Life
Rev. Fred Luter poised to become first African-American president of the Southern Baptist Convention
The 55-year-old grew up in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward, the middle of five children raised by a divorced mother who worked as a seamstress “not to make ends meet, but just to make them kind of wave at each other,” he said.
The family walked to a local Baptist church every Sunday and Luter’s mother made sure all the children attended.
Luter drifted away from religion after leaving home for college, but at age 21 he found himself making a promise to God that he has kept to this day.
After a near-fatal motorcycle accident landed him in the hospital, “I said, ‘God, if you save my life, I’ll serve you for the rest of my life,’” Luter said.
He survived and soon began preaching on street corners every Saturday with a group of friends from church.
“We had no training,” he said. “We were just really excited about what God was doing in our lives and we wanted to share it with others. We got ridiculed a lot.”
Luter kept it up for nine years before someone suggested he apply to become the pastor at Franklin Avenue Baptist Church. Formerly a white church, the membership had changed to African-American with changing demographics of the neighborhood.
