By Rev. Dorothy S. Boulware
Word in Black
Residents of Flint, Michigan, still don’t drink the water.
They drink bottled water. They use filters to purify the water that flows from their faucets. But after 10 full years, and much assurance from political leaders, they still don’t trust that the quality of their water — once so contaminated it was compared to an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site — is now safe enough for their consumption.
Therefore, the churches of Flint still don’t regularly conduct baptisms. Not yet.
“For many years since the inception of the problem, we did not baptize at all,” says Bill R. Quarles, deacon at First Trinity Missionary Baptist Church in Flint. “We had one about eight months ago, but we still don’t baptize on a regular basis.”
It’s a stark departure from their faith, given the importance of baptism in religious ceremonies. But it also indicates the degree of trauma inflicted on the church by the Flint water crisis a decade ago, and a desire to keep congregants safe.
The problem, however, is much more than just the loss of the baptism ritual.
In 2014, Flint had a population of just under 99,000 people. By 2022, the most recent year U.S. Census Bureau data is available, only 79,854 residents remain in the city.
“Five Black churches have closed in the last three months,” says Rev. Derrick Aldridge, senior pastor of Second Chance Church. And due to the inability to easily cook with water, First Trinity still has no fellowship meals, which is a hardship in Baptist churches.
Roots of the crisis
On April 25, 2014, not long after officials switched the city’s water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River in a cost-saving move, residents began to complain the water looked filthy, smelled foul, and tasted of chemicals. Officials insisted the water was safe, but those who could afford it switched to bottled water.
Further testing, however, revealed that the water contained dangerous levels of bacteria and lead, leaching from the city’s aged, decrepit water system. The crisis became a national scandal: a majority-Black city with a 40.1 percent poverty rate became a high-profile example of environmental racism.
Then-Gov. Rick Snyder sent in the National Guard to distribute bottled water to poor residents while local, state, and federal government officials bickered about how to solve the problem, who was to blame — and who would pay for it.
As the crisis dragged on for many months, officials eventually agreed on a plan to overhaul Flint’s water system, gradually upgrading pipes, enhancing the filtration system and making the water safe for all. By then, however, residents had come down with mystery illnesses, strange rashes, and hair loss, and tests revealed children had alarmingly high levels of lead in their blood.
While the water crisis disrupted everyday life, from doing dishes to learning loss in schools, not much attention was paid to how it affected the city’s faith community.
The toll on Black churches
Quarles, of First Trinity Missionary Baptist, has been closely involved with the church for over 42 years. He says he has worked tirelessly to find solutions when people’s lives and health were threatened by unfit water.
Through their Flint Water Relief Mission, Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, partnered with First Trinity for over two years, providing 20,000 cases of water to Flint residents. “They sent teams to work with us, and we’re still in touch,” Quarles says.
Nowadays, the church is still “blessed to have partners, so we have water boxes that hold and filter water before it’s given out in 2- or 5-gallon containers,” he says, which they do every Wednesday and Thursday.
Some churches joined in the distribution of bottled water to poorer residents, and churches served as repositories of important information and updates. They also helped bring people together, forging resiliency in a time of crisis. But not much thought was given to how it changed the ritual of baptism.
Redefining baptism
Flint-area pastors collectively reflected on and developed principles around baptism in the city. In a 2022 paper published in “Sacramental and Liturgical Theology of Healing and Crisis Rites,” the pastors wrote that “Baptismal faith and identity were expressed in networks of solidarity that both facilitated church parking lots piled high with pallets of water and sustained those who sat around countless tables in tense rooms demanding accountability and justice.”
They “found themselves examining their own understanding of baptism — what it is, what it means — during a time when the water was a sign of dehumanization and environmental racism.”
As a result, “The call to pastoral care rapidly expanded outward as folks recognized a need to act beyond the church walls,” according to the paper.
Significance of baptism
Most churches celebrate new membership with some form of baptism, christening, or drizzling. For Baptists, full immersion is the most often employed method — dipping the new member’s entire body into a water-filled tank, or a nearby body of water. But if the water is not clean enough, most pastors look for alternatives.
While salvation is not dependent upon baptism — baptism is an outward sign of an inward transformation — it is quite important in the life of the church and of the family. Fully immersing a candidate in water symbolizes a formerly sinful person’s metaphorical death and resurrection into a new life in faith.
Faith-based calls for accountability
Despite an ongoing, massive overhaul of the city’s water system, Flint’s faith community is still not sure their water is safe enough for baptism, one of the church’s most sacred rituals.
Aldridge, of Second Chance Church, says baptism “was a big deal, like a bar mitzvah.” Families would gather to celebrate the event, with meals and fellowship with the congregation.
Since the water crisis emerged, Aldridge says, baptism “has lost momentum and is now disconnected from the church’s purpose.”
Fortunately for Aldrige, his church building gets water from a different source. But he is frustrated that, a decade after the first cup of dirty water was drawn from the Flint River, no one has been held to account for the problem.
“Someone needs to take responsibility,” he says “Someone needs to be held accountable. The people of Flint need to be made whole again.”
This article was originally published by Word in Black. This story is part of “Flint’s Still Fighting,” Word In Black’s series about the decade-long water crisis, and the struggles and triumphs still transforming the majority-Black city.
