MACON, Ga. - There are two First Baptist Churches in Macon - one black and one white. They sit almost back-to-back, separated by a small park, in a historic hilltop district overlooking downtown.
About 170 years ago, they were one congregation, albeit a church of masters and slaves. Then the fight over abolition and slavery started tearing at religious groups and moving the country toward civil war. The Macon church, like many others at the time, decided it was time to separate by race.
Ever since - through Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, desegregation and beyond - the division endured, becoming so deeply rooted it hardly drew notice.
Then, two years ago, the Rev. Scott Dickison, pastor of the white church, and the Rev. James Goolsby, pastor of the black church, met over lunch and an idea took shape: They'd try to find a way the congregations, neighbors for so long, could become friends. They'd try to bridge the stubborn divide of race.
They are taking up this work against a tumultuous backdrop, including the much-publicized deaths of blacks at the hands of law enforcement and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Next month, they will lead joint discussions with church members on racism in American history, and also in the history of their congregations.
"This is not a conversation of blame, but of acceptance and moving forward," Goolsby said.
Religious groups try to set a moral standard that rises above the issues and ideologies dividing society. But faith leaders often fall short of that ideal, reflecting or even exacerbating the rifts. Like many other American institutions, houses of worship have largely been separated by race, to the point that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. called Sunday mornings "one of the most segregated hours."
Recently, more churches have tried to diversify and to look critically at their past actions and teachings, with denominations from the Southern Baptist Convention to the Episcopal Church making a priority of fighting racial bias.
In the early 1800s, in Baptist churches of the South, whites and blacks often worshipped together, but blacks were restricted to galleries or the back of the sanctuary. Eventually, black populations started growing faster in many communities. Whites, made uneasy by the imbalance, responded by splitting up the congregations.
This was apparently the case for First Baptist in Macon, which built a separate church for blacks in 1845, then finalized the separation two decades later, soon after the Civil War ended.
Goolsby and Dickison said their respective churches were enthusiastic about plans to work together, under the auspices of the New Baptist Covenant, an organization formed by former President Jimmy Carter to unite Baptists.
Yet excitement mixed with apprehension, since the effort would inevitably require "some challenging conversations," Dickison said, including a re- examination of the official church history, which had been recorded in mostly benign terms, with almost no recognition of racism.
"We need to go through this kind of conversion experience of confession, of repentance and of reconciliation. We need to have that when it comes to race, not just in the country but within the church," Dickison said.
Goolsby recalled that after the massacre last year at the historic black church in Charleston, S.C., he was outside a store, awaiting his wife, when Dickison called.
"Scott shared how he felt, how he was struggling with what he would share with his congregation," Goolsby said. Dickison asked how he could show support.
"I said, 'We're already doing it,'" Goolsby said. "The mere fact he thought to call me was huge."
The stakes were even more personal months later, when the white church invited black church members for a youth trip to Orlando.
Goolsby's teenage son was among those invited. But Goolsby had considered Florida a danger ever since Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, black 17-year-old, was fatally shot in Sanford by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who was later acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter.
The pastor could not let his son go on the trip. "If you put a hoodie on him," he said, "he looks just like Trayvon."
The concerns of anxious black parents had been much in the news, but the white church members hadn't had to confront the issue directly until Goolsby raised it.
After reassurances from a white chaperone, Goolsby allowed his son and the other young people to participate.
"The fact that that was so easy to share - we've already made progress," Goolsby said.
Pastors in Chattanooga also are trying to make progress in their own ways. Jim Pickett, the pastor of New City Fellowship - East Lake, a self-described "cross-cultural worshiping community ministering to people of all ethnicities, classes, and cultures," said churches have an important role in racial reconciliation.
"What is interesting to me is that God always had this in mind. It is not new or novel," he said. "When Israel left Egypt, 'many other people went with them.' When Israel went into Canaan, Canaanites joined them, and so on. It was always meant to be this way-the nations together under one God."
The idea of bringing all races together is integral to Pickett's church, which was founded in part to pull blacks, whites and Latinos under a single roof to worship. Portions of the service are often in Spanish, including songs and even sermons on occasion.
"To be in a community like East Lake that is almost equally three people groups - Latino, African-American, and white is a great gift if you understand the vision of the biblical God who is bringing all the nations together by the reconciling grace of his son, Jesus," he said.
Kevin Adams, the pastor of predominantly black Olivet Baptist Church, said reconciliation should be a priority for every Christian.
"We have been given the ministry of reconciliation, the word of reconciliation, and the means of reconciliation through Jesus Christ," he said. "If I see every person as made in the image of God, then racial reconciliation happens as a natural side- effect of loving my neighbor as myself."
Dickison strode into the basement hall of his church with a box under one arm. Inside, were copies of "Strength to Love," a collection of sermons and writings by King. The book was at the center of classes at the white church Dickison organized in preparation for the joint talks on racism next month.
This class was held on the Sunday in July after the fatal police shootings of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota, and the ambush of a dozen white Dallas police officers that left five dead.
With the stifling humidity of a Georgia summer building outside, Dickison launched into a discussion of King's sermon on the Good Samaritan, about despised groups and showing mercy.
"We have our tribes. We see ourselves over and against others," he said, then asked church members to reflect.
One man said when you reach out to someone from another group, "you're perceived as unpatriotic," or disloyal. A woman said she was upset to see some disrespect of the police. "They rush toward danger when others run," she said.
The next night, the black church hosted the city's Black Lives Matter vigil, marking the tragedies of the preceding week.
Clergy from across the city filled the pulpit. Goolsby and Dickison stood together to speak. Dickison compared racism to "a cancer that roams inside the body of this nation, and yes, even in the body of Christ."
Goolsby urged people to maintain hope "in spite of our circumstances," and he added, "We know there will be change."
Then both men said, "Amen."