by Mike Tobin
The Rev. Willie Wilson has spent the past three decades swimming against the mainstream, using his pulpit to do everything from developing affordable housing in one of the nation's most blighted areas to overseeing the political resurrection of Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry.
Wilson, BSJ '66, is the pastor of Union Temple Baptist Church, considered the largest and most influential African-American congregation in the nation's capital. In his 24 years as pastor, Wilson has turned a small, 30-person church into the bustling center of African-American life in the District of Columbia, where its 6,000 members provide virtually every social service imaginable.
Wilson's life is spent bringing God to the rough streets of Anacostia, a depressed section of Washington with high crime and unemployment rates. Under his guidance, Union Temple has developed an array of programs that meet the daily needs of his congregation.
The church does everything from caring for AIDS patients and offering a prison ministry to housing and counseling troubled youths and running one of the largest soup kitchens in the city. Union Temple also has developed more than 200 units of low-income housing, an act Wilson calls one of his proudest achievements.
"We have a holistic ministry. We try to deal with the whole man," says Wilson, 51. "We try to incorporate the African world view, which does not compartmentalize life, but sees God as the basis of everything that one does."
A nontraditional approach has always been the goal for Wilson, whose grandfathers were both ministers. A native of Newport News, Va., he attended Howard University's divinity school after receiving his bachelor's degree from Ohio University. He remembers thinking from an early age that religion had to be more relevant to the particular needs of African Americans.
"There was that opportunity, as I see it, to come in and be innovative, creative and shape and mold the ministry (at Union Temple) as I saw the need to be. And that's what we did," says Wilson, who turned down job offers from more established churches to work at Union Temple.
Wilson's innovative approach can be seen inside the massive church, where visitors are greeted by a 60-foot portrait of a black Jesus, who is surrounded by 12 black apostles, including Nelson Mandela, Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr. Wilson's sermons can blend the Bible, the Koran, pop culture and Malcolm X.
His sermons are so powerful that Robert Wilkins brings a notebook every Sunday to take notes. Wilkins, a public defender who graduated from Harvard Law School, calls Wilson "one of the most intelligent people I've ever come across."
"Religion and spirituality need to be humanized and made real," says Wilkins, who has served as a teen mentor in the congregation and volunteers as night watchman. "Rev. Wilson's ministry is an empowering one. The overwhelming message is 'we have the power within ourselves to do all kinds of things.'"
But Wilson's distinctive approach hasn't been without its critics. He ruffled feathers a few years ago when he instituted a boycott of a Chinese-American grocer who allegedly pulled a gun on an African-American customer. He also is a vocal supporter of D.C. Mayor Barry, who is a member of the church. When Barry was on trial for drug charges, Wilson erected a tent outside the courthouse and held prayer services throughout the trial.
"At that point, I was doing what any minister is called to do, and that is to restore those who have fallen and gotten lost, and that's the ethic of the gospel that Jesus taught," Wilson says of his association with Barry. "And so I think that I'm very much in tune with what I should be doing. It's not in any respect political in nature. It's about restoring a person who had been pretty much doomed to the graveyard of life.
"That has always been something that I have done in terms of living out, fleshing out my understanding of what the gospel says we should do."
