HARLEM, N.Y. — In the near-decade that Stacy Parker LeMelle has lived across the street from the Atlah Worldwide Missionary Church on Lenox Avenue, she has had to swallow a daily dose of outrage. There — on one of the most important streets in the history of black culture and in the middle of the city where the modern gay rights movement began — it stands: an official letter board sign used to regularly promote racist and homophobic hate.
“Jesus would stone homos,” trumpeted one of the more jarring messages mounted outside the church in recent years, stopping many a passerby cold. “Obama has released the homo demons on the black man. Look out black woman. A white homo may take your man,” read another.
At first LeMelle tried to ignore it, occasionally laughing at the proclamations when they became too much to walk past without yielding to some sort of emotional reaction. Eventually, though, she and her neighbors decided they had seen enough.
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“We knew that silence wasn’t an option anymore,” LeMelle told MSNBC in a February interview just blocks away from the Atlah church where, for years, the sign out front served as a vehicle for racially-charged, homophobic rhetoric and conspiracy theories, often about President Obama.
“We would have to do something,” she said.
Determined to channel their anger into a positive cause, LeMelle and her neighbors started raising money in 2014 for the Ali Forney Center, a nearby organization that provides shelter and services to LGBT homeless youth. Now, in an ironic twist of fate, that same organization stands a chance at buying the church building that has for so long embodied discrimination against the very community the Ali Forney Center was created to serve.
Some are calling the potential sale karma. But in the eyes of the Rev. James David Manning, pastor of Atlah and the man behind the violent rhetoric, it’s a witch hunt — and he won’t go down without a fight.
“This is our building,” Manning said from inside the sanctuary of his Baptist church on a recent afternoon, his booming, preacher’s voice laced with the Southern drawl of his native North Carolina. “And it’s not going to go away to the sodomites.”
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Despite Manning’s conviction that his outspoken beliefs are what landed his church in hot water, his legal troubles appear rooted in something far less sensational: He hasn’t paid the bills.
It’s a charge Manning himself does not dispute. His argument, which will be considered in state court next week, is that he shouldn’t have to.
“We don’t owe the taxes,” Manning told MSNBC in a wide-ranging interview last February. “We’re tax-exempt. We’re a church, for crying out loud!”
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But the law may not be on his side. In December, a New York state Supreme Court justice issued a judgment of foreclosure against the Atlah church, ordering that it be sold at public auction. The official grounds seemed legitimate — the church owes more than $1 million to various creditors, according to a public notice of the foreclosure sale posted by the New York Law Journal. Manning, however, believes that debt had nothing to do with it.
“This foreclosure is a bogus foreclosure inspired by the [New York City Mayor Bill] de Blasio administration, probably prompted by Obama, to finally try to shut up my very strong voice against this wicked and immoral activity of sodomy,” Manning said.
Dressed in an immaculate suit, as is his custom, the 69-year-old pastor cuts a slick figure in person, yet still manages to come across as friendly and unguarded — even while complaining to members of the media about the media’s treatment of him. (To wit, while sitting down to prepare for an interview with MSNBC, Manning accused Fusion of publishing “a hit piece” that day entitled, “Doomsday: This homophobic preacher’s worst nightmare is about to come true.” To be clear, he said, it wasn’t the word “homophobic” that bothered him; it was “doomsday.”)
At least outwardly, Manning doesn’t seem concerned that he could lose his church to an organization that helps LGBT youth.
“I believe that before this building is ever inhabited by any sodomite, homosexual, f***t group, that men will be carrying babies in their balls and giving birth out of their a**holes before this building will be ever used by f*****s, that’s what I believe,” he said. “Now, if that’s possible they can get it. But if it ain’t possible, it ain’t going to happen.”
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Constructed in the late nineteenth century, the landmarked building that houses Atlah is a sight to behold. A little cluttered and rundown, perhaps (Manning said they were in the process of renovating); but spacious, nonetheless, with high ceilings and an impressive skylight opening up over the main staircase.
