At 39, Reverend Brad Braxton feels the same ease in a classroom as he does in a chapel.
Named the new senior minister of The Riverside Church Sept. 14, the Southern Baptist minister is stepping into a role that has left a congregation torn along racial lines, after the 18-year tenure of former minister Reverend James Forbes ended this past spring. But Braxton doesn’t see himself as filling anyone’s shoes, and is optimistic that he will make strides in building up his new community of faith.
“Each pastor is in his or her own place,” he said. For him, that place is halfway between academia and public outreach, traveled to on a road of what he regards as diversity and forward thinking.
Forbes currently is a professor of Homiletics and New Testament at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. and will begin at the church on Nov. 1.
The African-American pastor’s voice thunders even as he speaks calmly on the telephone about his love for his wife and children. Yet the self-proclaimed “progressive evangelical” is quick to separate himself from the conservative preachers who use television as a way to broadcast their scriptural literalism.
“I take the wisdom of sacred texts, and I believe it is important to look at the ancient past for wisdom,” he said. “At the same time, I believe that the best meanings, the most wholesome, might lie in the present and the future.”
The answers to modern questions, like ones about sexuality and race, are “not exclusively to be found behind us,” Braxton said.
The church’s Senior Minister Committee selected Braxton as a candidate Aug. 3, with a vote by congregants appointing him to the post less than two weeks later.
“We look forward to Dr. Braxton not only serving The Riverside Church as a dynamic spiritual leader, but also serving as a voice for positive change in our community,” said Billy Jones, head of the Church Council, in a press release.
Much of Braxton’s perspective stems from his background as a scholar of the Bible and a teacher of the church. He said he learned the value of teaching from his mother—herself a long-time educator—and the “positive power of words” from his father, who served as a reverend in their hometown of Salem, Va. where Braxton lived until college. He was a Rhodes Scholar and developed a close relationship with New Testament expert Christopher Rowland.
Scholarly research may seem foreign to congregants who find solace in prayer alone, yet Braxton believes a spiritual leader can spread faith through academic insight. As his example, he cites a yearlong bible study on the Book of Revelations held in 1999, amid the advent of the Y2K craze. The course, conducted at Douglas Memorial Church where Braxton acted as senior minister, included a syllabus, textbook, examinations, and homework assignments. More than 200 locals attended.
“There are aspects that involve us loving God with our mind,” he said. “I hope to bring serious, high-level conversation to Riverside Church.”
From Ghana to Westminster Abbey, the pastor has covered a lot of ground in his role. But at Riverside, poverty reduction, healthy living, government lobbying, and decreasing gun violence are among his top goals, he said.
Though acknowledging what some charge as his “Afrocentric” point of view, the reverend also wants to prioritize diversity at The Riverside Church. Founded under a different name in 1848 with the current structure built in 1929, the church rises high above Grant’s Tomb and the Union Theological Seminary, symbolizing its prominence in New York as an agent of social justice and interfaith dialogue. Anxiety flurried about when Forbes—who described himself as a theological radical—ran interdenominational Riverside through what some labeled an exclusive and close-minded agenda.
In response to those who decry his book, Braxton explains that No Longer Slaves: Galatians and African-American Experience originated as his Masters thesis, and “burst in the intellectual womb of one of the world’s most distinguished universities.”
“One can do Afrocentric scholarship and still be diverse,” Braxton said.
To do that, he plans to bring his experience preaching in urban Baltimore to his time in upper Manhattan.
“Moving, walking, opening up conversation, talking to shop-owners ... not looking like a pastor,” he said. “That made the people in the community feel comfortable.”
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