MONTCLAIR, N.J. — A New Jersey pastor who formerly worked for American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. has been chosen to lead one of America’s largest black Baptist denominations.
Walter Parrish III, senior pastor of Union Baptist Church in Montclair, N.J., was elected general secretary of the Progressive National Baptist Convention Inc. (PNBC) at the group’s recent annual meeting in Louisville, Ky.
Parrish, 50, will succeed Tyrone Pitts, general secretary of the PNBC since 1989, who is retiring. Parrish is scheduled to take over the job Jan. 1 and will continue as senior pastor of the Montclair church in addition to his role with the PNBC, according to an announcement on the church Web site.
Claiming 2.5 million members around the world and 1.5 million in the United States, the PNBC is the third-largest black Baptist convention. It formed in 1961 out of a power struggle between younger ministers in the National Baptist Convention U.S.A. Inc., who wanted to move the denomination to the forefront of the civil-rights movement and the established leadership that desired to keep politics out of the convention and focus on worship and ecclesiastical concerns.
The PNBC was spiritual home for many of the period’s most celebrated civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr.
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