Today is June 19th which is an unofficial “holiday” which commemorates an event from my home state of Texas. Even though the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed on September 22, 1862, and enacted January 1, 1863, which declared by Executive Order that slaves were free in all the states of the South in rebellion against the Union, it wasn’t until June 19, 1865 that word made it to Texas and was announced by Union General Gordon Granger. As strange as this two plus year delay in freedom is, stranger still is the fact though this officially ended slavery in the South, states like Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia still legally practiced slavery for six more months until December 1865 when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified as part of the US Constitution.
These facts remind me of the complicated history we in this country have with slavery. As a Southern Baptist, these kinds of complexities get even more personal.
In 1860 a Baptist pastor from Virginia, Thornton Stringfellow, defended slavery by saying “Jesus Christ has not abolished slavery by a prohibitory command.” His twisted argument praised slavery because it brought black Africans to the United States where they were able to hear the Gospel. I would whole-heartedly reject this sort of “ends justifies the means” awful reasoning.
In scripture, such as with Joseph in Genesis 50:20, God absolutely does use evil people’s actions to His own good ends, but that’s a testament to God’s goodness, not a vindication of evil acts. More explicitly: the Bible is not justifying the selling of Joseph into slavery by his brothers when it shows God used those wicked events to eventually save Joseph and his family, also known as Israel.
Today, Southern Baptists clearly and officially denounce racism in all forms. It had been building for some time. In 1995 the Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention adopted a “Resolution On Racial Reconciliation On The 150th Anniversary Of The Southern Baptist Convention” which denounces racism, affirms humanity’s equality and oneness, laments and repudiates racist institutions such as slavery, apologizes to African-Americans and repents of guilt in these areas, asks forgiveness from African-Americans for condoning and perpetuating individual and systemic racism, commits the SBC to eradicate racism in all its forms from within, and commits the SBC to be doers of the word who pursue racial reconciliation especially with our brothers and sisters in Christ. This was an historic moment, and one I’m proud of.
Actually, if you go back to 1941 there have been 19 resolutions touching on racism from the Southern Baptist Convention. In 2016 the Convention even spoke publicly about the display of the Confederate Battle Flag (On Sensitivity And Unity Regarding The Confederate Battle Flag) when we (I say “we” because I was there to vote in favor of this resolution) called on “our brothers and sisters in Christ to discontinue the display of the Confederate battle flag as a sign of solidarity of the whole Body of Christ, including our African American brothers and sisters…”
Are we perfect? No, far from it, but I am proud to be part of a denomination who, for the last 80 years, has been publicly working to improve in the area of racism and racial reconciliation. If you listen to most people talk about Southern Baptists, it is obvious we have a reputation of being racist Confederate Flag waving white supremacists. The truth is very far from that caricature. In fact, 20% of SBC churches are predominately non-Anglo and for years most of the new SBC churches planted are also predominately non-Anglo. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Evangelical Denomination in the United States, and I believe it is a good thing that we have and will continue to incorporate more and more people from every tribe tongue and nation. We are not the most diverse faith in the United States (that’s Seventh-day Adventists), but we are more so than Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, Church of the Nazarene, Presbyterians, Church of Christ, and the Churches of God in Christ, to name a few. I am proud to be a Southern Baptist, I’m happy with where we are headed, and I’m hopeful that you will join us!
May God bless you and “Happy Juneteenth!” from this Southern Baptist.
