This has been an interesting convention. Yesterday’s events during the Resolutions Committee’s report were a black eye on the Southern Baptist Convention. The resolution that the committee brought out today was an attempt to make things right.
The resolution passed with very little opposition (maybe 3 or 4 voting no). Praise God for that. I will hopefully have some further reflections later, but wanted to give a brief update here.
It was also a blessing and significant that the chair of the resolutions committee began his presentation with a sincere and heartfelt apology for creating the chaos that ensued after they chose to not report out the original resolution.
Evidently, I am the only guy who knows nothing about the Alt Right.
Who is the poster child for that movement? I looked around on ERLC’s website and did a search from the ERLC homepage but nothing came up for “alt right”.
Can you guys help me to get up to speed on who / what the alt right is? Is it different than the KKK? Is it a name for some subset of Trump supporters?
Roger
Roger: You are a very intelligent man. How about simply doing a search on Bing or Google. I posted a video on Dwight’s post on this site. There is plenty of information out there if someone really truly wants truth.
Do a search for alternate right or alt-right.
I just read a post by the Gospel Coalition about them. It’s pretty weird and obscure, and doesn’t have Christian orientation. In fact, they don’t even like Christians. You might check that article out.
Search Richard Spencer….or don’t.
The “poster child” of the “Alt-Right” is Steve Bannon, close, very close advisor to D. J. Trump (AKA The President of the United (?) States.
He and his kind are racist and worse. NOT NICE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!
John, Vince my husband voted for Trump , I did not and have never voted for a Republican. My husband told me when I showed him the first resolution that he felt this was political and would be submitted if my person had won. I do not think that is true. Now you submit a claim that Bannon is heavily involved in the alt right, which is more of a political statement than a faith based message. I think Dr. Moore did a great job making the resolution as Gospel based and avoiding current political context. My husband cites Bernie Sanders as an example of the Democrat Party which he is not. I do not think your comment advances the Gospel message
I am sorry that should be alternative right instead of alternate. I was typing too fast.
OK. I did my assignment.
I looked around at wiki and Google links and found out some stuff about the alt-right. My 20,000 foot flyover assessment is that it is a loosely affiliated group of people who mostly communicate via the internet and blogs who assert such things as [a] white supremacy, [b] being anti – Semitic, and [c] to some extent neo-Nazi. After reading some of their writings I’d say that some of it is “tongue in cheek”. Sort of like a revival of Mad Magazine from the 1960s only its theme seems to be venting because they feel they are being marginalized by people who are “foreigners”. Alt right ideology seems to custom-made for someone who feels that the playing field is no longer fair and opportunity is being stolen from you and given to “foreign” interlopers. This is in sync with the situation where we have [a] the gutting of the middle class over the last 30 years, [b] intellectuals from college with worthless degrees who can’t hold a decent job and hold tons of college loan debt, and [c] people whose fortunes have spiraled downward over the last several decades.
Supposedly some people in the alt-right support Trump. Steve Bannon is mentioned as a figure in the alt-right movement. However, my sources say that Trump has disavowed the alt right.
It looks to me like there are many differences in the substance of what animates the alt right now and the Hippies of the 1960s. But in terns if being iconoclastic and at the edge of society the alt right looks to me like a reincarnation of the hippies in Santa Cruz during the 1960s.
Roger
Roger, you may appreciate this article
5 Things To Know About The Alt-Right.
The five things explained are:
1. What are the origins of the Alt-Right?
2. What is the philosophy of the Alt-Right?
3. The Alt-Right is not conservative.
4. The Alt-Right is a counterreaction to the left’s race-baiting.
5. The Alt-Right doesn’t consider Trump and Steve Bannon as part of the Alt-Right.
If you think it’s tongue in cheek, then you’ve never made a public statement about race that an alt-right has seen. Myself and many of my friends who speak out for biblical unity and reconciliation have been viciously attacked with vile and despicable language. The alt-right is a significant, vocal, satanic movement, even if unknown to the majority of messengers. It’s presumed association with evangelicalism and contemporary conservative politics by many call for a response from our Convention. Especially in a season where the recent election has threatened division among Baptists and caused the world to believe evangelical Christians and Southern Baptists particularly are racists, the Convention needed to speak clearly on this issue.
If southern baptists don’t know who the alt-right are, be assured that the lost world has and not only rejects the movement, but associates Christians with it. If we want to reach a lost world with the gospel, it’s time to wake up and pay attention.
Todd,
I think you make some great points here. We are often left in the unenviable position of having to distance ourselves from views that we do not in fact hold merely because of a guilt by association cultural view. We should be sensitive to any such events so that we can ensure that we do not hamper our witness to a watching world by ignoring the cultural moment in which we find ourselves.
