educated by institutions and communities. Liberation commits itself to liberating lives and communities.”
As we enter the New Year, Liberation Christian Church’s pastors challenge churches locally and nationally to be more inclusive in the work of Christ, to open their doors and theologies to progressive work and ministry.
This pairing, a straight-identified black woman who preaches with a gay-identified black man who also preaches with fire, is an example of what can happen when we liberate ourselves to only focus on doing Christ’s work, rather than the crippling chains of prejudice and bias, they said. With this dynamic duo of pastoral care and prophetic preaching, as well as innovative and creative congregation, Liberation is poised to make great change within the St. Louis metropolitan community, with its unique and powerful mission and vision.
For more information on Liberation Christian Church, visit www.liberationcc.org/. The church worships noon Sundays at First Presbyterian Church of St. Louis, 7200 Delmar Blvd.
