At last year’s SBC in Orlando, Dwight McKissic made a motion to add racism to homosexuality as sins that eliminated one from being in cooperation with the SBC. The motion was referred (as is standard practice) and the convention voted down a follow-up motion to undo the referral and vote on it. Many people (myself among them) were disappointed that the vote was not taken but we were hopeful that the Executive Committee would bring back a favorable report on the motion. That did not happen. They decided not to recommend the bylaws change. Dwight McKissic’s motion died.
I have, for some time, been considering bringing a motion to the convention to reconsider last year’s motion and to try again to get the convention to vote. I have decided not to do that, and I would like to explain my thinking here.
My Reasoning
- I received a copy of the Executive Committee’s study of racial issues within the SBC, which will be brought here today. It gives evidence that the EC is taking this issue seriously and desires to take steps to change things in significant ways.
- I was contacted by a member of the EC who explained the rationale of the committee. They were not attempting to avoid the issue, but simply approaching it in another way.
- I spoke to an expert in SBC polity who explained that the current BF&M 2000 and current policies are already sufficient to challenge the seating of messengers of a church that practiced racism.
- I received an email from Bryant Wright telling me that he was fully supportive of the idea of increasing the ratio of minorities in the appointment process and was taking efforts to do so. That was very encouraging.
- The simple fact is that my motion would have little chance of success and would almost certain meet the same fate that Dwight McKissic’s met last year. It is probably, at least at this time, better to let the system work than to try to work outside the system – at least as long as progress is being made.
After thinking through all this for quite a bit, I decided that it was best to trust the goodwill of people who clearly represented to me and publicly that they cared about this issue and that they intended to make real changes.
And I am seeing some hopeful signs that this is actually taking place. I believe that we are seeing progress in a hopeful direction. Here are some things I have seen.
- Vance Pitman’s praise team (which is simply the praise team and choir from his church) is a model of what we want to be. I think it might be true that white folks were the minority in the choir – a mix of African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics and other ethnicities. The worship leader was black. Perhaps a slightly greater balance in preaching could be accomplished in future years, but this was a good first step. The podium was not a whites-only enclave this year.
- The talk is that Fred Luters will be nominated for First VP tomorrow, and there seems to be a move to nominate him for president of the SBC next year. May it happen. If he gets elected, all the better, but the fact that the pool of candidates is multi-racial is a good thing.
- The leaders of the SBC entities and state conventions have joined together to sign a document of cooperation. One of the points in that document is the promotion of greater racial diversity in leadership of the SBC.
- The EC report on racial issues within the SBC seems to be a good starting point and template for what needs to happen.
- Just an observation; hardly scientific. I think there was more racial diversity at the Pastor’s Conference this year. Again, just an impression.
So, I am encouraged that things are going to change for the better; perhaps too slowly with a few bumps along the way. If the effort gets derailed, we can always intervene to try to force the process. But I think there is momentum right now for this issue. Our leaders are not fighting against this, though perhaps they did not favor Dwight McKissic’s bylaws change approach. But that option is always available to us in the future if things don’t happen as they should.
I will state my conviction one more time. It is our job – the white folks – to deal with it and correct it. Ethnic Baptists should not have to come hat in hand begging for equality and justice. It is not the fault of African Americans that they were enslaved, oppressed, segregated, excluded and ignored. It was done to them. I do not believe that I have personally oppressed black people. But I am the inheritor of the system that did and it is our job to take responsibility and do what it takes to convince people of every skin color that they are not just tolerated, but welcomed and celebrated in today’s SBC.
I am hopeful that the powers that be in the SBC agree with this desire even if they are seeking a different approach.
There seems to be (if I am reading it right) a genuine consensus on the importance of this issue. Encouraging.
Dave,
Could you provide more detail about how the EC (or whomever) can “challenge the seating of messengers of a church that practiced racism”? I know of a church that recently forced out their pastor because he was not white and am just curious.
Matt Emerson
The only way it can be done is for someone to make a motion at the SBC Annual meeting and challenge the messengers from a certain church. It is an individual act, not an EC act. The convention would have to vote.
I think that if issues are raised, the EC or someone can meet with a church (as it did with Broadway) to raise concerns, but with autonomy it is mostly a matter of refusing to seat messengers.
It happens so rarely, if ever. I’m not sure the process would be different either with the bylaws change or the BF&M approach. Someone has to challenge a church on the basis of their actions.