Grace and peace,
Chad Dougless
Sarah Pulliam Bailey, a very savvy religion writer, has this paragraph in her Washington Post article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/06/14/southern-baptists-are-about-to-vote-on-a-proposal-to-condemn-white-supremacy/?utm_term=.496b6c973a25
“Some of the [Resolution] committee members are affiliated with National Religious Broadcasters and First Baptist Church in Dallas, institutions that are seen as friendly to Trump. The committee considering resolutions has 10 members, one of whom is black.”
Evidently, the committee badly misread the matter, as did I. I’m glad they quickly recovered.
Now that’s a fascinating piece of info right there William. And heightens some suspicions I was already harboring.
So it’s a bit of the old, “I don’t want to damage my gravy train” there?
First thing in my mind–and I haven’t tracked the Annual Meeting at all this year–is the goal of the resolution is to create a clear statement of opposition to something that is defined by being obtuse and ambiguous. I’ve been supportive (perhaps to a difficult-to-comprehend extreme) of our dear friend at Cornerstone on this site precisely because I believe his voice represents a calling out by a group of participants that by culture, by choice, and systemically were marginalized in the life of the SBC since founding largely based on the premise that race is a legitimate reason for marginalization.
My instinct for that support is de-marginalization requires engagement, listening, response, and lifting up Jesus together by denying Satan division. I personally struggle with the ambiguity of the resulting wording of this resolution. But I trust Dwight and I believe this resolution carefully condemns every form of coded racism no matter what kind of emerging coding it possibly could take and is essentially historical.
But if we do not find a way to explain it exactly that way and largely to administer it that way in historical allusion to it, we will lose the battle and possibly the war against persistent, continuing racism in the individual, self-organizing and autonomous churches of the SBC. This resolution has to be administered by gentle but firm discussion with congregations and leaders that cross the line especially in the name of cultural engagement into any form of organization of demographics that even hints of re-assembling a cultural and political coalition that re-marginalizes minorities and because of our unique history as a Convention especially Blacks.
Dwight can correct me on that sensation as his direct, heart-felt intention.
I applaud the floor (and the leadership that listened to the floor) for responding to this need with a direct plea to work out a resolution. I recognize the background is a plea to our President and his political team to be extremely careful on this issue and that notion upsets fellow SBs that support the Predident by appearing to accuse him and by extension them of already stepping across that line.
I also believe that support for the President himself could become so divisive that it harms the cause of Christ within the life of the Convention if we do not actively commit to not allow that. I voted for Donald Trump and I support his appeal for a nation that is focused on making sure it’s own people are its foremost responsibility. But to the extent any of his words or policies that either imply or enact political marginalization of minorities based solely on the premise of “political might makes right” I reject that and will fight it with every fiber of my being.
Right makes might. Jesus is the only righteous one.
SBC denounces ‘alt-right white supremacy’
http://bpnews.net/49057/sbc-denounces-altright-white-supremacy
David R. Brumbelow
I suspect even the 10 votes against had more to do with the relative confusion of the process more than anything else. I doubt there is even a single person in any of our churches that truly believes the Bible teaches that White supremacy is anything other than a lie from Satan himself.
But many of the churches of the SBC used to peddle a soft line on Black inferiority and White supremacy using the Curse of Ham. My mom taught me about how some Christians used that passage to justify “race”-based slavery. Needless to say I was just as appalled then as I am now at the thought that our creative use of Scripture to excuse our sins is so easy.
Of course it really isn’t excusing sin. The Law isn’t broken. We shatter ourselves against it literally–hithpael means self-cause–causing ourselves to die. Jesus came because once we’re broken we need a Savior to piece us back together and to experience true liberty which is freedom from sin. It is tremendously uplifting to have such an overwhelming response to a continuing national sin by simply and formidably rejecting it by a group of believers. And what an affirmation of folks we–IN MY LIFETIME–marginalized.
May the sign of the Year of the Lord continue: prisoners, slaves, and sinners set free.
For the record, I was introduced to racist theology grounded within the Curse of Ham as a child – and I am only 30. Just because such views have faded from the foreground does not mean that they their existence is wholly eradicated.
New American Commentary on the Curse of Ham
http://gulfcoastpastor.blogspot.com/2017/06/more-on-curse-of-ham.html
David R. Brumbelow
Thanks David. Do you have a similar exposition on Jim Crow laws and the resistance of Southern Baptists to Civil and Voting Rights Acts? A series on this kind of history that is introspective and thorough–and documents meaningful voices against racism like Dr. Harold E. O’Chester stories he told from the pulpit at Great Hills, Austin about his tenure at a church in Mississippi –would be extremely helpful.