E. V. Hill
As the pastor of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church is Los Angeles
who became a leader in the civil rights movement and was honored
by Time magazine as one of the seven most outstanding preachers
in the United States, died February. 24 at age 69.
Raised in poverty in Texas, Hill grew
to be an early confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. and a close
friend of Billy Graham. He also served as a leader in the National
Baptist Convention, the nation's largest grouping of black churches,
and in 1972 was elected as the youngest president of the California
State Baptist Convention. Hill was co-chairman of the Baptist
World Alliance and associate professor of evangelism for the
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. In 1971, he was one of
eight black clergymen whom Graham took to the White House to
speak privately with President Richard Nixon
E.V. Hill does not have to worry about
competing for attention with television—or anything else.
There is hardly a gifted teacher, TV actor or stand-up comic
in America who can surpass the show that Hill puts on every Sunday
before 1,400 enthralled parishioners in the black ghetto of Los
Angeles. Hill is a man of a thousand voices, and all of them
can range from a whisper to a raspy roar. It is the folly of
mankind, especially as practiced by the folks in his congregation,
that Hill dramatizes with a gift for caricature reminiscent of
Geoffrey Chaucer liming the qualities of his sinful pilgrims.
In devastating yet genial parody, Hill can do a drunken black
and a policeman, a young couple falling in (and out of) love,
wives bearing grudges against husbands, husbands tired of wives.
From time to time he'll call out, "Are ya'll listenin' to
me?" or "Help me now!" or "Help me, Holy
Ghost!" The crowd joins in until the church hums with sound.
But just when it seems that this is
pure show biz, Hill will lay his theme on the people: the need
for agape, or pure, unselfish love. "I can't be bothered
with my old mother," he quotes a parishioner. "I can't
be bothered gettin' married. I can't be bothered with my husband."
Each "bothered," thunderously drawn out, reverberates
with pride and selfish isolation — and the boredom that
he sees as a curse of the modern world. "Sin won't stop
developing," he notes. Boredom and selfishness are merely
the devil's latest tricks. "Life lived at its best is full
of daily forgivin' and forgettin'," Hill concludes. "It's
no trick to love the lovely. It takes a child of God to love
the unlovely."
Hill's "hells" are not just
for other people. As he holds forth, a chunky figure in white
billowing robe, mopping his brow from exertion, or telling a
funny and touching story about how he and his wife once avoided
divorce by going to an ice show, it is clear that he is down
there, an Every man in the street, wrestling with the devil himself.
Hill brought his earthy style from Seguin, Texas, where he was
raised among Depression sharecroppers. From his freshman year
at Prairie View A & M University, where he earned a degree
in agriculture in 1955, he paid his way by preaching. What he
calls his lifelong "romance with the Word" is catching.
In his almost two decades at Mt. Zion, his congregation has produced
74 preachers.
.“(Jesus) came back at him again
and he said, devil, It is written, man shall not live by bread
alone. It is written, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.?’
He hit him over and over and over with the Scripture. And guess
what happened. The devil ran! And guess what you can do, beginning
tonight? You don't have to take it! You don't have to take his
mess! You don't have to take his stuff! Hit him! Hit him! Hit
him! Hit him!"
E. V. Hill
VVV
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