Secret Recordings, Leaked Letters: Explosive Secrets Rocking the Southern Baptist Convention,
Baptist News Global: Could you win a Quiz Show by Defining Critical Race Theory?
The Southern Baptist Convention met in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2012, following the devastation the city experienced from Hurricane Katrina. For the first time in the denomination's history, it elected a black man, Fred Luter, as its president. Luter is a native of New Orleans, born and raised in the city, and is the pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, an inner city church that has grown into the largest Southern Baptist church in the state of Louisiana under his leadership.
Franklin Avenue had been a white, Southern Baptist church from its founding in the 1940's, but the neighborhood around the church shifted and eventually, the white congregation that was left after a long decline, turned the buildings over to the New Orleans Baptist Association which planted an African American church there with the same name, and continued its affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention. Times had changed, and the SBC had actually begun welcoming black church members and predominantly black churches into affiliation by the 80's. Luter became pastor in 1986, when it was still a mission congregation supported by another church, and under his leadership, it grew from about 60 in attendance each week to over 6,000.
Churches with predominantly African American membership were not always welcome in the Southern Baptist Convention, which did not repudiate its segregationist and slavery-endorsing past until a resolution was finally passed in 1995. But it takes more than a resolution to change attitudes and actions. The denomination did have some visionary individuals, mostly at the local church level, who saw that segregated churches preaching and teaching the Christian gospel was inconsistent with the principles of that gospel, taught by Jesus and the Apostles and recorded in the New Testament. By the time Luter became pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist, there were several hundred predominantly African American churches that were affiliated with the SBC, though most of them kept their ties to the historically African American Baptist denomination to which they also belonged.
There are still very few churches in the SBC that are diverse or integrated. The denomination's statistical analysis says that there are over a million church members who are African American, out of 13 million total. But that membership is nowhere near the point where they are proportionately represented on the trustee boards and committees of the denomination's entities. The SBC's inner core of leaders is still an insider group of older, white men who profess loyalty to the doctrine and theology introduced by the "Conservative Resurgence," a takeover group of fundamentalists within the denomination who have tight control over all of the positions holding power.
During Luter's presidency, which was supported by messengers at the convention over some objections from a few of the inner circle oligarchs, the door was opened to a much wider spectrum of members, including several African Americans and Latinos, who together represent the only demographic segment of the denomination showing any growth in membership at all. Most of those who were appointed by Luter have either been term-limited out, or, terminated on pretext of theological error.
Opposition to Critical Race Theory has Extremist Right Wing Political Roots
Take a look at the piece I referenced above from the Bowling Green Daily News in 2021. An African American employee at the North American Mission Board, who was also a pastor, was fired for disagreeing with a position taken by Georgia pastor Mike Stone, who was, at the time, a candidate for SBC president. The disagreement wasn't disrespectful, and it wasn't a violation of any NAMB policy or doctrinal position. Though the denomination passed a resolution on CRT at its Birmingham convention meeting in 2018, resolutions are not binding on churches or on SBC entities, and are a reflection of the thoughts and convictions only from that specific gathering. To enforce resolutions, trustee boards would have to transform them into policy.
It was, in fact, the presence of several African American pastors on the resolutions committee in 2019 that prevented the convention from completely embarrassing itself over a resolution that was initially introduced to the committee which was full of misinformation and incorrect assumptions and interpretations of CRT. Other than inflammatory rhetoric and labelling CRT as "Marxist" which is the new conservative catch-word to sling at anything conservatives don't understand and don't like, no one has yet pointed out, theologically and biblically, exactly how Critical Race Theory contradicts scripture apart from the right wing extremist labels, which are inaccurate characterizations of the theory.
Since then, the African Americans who served on the resolutions committee, including the Chairman, Curtis Woods, pastor of Severns Valley Baptist Church in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and Walter Strickland, a professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, have taken a beating in social media, endured caustic criticism that is neither consistent with a biblical, Christian manner in which to deal with disagreements like this, nor are the things being said about them truthful. Woods has since resigned his pastorate, citing "clinical depression" as the reason for his inability to continue, and Strickland has been the target of all kinds of attacks. Both of these men are solidly conservative, Evangelical Bible scholars, and they are intellectually and spiritually capable of discerning and interpreting the role of Critical Race Theory in the African American church, with scriptural truth.
