The Craft of Innovative Theology. Группа авторов

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not end and was accelerating the current racial crisis that had in its midst “frustrating confusion and blurred issues.”35

      Following the Brown decision in 1954, the SBC had merely desegregated its institutions as the law demanded. There was no official expression of Christian compassion offered to African Americans, and the SBC offered no responsibility for having supported the pain of the Jim Crow system until the peak of the civil rights in the mid-1960s. Its official statements and resolutions always were carefully crafted to show interest in African Americans, but they were more concerned with the criminality of mob violence, especially by racial agitators, and with maintaining social order. It began to change its tone only after it became clear that its desire to plant new churches in African American and other ethnic communities had been thwarted by its racist reputation.

       Box 3.7

      Footnote 42 is where the author introduces a contrast with another denomination. She explains that Roman Catholics did take a different approach. This footnote is important. This is a careful history of all the key pronouncements from a denomination. The reader might, at this point in the article, be thinking: Well, were the SBC so much worse than the other denominations? To explore this question in any detail would be a major distraction from the careful historical analysis of one denomination. But the author skillfully uses this note to respond to this obvious question that the reader might have.

       Box 3.8

      The change of heart, explains the author, comes in 1995 with the apology. This is the third and final shift in the narrative. As a good historian, the author is working both thematically and chronologically.

      The SBC’s Change of Heart: The 1995 Apology

       Box 3.9

      This entire article has explored the attitudes of one denomination and its attitude to racism in the light of the Golden Rule. As the author comes to a key moment in the narrative, the apology, she explains why this matters so much. A dimension of racism is the way a deep distrust can form of an institution or an organization or, in this case, a denomination. Racism is more than the sum of individuals with prejudice; racism can shape an entire denomination and the lack of trust can continue long into the future.

      Ultimately, the SBC issued an apology to African Americans during its 150th anniversary in 1995. Entitled “Resolution on Racial Reconciliation on the 150th Anniversary of The Southern Baptist Convention, Atlanta, Georgia (1995),” it acknowledged its historic role in the support of slavery, racism, and segregation in the exclusion of African Americans from SBC congregations. It also recognized its failure to support the civil rights movement; how the SBC divided the body of Christ between whites and African Americans; how it promoted the distorted belief that racism and discrimination were compatible with the gospel; and its minimal commitment to eradicating racism. It concluded:

      Be it further RESOLVED, That we apologize to all African-Americans for condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime; and we genuinely repent of racism of which we have been guilty, whether consciously (Psalm 19:13) or unconsciously (Leviticus 4:27); and

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