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Posted by By Sam Omatseye reporting from US on
In a script that is unveiling like a flip-flop of history, a rural town of white people is growing nervous about the 'invasion" of blacks, especially blacks from another country, which happens to be Nigeria.
In a script that is unveiling like a flip-flop of history, a rural town of white people is growing nervous about the 'invasion" of blacks, especially blacks from another country, which happens to be Nigeria.
'I don't have problems with black people," remarked Luanne Moody, a white woman in an interview with the Dallas Morning News over the plan by the Redeemed Christian Church of God to build an elaborate Christian community in Floyd, Texas. 'I just feel uncomfortable in large numbers of them."
She said she does not hate black people, but her outpouring is unmistakable: 'They live different, they think different, they have different cultures."
The project will comprise a 10,000-seat sanctuary, two elementary school-size lecture centers, a dormitory, a slew of cottages, a lake and a water park distinguished by a Christian imprimatur.
The choice of Floyd has baffled not only the inhabitants of Texas but Americans who think it too audacious. Part of Texas belongs to what is known as redneck America, a term that describes an entrenched culture of racial bias.
Texas was one of the major centers of slavery in the nineteenth century, with a long history of discrimination against blacks.
The state is ranked with other strongholds of racial intolerance like Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina.
Racial biases run deeper in rural folks than in the city. But the RCCG chose neither Dallas nor Houston nor even Austin, which enjoy a variegated racial mix, but Floyd, a rural backstreet.
The RCCG says the choice of Floyd was not the province of man. God pointed the way. The story is told of a visit by the general overseer, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, when he stopped over at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport en route to a revival by Kenneth Hagin in Oklahoma. He proclaimed the vision to the church. That was the seed of the idea.
'You are not going to build a megachurch yet," he is quoted to have enunciated as the words of God. 'You are going to plant little parishes around the Dallas metroplex."
In the 1960's, a big banner ushered visitors to the county seat, which is an equivalent of a local government headquarters.
It read: 'Blackest land, whitest people." The county's judge Joe Bobbitt hangs a photograph bearing that sign in his office today.
But he denies sharing the view.
'If you try to change history, or try to hide it history," he is quoted as saying, 'You can't learn from history."
Bobbitt seems to be undergoing some education over the RCCG project.
He confessed to some discomfort when the church mooted the idea of the project. He said he expected them to be religious zealots, which is strange because such extremist organizations have been predominantly white in the United States.
But he allowed the pastor, Ajibike Akinkoye who heads the church's regional headquarters in Dallas, to pitch the grand plan to him.
'They were congenial, very kind, well-spoken," he said. 'If you have the right to be in this country, I want you to be in Hunt County."
It seems Akinkoye's strategy has been at once conciliatory and defiant.
'They may not welcome us, but we are not afraid," he proclaimed to the local media. 'In fact, maybe God sent us there so we can bring them to the lord… to chase them out of the darkness and bring them into the marvelous light of God."
Cities cannot provide the kind of space for the church's ambitious project. But the project is not without its omen. Rural Texas is one of the strongholds of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist organization that tortures and kills blacks.
In 1998, three white men dragged a black man to his death from a van. It happened near Floyd. The other fear is arson. Since the 1960's, church arson has been a weapon of racist expression. Nine years ago, two black churches were burnt down in Greenville, 10 miles from Floyd.
But an investigation by the U.S. attorney's office for the Northern District of Texas found that the fires were not sparked by racial hatred. An 18-year-old black man with learning disability was sentenced to two years in prison after confessing to the burnings.
'If it happens, the first thing we will do is pray for them," he said. 'Then God will turn it around for good. He said the very culprits will be touched by the hand of God with repentance and restitution.
But the church will depend not only on the holy spirit for protection, but also on physical measures as well, said Akinkoye.
One factor working for the RCCG among the Hunt County officials is the economics of the project. The project will bring millions of dollars to the county, and that is a strong pull for any community in the U.S., race notwithstanding.
'Whether you are black or white, money has only one colour: green," said Akinkoye, explaining that 'a dollar is a dollar."
The church began with a purchase of 114 acres of land in 2000. That number has grown to 490 acres.
Just as the RCCG has the camp on the outskirts of Lagos, so the church plans to turn Floyd into its
North American equivalent.
Last June, the church held a big revival at the Madison Square Garden with Pastor Adeboye presiding.
Those who attended thought that New York was too congested and commuting too challenging to make the revival as smooth as it could be. Such events may hold in Floyd in years to come.