Maybe someone else has better info on this, but that is my belief.
I am off to the convention now. You guys all play nice.
A motion asking the EC to find out facts, or even just a letter to the EC asking them to do, sent to the EC rep from that state would be a good start.
Also considering connecting with state convention folks along the same lines. It’s probably too late to unseat anyone at the SBC this year and by next year the situation might have cooled that nothing gets done, but the state convention is probably in a few months and would be an opportune moment to take some action.
The other option would be, and this time has passed for this year’s SBC, to stand up when the registration report is made at the beginning and move that “messengers from ____ church” not be seated. You’d have to be there to do it.
This is good, Dave. I am hopeful for more movement on this in the future. The last strong vestige of racism in the SBC is found in the realm of “personal preference” and “worship styles.” That has become code-language for, “I don’t want to be with “those” people.” We will be with them if they become just like us, but that then becomes a kind of circumcision-separation in the body of Christ. If they take on our culture, our customs, our vocabulary, our way of doing church, and our music, then we will fellowship with them. That is just like the Judaizers saying that the Gentiles had to be circumcised, obey dietary laws, etc. to be accepted with the people of God. Of course, we don’t make our preferences soteriological like the Judaizers did, but we do make them ecclesiological and even missiological, and if you understand the implications of the gospel in Ephesians 2:11-22, Christ is our peace and tears down the dividing wall – there is neither Jew, Greek, Barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, male, or female. We are all one in Christ. So, that Oneness must be our priority, not our preferences, styles, methods, and approaches. All of those divisions are products of the Fall and are erased in Christ.
The only way through this is Agape – Sacrificial Love. If I truly and sacrificially love my black brothers and sisters in Christ, I will recognize that the divisions that we have are all from the institutional and cultural sins of racism, slavery, and segregation – sins that my Baptist ancestors promoted and codified. So, love for God and others requires that I not wait for them to come to me and become like me – rather, it requires that I go to them and identify with them, bringing the Incarnation of Christ into the still-existing broken relationships.
Could the healing of America be found in white, Baptist (and other), Southern Christians going to black, Baptist (and other) Southern Christians and laying down their lives sacrificially to communicate something other than our personal preferences? What if we truly laid down our lives for them in every way – for the health of their churches and communities and their future? What if their concerns became our concerns? What if we did not leave the cities because there were problems, but instead joined together with our black brothers and sisters and pastors and churches to identify with them and to carry their burdens? Might we then see the healing that we so desire. Isaiah 58 seems to say so.
Yes, Dave. This is crucial, but true healing requires much more of us than we can imagine. This is the work that we are doing in Montgomery, AL and it requires every bit of our lives. But, the witness of the Kingdom is at stake and Christ demands it of us.
By the way, how can I email you? I don’t see it on this site.
I’m just wondering if all the reasons you were told for killing the motion, if true, do not also apply to seating messengers from churches that support homosexuality? One cannot help but come away with the impression that racism is a lesser sin than homosexuality.
I was thinking the exact same thing. Excuse me if I fail to trust our leaders and their reasoning on this considering the track record of our denomination.
Here’s the thing, Bill. I have talked to several people in positions of influence, and there is some level of regret that the homosexuality thing was put into the bylaws.
It gives the impression that homosexuality is a sin in a different class from other sins.
It leads to the tendency of developing a laundry list of sins that will be put into the bylaws. Pretty soon, we will have 412 sins in the list. I think there is some regret now, not about taking a stand against the sin of homosexuality, but in the way it was done.
Would it be possible to re-do the by-laws without having people say we’re softening on sin?
Not likely, I guess.
Oh DAVID, I am so glad that people are realizing what the ‘impression’ is . . .
that is such an important awakening
Can you get that in writing from someone on the ExComm? I’ve participated in a lot of work with anti-racism and racial reconciliation. This is a very important issue to me that racism is treated and acknowledged as the deplorable sin that it is. It would go a long way to help rebuild my trust with our leaders if they admitted what you suggest they’re saying. One of the things I appreciate about the SBC and its people is their willingness to call sin sin when its unpopular. It may be annoying when we do it hypocritically but that’s better than not doing it at all. I think, with our history, the sin of racism can not be tolerated as any kind of lesser sin by us and it can not be our witness to the world either that we hold homosexuality as a worse sin than racism. They are both clearly detestable in the eyes of God.