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For a denomination born in defense of slavery and a spiritual haven for the white supremacist movement over the last century, this is I guess progress on one front. (NYT):
The Rev. Fred Luter Jr., 55, a New Orleans pastor who got his start preaching on the streets of the Lower Ninth Ward, is expected to be the only candidate for office on Tuesday when Southern Baptists gather here for their annual meeting.
His anticipated victory is being hailed as a milestone by white and black pastors alike in the convention, a grouping of 51,000 congregations with 16 million members, about a million of them black. Acutely aware of the nation’s changing demographics, the fiercely evangelical Southern Baptists have been working to draw in more black, Hispanic and Asian members, often by starting new churches in ethnically diverse urban areas in the country.
If, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said of the nation’s churches, Sunday morning is the most segregated time in America, the Southern Baptists have carried a special burden, giving added resonance to this week’s election.
“Given the history of the convention, this is absolutely stunning,” said Michael O. Emerson, an expert on race and religion at Rice University.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s move is interesting, since in the 21st century its focus has been on ejecting LGBT-affirming members of its convention, vehemently opposing marriage equality at every turn. The fact that black congregants of a similar mindset would want to worship under the roof of church that based its start on the support of slavery shows just how sad oppression in the name of the Good Book moves on to the next group of human beings without any sense of guilt or even self-reflection.
Watch Rev. Fred Luter Jr. on PBS. See more from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.
President Jimmy Carter, who favors marriage equality, left the Southern Baptists over its also-regressive stance on women.
What do you say to those who point to certain scriptures that women should not teach men or speak in church? (1 Corinthians 1:14)
I separated from the Southern Baptists when they adopted the discriminatory attitude towards women, because I believe what Paul taught in Galatians that there is no distinction in God’s eyes between men and women, slaves and masters, Jews and non-Jews -– everybody is created equally in the eyes of God.There are some things that were said back in those days –- Paul also said that women should not be adorned, fix up their hair, put on cosmetics, and that every woman who goes in a place of worship should have her head covered. Paul also said that men should not cut their beards and advocated against people getting married, except if they couldn’t control their sexual urges. Those kinds of things applied to the customs of those days. Every worshipper has to decide if and when they want those particular passages to apply to them and their lives.
A lot of people point to the Bible for reasons why gay people should not be in the church, or accepted in any way.
Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things -– he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.
I draw the line, maybe arbitrarily, in requiring by law that churches must marry people. I’m a Baptist, and I believe that each congregation is autonomous and can govern its own affairs. So if a local Baptist church wants to accept gay members on an equal basis, which my church does by the way, then that is fine. If a church decides not to, then government laws shouldn’t require them to.
The Southern Baptist Convention is well-aware of its reputation, and Richard Land has been the center of this “new tradition” movement inside the church.
Southern Baptist leaders acknowledge having a lot to answer for. “We were a segregated, virtually all-white denomination as late as the 1960s,” said Richard Land, president of the convention’s policy arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Mr. Land is the convention’s most prominent public face, often speaking out pungently on conservative causes like opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage and big government.
Mr. Land has been known for seeking racial reconciliation and was one of the authors of a resolution, adopted by the convention in 1995, that apologized for “historic acts of evil such as slavery” and for condoning “racism in our lifetime” and asked forgiveness “from our African-American brothers and sisters.”
It’s transparent that he and the current leadership want to unite, fronting with a multi-racial coalition in order to unite against the social change that is upending the social conservative apple cart — women are too independent (control over their bodies!), and a society overrun by The Homosexual Agenda. It’s the NOM strategy executed from the pulpit.
Fearing a decline if they do not broaden their appeal, the Southern Baptists have worked to attract new members from all regions and from the minority groups that make up a growing share of the population. One in five of the convention’s congregations is mainly black, Hispanic or Asian, but these include many newer, smaller churches.
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Tokenism never ends, does it. In the 18th century the Baptist conventions in Virginia and North Carolina passed resolutions advocating manumission–not that members did in any numbers. On the eve of the Civil War both the Methodist Episcopal churches and the Baptist churches organized into Southern and Northern branches, and the Southern branches became the defenders of slavery and then segregation after the war was over.
In 1939, the Methodist Episcopal Church, Methodist Episcopal Church South, and Methodist Protestant Church merged as a segregated denomination, the African-American churches being placed in the non-geographical Central Jurisdiction. In 1964, the United Methodist Church began merging churches of the Central Jurisdiction into the annual conferences of the geographically organized jurisdictions. In no way is the United Methodist Church yet completely desegregated.
Given the fact that in 1978, the Southern Baptist Convention purged those who did not want to front for the Republican Party and conservative politics, this move coming at this time looks like a part of the Republican strategy to capture a part of the African-American vote in the 2012 election.
And let’s not forget the SBC’s position that a woman should “submit herself graciously” to her husband. So now we have a multiracial fig leaf for that rubbish.
Pardon me for being a cynic but I don’t believe that the hearts and minds of Southern Baptists have changed at all. Since I grew up in the south I have some knowledge of them and they are the most narrow-minded people imaginable and won’t move an inch on any issue. I hope that African-Americans won’t be taken in by this hogwash.
Not always true. Used to be that Baptist had a personal relationship with God and interpreted it individually. That what was taken away in 1978. I was actually raised in a liberal Baptist church in New Orleans. It now houses Habitat for Humanity. I do know that it is the exception.
Over a third of the churches formerly in the Southern Baptist Convention have changed conventions. Most of them were liberal or moderate in their theology and politics. In addition, most of the former Baptist universities and colleges have become independent – notably, in the Carolinas, Wake Forest University and Furman University.
Concession and acceptance are not one and the same. Throwing in the towel on certain racist fronts to regroup and wage war against the LGBT community is not progress.