Community is torn apart by a court case involving a Second Baptist Church’s pastor

By Timothy Pratt

Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2007 | 7:16 a.m.

As you hit the streets after a service on any given Sunday morning on a certain patch of the West Side, chances are good that the person walking next to you will be speaking with a Louisiana lilt while the thick, sweet smoke of ribs from American Bar-B-Q on D Street fills your lungs.

This is the heart of the mostly black, historically rich neighborhood, home to at least 60 churches, including the Second Baptist Church, at 65 years old the oldest church of its denomination in the valley.

Second Baptist also is the site of an 18-month-old case that has divided the congregation, pitting the federal government against the pastor, the Rev. Willie Davis, and his wife, Emma .

The sizzling emotions that reach beyond the Madison Avenue church and into the village-within-a-city may well boil over soon.

McTheron Jones, named in late 2005 in a federal indictment that alleged misuse of $330,000 in grant funds meant to help former felons, has recently entered a guilty plea, the terms of which are sealed. And the Davises are expected to have a court date set Wednesday, after repeated postponements.

The protracted case and the feelings it has spawned underline the role of pastors and the church in the black community, as well as the relationship between black churches and the larger society.

"African-American ministers have always been very strong, vocal leaders," said Ralph C. Watkins, assistant dean for the African-American church studies program at Fuller Theological Seminary.

"When a black minister is under indictment or any suspicion of wrongdoing, it affects the entire community. Going through these experiences, the community and the congregation are almost held hostage ... and splinter groups form until this gets worked out."

Some congregation members have tried to get the church's deacons to consider removing Davis until the case is settled. Davis, however, keeps preaching.

On at least three occasions, most recently last May, Davis also issued fundraising requests to the congregation for help with his legal fees.

Several deacons refused to comment about both issues. And the Rev. Jesse Scott, the church's spokesman, said, "As far as I'm concerned, nothing has changed," then refused further comment.

Others have left the congregation - hundreds, by the estimate of some who still worship at the church.

Cecil Davis is one of those. He's also the self-described whistleblower whose dissatisfaction about not being paid for the work that he and colleague Victoria Coleman did in 2002 under the federal grant sparked the investigation that led to the indictment.

Davis, no relation to the reverend, noticed such details as the alleged false signature of North Las Vegas Municipal Judge Warren VanLandschoot on nonprofit incorporation papers. Davis followed that up with conversations with the office of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. - an early supporter of the faith-based grant - and, eventually, the state attorney general. Federal officials soon followed.

Sitting recently in his Summerlin home, Cecil Davis reflected as much on his loss of a church as on the legal ins and outs of the case.

A native of McKinney, Texas, Davis found the Second Baptist Church in 1993, after nearly a decade of worshipping at Nellis Air Force Base. Davis spent 26 years in the military.

Cecil Davis and his wife, from Selma, Ala., joined the church through some friends. He recalls feeling, after some months, "Man, I like the way that choir sings."

The salt-and-pepper mustachioed part-time disc jockey soon added his smooth voice to the effort.

"The songs I was singing were ones I was familiar with ... from my childhood," he said.

And the reverend's voice also sounded familiar.

"The delivery of a black minister is different from the delivery of a nonblack minister," he said. "That took me back to my roots."

Now that's all over. Since 2002 Cecil Davis has been back to the church only four times - to pay his last respects to friends who died.

Now, he says, "I meet people at supermarkets, at casinos, on the base. I feel strongly that a lot of people who have been at Second Baptist forever - who are embarrassed to be at a church where there is alleged corruption - would rather stay and ride this out, and are secretly praying that this goes away."

Eighty-year-old Arby Hambric has been at Second Baptist Church for 29 years.

He's written his own handmade bulletins for several years urging the Rev. Davis to step down and to stop soliciting funds.

"You feel impotent after awhile," he said.

A buddy of his, Calvin Crichlow, has spent nearly half of his 75 years at the West Side church.

Although fed up trying to get answers about what happened with the funds cited in the indictment and other issues, he said he wasn't going to change his Sunday habits any time soon.

"You just don't run away from a church - you stay there and try to get things right," he said.

He said the charges affect relationships with other churches in the small-town spot on the urban map.

"Most of the churches in the community don't want to have (anything) to do with the church," he said.

He also fears that the case's effect will be felt into the next generation.

"Younger people done left our church," he said.

Earl Johnson measured the drop in people lining the pews with an anecdotal statistic about the church's 8 a.m. Sunday service.

"When I started with the church in 1995, you had to get there at 10-after-7 to get a good seat," he said. "Now you can show up at 8:30 and sit anywhere you want."

Earl Hughes, an associate minister at the church, also is concerned about the effect the church's troubles has on the community's youth.

"It erodes our ability to go into the community, especially with young men, engaged as they are in a gang war," he said. "It makes it difficult to look up to a leader like him, since they think he's no different from what they've encountered outside the church."

Hughes tried to alert the deacons in a meeting last week to the corrosive effect of allowing Davis to continue preaching.

"They told me, they'll look into it."