The turbulent racial history in the United States does not make reconciliation easy. Had Southern pastors taught the gospel in full, rather than selectively, slavery may have ended earlier, he said.

As a student at Beaumont High School in the 1970s, Mike Higgins “thugged around” the neighborhood, he admitted. But when his friends weren’t looking, he would secretly study and do his homework.

“I was digging a hole out of prison with a spoon, but I wasn’t going to tell anyone,” said Higgins.

Higgins graduated from University of Missouri–St. Louis with a degree in biology, served as U.S. Army chaplain for 30 years, then pursued his masters in theology at Covenant Theological Seminary in Creve Coeur.

On Jan. 17, Higgins began his first day as the dean of students at the seminary, an agency of the Presbyterian Church in America. He is the only African American on staff and one of only 40 black pastors among the domination’s 3,000-some clergy.

Many of his friends and family have asked him why he chose this denomination, especially because he was ordained as a pastor in a predominately African-American church in 1985.

“The songs they sang in chapel were different, but I knew this was where I needed to be,” he said.

“I think that God was trying to say to me that reconciliation not only between races, but cultures and denominations, is at the heart of the gospel.”

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