CEDARTOWN, Ga. — For three years, a group of deacons from the Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church has tried to oust the congregation’s pastor. And three times, the church leader has taken the case to the Georgia Supreme Court.
Pastor Willie M. Bolden simply refuses to leave.
“I’m stubborn, especially when I know I’m doing the folk right,” Mr. Bolden said during an interview in his cramped office. “I’m here for a purpose. I truly believe God sent me here for a purpose.”
All through his life, Mr. Bolden has shown the courage of his convictions. He says he was arrested dozens of times protesting segregation in the South and once led 20 wagons — drawn by a pack of obstinate mules — from Mississippi to Washington to advance the plight of the poor.
Now he has found a new cause: Clinging to the pulpit of the tiny black church in west Georgia, a campaign that’s made him a frequent visitor to the state’s highest court.
It all started, Mr. Bolden contends, because of a spat with the congregation’s most powerful member.
That would be Robert Barton, who also is its next-door neighbor. Mr. Barton once oversaw the church’s finances, chaired its deacon board, and ran the choir and Sunday school.
When Mr. Bolden became pastor 11 years ago, he started to carve up Mr. Barton’s duties and sought more oversight over the church’s finances. Mr. Bolden said that’s when the deacons wanted him out, but he wasn’t going to budge for the sake of his congregants.
“To be quite honest with you, I think for a number of years they have been taken advantage of,” Mr. Bolden said of his congregation’s members, who number 30 on a good day. “Finally the Lord got tired and said, ‘I’m going to send somebody who I trained through the civil rights movement, who won’t mind standing up, being a man, who won’t scratch when he ain’t itching and grin when he ain’t tickled.’ ”
A former Atlanta public school administrator, Mr. Bolden started preaching on the side in 1986 and soon he was urged to try out for a full-time position 60 miles away in Cedartown. After a few attempts, he landed the job in September 1995.
At first, he seemed a great fit. With a gravelly delivery, he always spoke of living a sermon, not just preaching it, and his church responded. Under his guidance, the membership raised enough money to buy a church steeple, carpet the cozy chapel in a lush red, install new glass doors and buy a used van.
He said the honeymoon ended when he started demanding a weekly budget statement. The deacons’ lawyer, Mark Webb, said his clients were simply tired of the pastor “running the church as a monarchy.”
Either way, the deacons started to grumble.
At one of the church’s quarterly gatherings in 2004, they tried to call a vote to dismiss the pastor. Mr. Bolden caught wind of it and quickly adjourned the meeting and, weeks later, removed Mr. Barton and the other deacons from their posts.
Mr. Barton, who declined comment, sued and the case landed in the Georgia Supreme Court for the first time. The justices ruled they couldn’t weigh in on religious matters, but suggested they could have a say if the case was presented as a property dispute.
Mr. Barton took the hint, and the justices eventually ordered a vote on whether the deacons controlled the property.
Last August, dozens of congregants filed into the tiny chapel to cast their ballots as a trial judge watched. It was over quickly: The members voted to support the deacons by a 27-12 margin.
But the 68-year-old pastor refused to hand over the church deed, saying that he recognized only the new deacons he recently appointed.
And so they were back in the Supreme Court again last week, mystifying the justices with a third round of arguments over who is in control of the tiny church’s pulpit.
“This is the third time you’ve been here?” asked Justice Harris Hines, shaking his head slightly.
Mr. Webb, the deacons’ attorney, told the justices that the congregation had spoken — and “they said control of the church property should be in the hands of the deacons.” The pastor’s lawyer asked the court simply to drop the case and let the church deal with its own problems.
Arms folded, Mr. Bolden watched the back and forth. When it was over, he walked out of the courtroom, defiant as ever.
Win or lose, he has no plans to give up.
He’ll be driving back to Cedartown on Sunday to lead the church that has tried so many times to dismiss him.
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