Manning lives there with his wife, along with two homeless families. He became chief pastor in the early 1980s after serving time in prison for armed robbery, and later changed the name of the church — formerly called “Bethelite” — to “Atlah,” an acronym for “All the land anointed holy.”
Atlah isn’t just a place of worship, although the words, “All Jesus, all the time,” mounted on the wall behind the pulpit may suggest otherwise. In addition to its religious services, the church runs a children’s breakfast program on site and functions as a private Christian school. From his second-floor office, which is packed with camera equipment and personal mementos, Manning conducts a three-hour Internet radio program called “The Manning Report” on weekdays. He also broadcasts a weekly worship service, the “Pulpit of Power,” every Saturday morning.
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“For the past 30 years, we have been integral to the community,” Manning said.
The exact size of Atlah’s congregation, however, is difficult to pin down. When asked how many members belonged to the church, Manning and his staff became somewhat evasive, sidestepping requests for an estimate both during the interview, and in numerous follow-ups.
At a recent “Pulpit of Power” service, there were approximately 40 people, mostly African-American, in attendance, including about ten children. Seating did not appear to be optional; prior to the service, worshipers were guided to the first few pews, making the house look packed to anyone watching the live stream online (though no one at the church said that was their intention).
There, as in the interview a few weeks prior, Manning was the picture of confidence speaking about the future of his church.
“This is the Lord’s house, and I am the Lord’s servant, and this house will remain open,” he preached, emphasizing the word “Lord” each time.
***
To listen to Manning speak about gay people as though the last 50 years never happened is, to a certain extent, an exercise in self-control. His views are more extreme than almost any right-wing politician’s; his criticism, almost cartoonish. If his unabashed disgust for any kind of gay relationship didn’t make his detractors want to pull their hair out, it would probably make them want to laugh.
But according to Carl Siciliano, executive director of the Ali Forney Center, Manning’s particular brand of anti-gay bigotry is more pervasive than one might expect.
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“When we ask our young people why they were thrown out of their homes, why they were made homeless, the biggest reason they tell us is because of the religious beliefs of their families,” Siciliano told MSNBC. “A lot of the young people that we serve have been called f*****s in their homes, have been told that they’re abominations, have been told that God is against them. And that’s something that is just really painful for them and it’s really painful for those of us who work with them to hear, to see the trauma that they’ve been put through.”
On Jan. 29, shortly after the foreclosure became public, Siciliano launched a crowdfunding campaign with an initial goal of raising $200,000 to buy Atlah at auction. To date, he’s raised over $330,000, and feels confident he’ll be able to find a partner that will help him make a competitive bid.
In practical terms, acquiring the Atlah church would expand the Ali Forney Center’s housing capabilities, giving them space for another 18 to 20 beds. The organization already has 10 different housing sites throughout the city and can fit up to 21 people at its 24-hour drop-in center in Harlem, where kids also have access to meals, vocational training and medical care. But there are still approximately 200 young people a night on the waiting list for one of the Ali Forney Center’s beds.
Siciliano also hopes to launch a catering business in the Atlah space that would be owned and operated by the young people who work with the organization, seeing as many of them have had success finding jobs in the foodservice industry once they get on their feet.
But beyond the tangible impacts, acquiring Atlah would also mark a major symbolic victory.
Steps away from the Atlah church sits Marcus Garvey Park, one of the last places where Ali Forney — the gender-nonconforming person for whom Siciliano named his organization — slept before being murdered at age 22 in 1997. Forced to live on the streets from the age of 13, Forney resorted to sex work and drug use as a means of survival. As he got older, he became an advocate for LGBT rights and HIV prevention, often filling his pockets with condoms that he would hand out to drug dealers.
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Forney grew up in a religious family, and Siciliano used to watch him close out talent shows with a gospel hymn at the homeless youth drop-in center where the two met. He remembers Forney often saying: “It doesn’t matter if I’m a man in a dress and a wig. God loves me for who I am.”








