Trials and Tribulations

摘要

He had it all. in the fall of 1994, the Rev. Henry J. Lyons had just been elected to lead the nation's largest African-American denomination, the 8.5 million-member National Baptist Convention, USA. The president hailed him; Hillary Clinton spoke from the pulpit at Lyons's church in St. Petersburg, Fla. Up from a hardscrabble rural Florida childhood, he moved comfortably among whites, refusing, for example, to participate in the Million Man March, citing Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitism. In 1996 Lyons helped bring peace to St. Pete when a race riot broke out. He seemed the consummate clergyman: connected, respected—and, at 55, a pastor, a father, a husband.