Racial Justice, Healing, and Reconciliation

Martha Brown UMC was founded in 1892. By 1918 the current sanctuary was built. Much of what Eastside knows of Martha Brown’s history can be found in this document. Archives of Martha Brown UMC are housed at the Pitts Theological Library at Candler. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pittsarchives/mss028/pdf/MarthaBrown.pdf.

Eastside recognizes that the original building was likely built by extremely underpaid former slaves and decedents of former slaves. In our racial reconciliation advocacy work and donations we acknowledge the reparations needed to repair relationship across racial divides present in the history of the building and church we inherited.

From photographs and historic member records we can deduce that MBUMC was at its largest in the late 1950’s and was an exclusively white congregation. We begin to see decline in the congregation from a high membership of 2,000 members due to suburban flight. The church did seem to work to intentionally stay vibrant even with the white flight decline and invested in the building of Brannan Towers. The church welcomed their new, diverse neighbors at Branan towers with a weekly shared meal that lasted upwards of 30 years. When Martha Brown merged with Eastside in 2014, the weekly shared meal was their strongest ministry and offered opportunity for cross racial fellowship, which Eastside has remembered as we have intentionally invested in Racial Reconciliation in our community for the last 10 years.

Since 2016 Eastside’s iconic church steps have been decked with banners declaring Black Lives Matter // Do No Harm, Do Good // Love God // and You Are Loved. All 3 sets of banners have declared our intentionality in multi-racial community and worship opportunity.