ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. (AP) - Ruthie Cobb has attended St. Luke African Methodist Episcopal Church on St. Simons Island since its founding before 1974.
The church has been a place of spiritual healing, fellowship and worship for Cobb over the last four decades.
“I was a founding member of this church, and I was hoping my funeral would be here,” Cobb said.
That may now be in jeopardy due to a dispute with the national AME organization and Tropical Storm Hermine.
Last week, the congregation of St. Luke found out that the AME 6th District, which governs AME churches in Georgia, was planning to sell the property where it sits at the end of George Lotson Road.
The problem is, according to church members, because the church was never incorporated into the national AME organization, the national organization doesn’t own the property - the local church does.
“The AME church doesn’t have the right to sell this property,” former St. Luke pastor Rev. Elzie Hayes said. “They don’t own the property, they don’t own the church.”
Hayes was the pastor of St. Luke until Tropical Storm Hermine descended on the Golden Isles. A back corner of the church building suffered damage from falling limbs, leaving two holes in the roof and a corner of the sanctuary and the pastor’s study open to the elements. Tarps were used to the cover the holes, but those had a tendency to slip off.
The congregation has been attending other churches in the area while it waits on a response from the AME 6th District to its request for aid in repairing the roof, church member Ruby Jackson said.
According to Jackson and her mother, Cobb, they had been waiting for a response from the bishop of the 6th District since Hermine. Then they discovered the property was listed for sale for $1.5 million. They did not know who listed the property initially, but Jackson said they found out it was the AME after contacting the bishop. Jackson said she was told the trustees wanted to sell the building.
St. Luke members bought the property the church sits on from the Glynn County Board of Education in 1974. The documents detailing the transaction establish a group of three trustees to oversee the property and a system by which new trustees are appointed, which involves nomination and election by the congregation and pastor. Hayes said he, Jackson and Cobb are the current trustees.
“We just had the bathrooms redone, why would we want to get rid of it all?” Jackson asked. “Why would we want to sell it when we’re trying to improve it?”
Jackson said they had contacted the bishop of the 6th District of the AME church, but so far had not made any headway. A bishop in the church will generally trust their Presiding Elder and, according to Jackson, the elder over St. Luke believed the national AME organization owned the church.
Islands Planning Commissioner Carla Cate stepped in to help after learning of the church’s situation. She attempted to attend the church last Sunday to find it closed. After asking a nearby resident, she was able to contact Jackson, who explained the situation to her. Cate offered to have someone examine the damages and give an estimate. Cobb, Jackson and Hayes hope having a number to put to the damages will encourage the AME church to lend assistance rather than push for a sale.
“People think that if you call something historic, nothing can happen to it. That’s patently not the case,” Cate said.
The property is particularly important to Cobb, who has been a member of the church since it began meeting in the old schoolhouse that once sat on the property.
The church was founded around 1974, when the school board sold the property to St. Luke to be controlled by the three trustees, two of which are still listed as the lot’s owners in Glynn County’s GIS system.
The lot is very important to the congregation historically and culturally, its members said. It is also the former site of one of the island’s three old African-American school houses. The one once at the site of the church served the entire south end of the island, but burned down in the 1980s, after the church building was built. Though no longer the pastor of the church, Hayes is still proud of the memorial made of bricks salvaged from the school that marks the location next to the church.
Despite numerous attempts to reach a representative of the AME 6th District, a comment on its position was not provided for The News by press time.
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