Adult worshipers heard two views of the civil rights movement yesterday from different perspectives of speakers whose lives were changed by it.

A former president of Goshen College, J. Lawrence Burkholder, was a professor at Harvard University in 1964 when he and his wife, Harriet, took a vacation to Florida, the first time they had been in the Deep South. In the highly segregated city of St. Augustine, racial tensions were particularly acute around Easter, and Martin Luther King Jr. was expected to attend a demonstration in coming days.

King did not come, but Burkholder found himself on the front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer after he and several others were arrested during a sit-in at a segregated restaurant. The event signaled Burkholder’s entry into the civil rights movement.

Burkholder was part of another demonstration the next year in Selma, Ala., that was the site of a killing of a fellow demonstrator, the Rev. James Reeb, by white assailants. He also recalled being asked to speak in Harvard Yard about the tragic assassination of King in 1968.

Though it was not common in the 1960s for Mennonites to take part in public demonstrations, “that’s a time I look back upon with great satisfaction,” he said.

He is also gratified that the civil rights movement has continued to change and grow in the years since those volatile and sometimes fatal days. “Now it is a much broader and deeper movement in the providence of God,” he said.

Also speaking yesterday was John Powell, director of missional church development for Mennonite Mission Network.

Powell spoke of the difficulties the Mennonite church has had in seeking to be more inclusive of blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.

“There have been some successes and there have been some failures in our efforts to be God’s welcoming table,” Powell said. “With the civil rights movement, there began to be a cloud of witnesses” to show the way to greater diversity.

Powell said he was among many people of color who approached the Mennonite table, but left, often in anger, when they could not find a place.

“God requires us to stand tall, to walk tall, to be engaged… but that has not always been the case,” Powell said. “So this table has been wrought with pain.”

With time, however, more openness arose, and people of color began to return to the church, Powell said. “As we began to work at these issues, the church began to realize that we all wanted the same things,” he continued. “We all wanted access to God’s table.”

Powell said he returned to the church because people were willing to help pave the way for him — a trend he hopes will help the church continue to grow in inclusiveness.

“But look now – God has said to me, ‘return to the table,’ because of brothers and sisters who stood in the gap,” he said.