For more than 20 years, the Historic First Baptist Church in Williamsburg has been led by a pastor who calls out injustice where he sees it in history and today.
“I want my legacy to say that the Pastor Davis did try to push America to become a more perfect union,” Rev. Reginald Davis said. “And he tried to push the church, particularly the Black church, more to the kingdom of God and to be that institution that Christ created when he was here on Earth.”
First Baptist, a state and national landmark, is considered a jewel in the crown of the city’s Black community and is nearing its semi-quincentennial this year. The congregation was organized by free and enslaved Black people in October 1776, with roots reaching back even earlier. They met in secret at a time when doing so was illegal without white supervision.
Forgetting that history is something that the church, and Davis, its 21st pastor, won’t do. Through the centuries, First Baptist and its congregation have overcome disasters, discrimination and displacement.
“We are still here,” Davis said. “We're in the soil, we're in the fabric, you cannot erase us out. And we're going to continue to tell our story, because again, history half-told is untold. We want to tell the whole story. And America has done a great job in hiding a lot of our history, even from us.”
Davis’ story starts in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of a pastor named James C. Davis. The younger Davis was brought up during one of the heights of the Civil Rights Movement. It and the work of Martin Luther King Jr., especially, who gave his final speech in Memphis, profoundly impacted Davis.
“I wanted to study more about why is it that a people who have been in this nation for so many years are still marching just to get our citizenship rights,” Davis said. “That should come at birth.”
Davis began college at a small parochial school in Texas before attending Colgate Rochester Divinity School in New York, where one of Martin Luther King’s professors, Kenneth Smith, taught ethics.
“Since he was still alive, I wanted to make sure that I received that kind of teaching that Dr. King received,” Davis said.
He received a doctorate at Florida State. While there, he met his now-wife, Myrlene, at Jerusalem Baptist Church. A Haitian woman fluent in French, she tutored him in the language. Davis’ doctoral program required him to study two languages.
“I said ‘O, lord, I’m struggling with English much less talking about French,’” Davis said with a laugh. “But because she became my tutor, I was able to pass.”
He became dean of students at a seminary in Illinois in 1999 and joined First Baptist five years later. When he arrived, he learned that his field director at Colgate, Rev. Leandrew Johnson, had pastored there.
“He and I would always talk when I was at Colgate and he talked about bringing integrity back to the pulpit,” Davis said. “So when I saw him, I just knew that this was the place for me.”
His life path and faith also forged Daivs into a passionate speaker and prolific author. His more than a dozen self-published books cover topics on the Black church and liberation, Christianity’s engagement with imperial power and racial unity.
Davis often speaks on racism and oppression from his pulpit. He believes people of faith, especially Christians, have a duty to call it out. Davis, quoting influential Swiss theologian Karl Barth, said Christian leaders have to preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.
“Some of the things that the Bible pointed out that would be happening, the newspaper is printing in real time,” Davis said. “A pastor’s job is to warn the people, prepare the people, encourage the people to make sure that they continue to keep their lives in order and continue to be people of the faith.”
Davis believes it’s increasingly important as courts have restricted the Voting Rights Act and installations on Black history have been flagged for removal from federal lands, including displays on the stories of enslaved people brought to Philadelphia by President George Washington that were taken down before courts ordered they be replaced. But the responsibility to speak out doesn’t fall only to the Black community, Davis said.
“Until the white church gets out of the bed with the power structure, with the elites, when they get out of the bed with them and come on over and really join Jesus Christ I think that we'll see a difference,” Davis said.
Looking around, however, Davis sees silence on these issues from large swaths of white Christendom. That’s why he and pastors of predominantly white churches around Williamsburg began trading pulpits five years ago. Davis said it’s helped broaden perspectives and strengthen connections between different churches and people.
“The kingdom of God is not all going to just be one color,” he said. “It’s going to be a multitude of people; all nationalities, all tongues, and so we have to start demonstrating it here.”
For Davis, it stems from his leadership philosophy of living the word and leading by example, painting a picture of what America could be.
“Now, would that permeate throughout the nation? We hope so,” he said. “Only thing we can do is be the example that we wish to see in other people.”
