EUR This N That | Urban Black News Blog

Charles and Te'Andrea Wilson were prevented from having their wedding at their own church because they are African American.

There have been numerous cases in history where interracial marriage was illegal in some states and frowned upon in others.  But never has it been illegal to marry someone of your own race in a church…unless you want to count the times of slavery when the enslaved were not allowed to be married.

But in 2012, Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson wanted to get married this month in their church, the First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs in Mississippi, and was asked by their pastor at the last minute to “move” their nuptials to another location because African Americans had never been wed at this church and it would set a new precedent, according to CNN.

“Because of the fact that we were black, some of the members of the congregation had got upset and decided that no black couple would ever be married at that church,” Charles Wilson told CNN on Sunday night.  ”All we wanted to do in the eyes of God was to be man and wife in a church that we thought we felt loved. What was wrong with that?”

Nothing, Mr. Wilson!  But, somehow, in the wake of all the controversy, the couple allowed their pastor, Stan Weatherford, to perform their wedding at another venue.  They obviously took the christian high road and saw that he was being pressured by the congregation not to perform the wedding:

“This was, had not, had never been done here before so it was setting a new (precedent) and there were those who reacted to that,” Weatherford told WLBT.  ”I didn’t want to have a controversy within the church, and I didn’t want a controversy to affect the wedding of Charles and Te’ Andrea. I wanted to make sure their wedding day was a special day,” he reportedly said.

Would you have gone along with that?  In addition to the pastor’s explanation, many of the parishioners poured in the apologies AFTER their wedding at another venue.  But, like Mr. Wilson said, that was a day late and a dollar short.  If the apologies were sincere then the time to “step up and be Christ-like” was before their wedding.

“If it was such a minority of people, why didn’t the majority stand up and say, ‘in God’s house we don’t do this?’” said Charles Wilson.

Check out the report and the couple’s interview.

-J.C. Brooks