Bishop's empire faces an uncertain future

Eddie L. Long of Georgia's New Birth Missionary Baptist Church has been accused of having sexual relationships with young male proteges. Locals are wondering if the 25,000-member church could survive without him.

October 09, 2010|By Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times

These days the church continues to offer financial guidance to its flock. One recent evening — on a campus buzzing with boys in football pads and mothers power-walking the vast church parking lots — about 75 locals gathered for a financial empowerment seminar in a cavernous church auditorium. Deirdre Cox, a loan officer at a local mortgage company, stood in front of a PowerPoint slide that read, "WHAT IS FINANCIAL STEWARDSHIP?"

"You all are in the midst of wisdom tonight," she said. "Amen?"

"Amen," the crowd assented.

She argued that homeownership, like prayer, was "a lifestyle." She told them to maintain excellent credit. She told them there was still a way — using something she called a "Grace and Mercy Loan" — to get into a house with a credit score of under 620.

Cox, in an interview, said she thinks the church is strong enough to thrive no matter what happens to Long. "I think he's done a phenomenal job of manifesting the word of God." His congregants, she said, "have now taken that word and are manifesting it in their lives."

If New Birth's goals remains ambitious, that's in keeping with its founding. The church history compared it to the cathedrals of Notre Dame in Paris, and the Durham cathedral in northern England — "significant spot[s] in the history of the cultures in which they were built."

"What, in 100 years, will they say about the New Birth Cathedral of America?" the authors asked.

richard.fausset@latimes.com

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