A Baptist missions organization has received a $1 million donation from a Virginia megachurch, boosting its efforts to help girls in Africa.
Lott Carey, a predominantly Black organization long known as the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Society, has traditionally had fundraisers as part of its annual gathering, which this year occurred from Monday through Thursday (Aug. 12-15) in Memphis, Tennessee.
The Rev. Gina Stewart, Lott Carey president, had announced beforehand she hoped to raise $1 million on the last night of the convention. But Alfred Street Baptist Church, a historic Black church in Alexandria, Virginia, decided to raise money ahead of that occasion.
Its pastor, the Rev. Howard-John Wesley, told Religion News Service he learned during a church trip to Ghana arranged by the Rev. Emmett Dunn, Lott Carey’s executive secretary-treasurer, about the plight of girls caught up in the Trokosi tradition in that country: Girls are turned over to priests at religious shrines for forced labor and ritual, sexual servitude as payment for the sins of their relatives. Although Ghana criminalized forced labor in 1998, Trokosi priests have continued to practice their servitude system “unchallenged” by law enforcement, according to child rights experts.
“It was our trip to Ghana that exposed us to the slave trade industry that you wouldn’t believe still existed in 2024,” Wesley said. “We really felt like God gave us an opportunity to make a difference in freeing some of these young ladies.”
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