Far right wing politics attacks what it finds disagreeable, not with facts or truth, or with a solid, discerning, evaluation of whatever it is that it is confronting, but with talking points that are invented to support their position without having to engage in discussion or dialogue. The resolution that was originally going to be presented to the Southern Baptist Convention was, itself, a complete distortion, full of dishonest conclusions about CRT, including misquotes and revisions of what those who've written about CRT have said. It was completely political, and not something a Christian denomination, especially one as large and visible as the SBC, had any business promoting.
I think there has been an expectation among the old guard bureaucracy in the Southern Baptist Convention, that African Americans who joined the convention would also join the Republican party. To be honest, the reaction to all of this is evidence which supports my contention that this is the case. Though they've tried, African Americans have never been brought into true leadership in the SBC. Many of those who came in under Fred Luter's leadership, and through his committee appointments, have been pushed out the same way Tez Andrews was dismissed. So far, Walter Strickland has stayed with his position at SETBC, and continues to be an advocate for racial reconciliation in the SBC, but I'm sure that's not an easy job.
Still No Biblical Explanation Making Resolution 9 Inaccurate
Other than using the buzzwords and catch phrases, and attempting to equate Critical Race Theory with Maxist ideology, which is a false comparison, I have not seen anyone really come up with anything that proves Resolution 9 to be wrong. Those who want to restore and bring back the original resolution seem to be oblivious to its incorrect assertions and false narrative regarding Critical Race Theory. But perhaps the biggest failure of those who continue to press the false narrative is a failure to look to the black church leadership within the SBC for guidance and perspective. White pastors and church members, especially those who still exhibit a touch of racist white supremacy in their worldview, connected to their cultural background, do not have the experience that African Americans have with the bigotry of white supremacy.
Critical Race Theory is just exactly what its title suggests that it is, a theory. The African American leadership in the SBC, in bringing forth resolution 9, clearly acknowledged that scripture is the determining authority in all matters of Christian faith practice. What enrages conservatives isn't that it has Marxist origins, which it clearly doesn't, or that it denies the authority of the Bible as scripture, which it also clearly does not do. They are enraged because it argues for racial equality and that's not something they are willing to concede, at least, not those who keep insisting that the convention in 2019 didn't know what it was doing, was duped by the committee, and needs to rescind the resolution. There are those in the SBC, to its credit, who are sincere Christians, understand that the denomination needs to stop talking a good talk about race and put up or shut up when it comes to sharing the leadership with people of other races who are equally capable, and just as spiritual.
The African Americans who have been close enough to leadership in the SBC to be recognized as solidly Biblical in their perspective have not placed Critical Race Theory above the Bible. The language used in SBC Resolution 9 is much more accurate than the anti-CRT, highly political rhetoric that was initially presented, and was something about which the SBC had no business making a statement anyway. But there's a real lack of spiritual maturity and either a lack of understanding of the kind of equality that the Christian gospel teaches, or deliberately ignoring it, when it comes to listening to, and submitting to the leadership of, African American Baptists who have become part of the SBC.
It's tough for a denomination to admit, when they claim to believe in the inerrancy and infallibility of scripture, and consider themselves conservatives who are right there next to Jesus on the right hand of God, that the whole premise on which their denomination was founded was racist, sinful and wrong. And that enrages them.
There are clearly elements in the Southern Baptist Convention who are unwilling to come to a resolution that is different than the one to which they are stubbornly holding, and which may be culturally comfortable for them, and for their churches. Those attitudes undermine the very gospel that they claim to follow and which they have determined in their own doctrine and theology to be "God breathed, truth without any mixture of error." Believing that is more than signing on to a statement of faith. It is putting it into practice. The African Americans within their denomination are equals, and deserve to be treated as such, including consideration given to their perspective on an issue where their experience runs much deeper than those of their white brethren.
It is my personal opinion, having been raised in a Southern Baptist church and educated, at least in part, in two of its affiliated institutions of higher education, that the denomination has undermined its own ability to preach and teach the truth by flying way too close to the far right political flame. They've allowed the intrusion of a political philosophy that glorifies sin and worldliness in the person of its candidates, and which is now trying to change the very message of Jesus himself with some members claiming that his teaching on loving your neighbor, turning the other cheek and going the extra mile are "liberal talking points."
There are real Christians within the Southern Baptist Convention who understand the Christian gospel and whose intentions are to open the doors of ministry cooperation within their churches and institutions as wide as they can go in faithfulness to Christ and the gospel. They've had their moments of success, though the membership numbers are indicating that a large segment of church members are giving up and going elsewhere. And many of those are African Americans who represent one of the few constituencies in the denomination that is still growing. Politics is ripping this evangelical denomination apart. Can it ever be put back together?
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