Qualla: Pullen Memorial Baptist Church

Pullen Memorial Baptist Church: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit -ted, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1992, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to expel a small congregation in Raleigh for blessing a same-sex union. The vote was decisive, and the church, Pullen Memorial Baptist, was already used to standing alone. Thirty-four years earlier, in 1958, Pullen had declared itself open to all people regardless of race — at a moment when most North Carolina churches were still arguing whether that question was even theirs to answer. The pattern has held for over a century: Pullen tends to arrive at conclusions decades before its denomination, and then waits, patiently and without apology, for the rest of the South to catch up.

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Pullen Memorial Baptist Church: Beside the University

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit -ted, CC BY-SA 2.0. Pullen sits on Hillsborough Street directly beside the campus of North Carolina State University, a position that has shaped both its congregation and its self-understanding. Students wander in. Professors pass through. The building itself dates to 1923, but the church was founde...

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Pullen Memorial Baptist Church: Finlator's Pulpit

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit -ted, CC BY-SA 2.0. William Wallace Finlator became pastor in 1956 and held the pulpit until 1982. He preached against segregation in the late 1950s, when that conviction cost congregants and friendships throughout Wake County. He preached against the Vietnam War in the 1970s, when that position cos...

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Pullen Memorial Baptist Church: The 1992 Expulsion

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit -ted, CC BY-SA 2.0. When Pullen voted in 1992 to bless a same-sex union, then formally endorsed the unqualified acceptance of homosexual Christians, the Southern Baptist Convention responded with expulsion. The expulsion shocked very few. Pullen had been drifting away from the SBC's center of gravit...

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Pullen Memorial Baptist Church: Sister Cities and Solidarity

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit -ted, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1986, Pullen began a sister-church relationship with Martin Street Baptist Church, a historically Black congregation in Raleigh. Two years later, it added another sister church — First Baptist of Matanzas, Cuba — at a moment when American congregations rarely talked to Cuban o...

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Pullen Memorial Baptist Church: Moral Mondays

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit -ted, CC BY-SA 2.0. When Moral Monday protests began at the North Carolina General Assembly in 2013, organized by Rev. William Barber and the NAACP against Republican-led legislation, Pullen members were among the early arrests. The church has continued to engage Wake County's debates over sex educa...

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