Black pastor will pay white worshippers

In an effort to increase diversity, a black Baptist church will pay whites an hourly wage to attended services during August.

The worshippers will earn $5 an hour for Sunday meetings and $10 an hour Thursday, the Shreveport Times in Louisiana reported.

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Baptist Bishop Fred Caldwell preaches at church (Photo: Shreveport Times)

"Our churches are too segregated, and the Lord never intended for that to happen. It's time for something radical," said Bishop Fred Caldwell of Greenwood Acres Full Gospel Baptist Church in Shreveport, La., according to the paper.

Caldwell, who says the idea came to him during a sermon Sunday, bases his initiative on a parable from the Gospel of Matthew. In chapter 20:1-16, Jesus told the story of a landowner who hired workers to tend a vineyard.

The bishop will pay the white worshippers out of his pocket if they register at the service.

"I just want the kingdom of God to look like it's supposed to," Caldwell told the Times. "There ain't going to be ghettoes in heaven."

The pastor said some whites already have responded positively, and a member of his congregation sees it as a bold step.

"I don't see it as any different than a lot of the churches that have different social functions to attract visitors," Criss Williams told the Shreveport paper. "Bishop just kind of cut to the chase and went to the money."

One religious scholar, however, compared the move to mission strategies that attract people in poor countries through food or medical assistance.

This kind of method often has "bordered on bribery," said professor Peter Huff, chairman of the religion department at Centenary College in Shreveport, according to the Times.

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But Huff commended Caldwell for raising the problem, contending conventional methods of integration have not worked.

"All of the best motives have not been able to overcome the racial divide," he told the Shreveport daily. "Just showing people that racism conflicts with the Gospel seems not to be enough."

Williams, one of the Shreveport church's few white members, said she appreciates Caldwell's willingness to speak out on sensitive issues.

"I don't know where people get the impression that he doesn't love white people. I know he loves me," she told the Times.