battle flag as a sign of solidarity of the whole Body of Christ, including our African-American brothers and sisters.”57 Such statements on Christian unity and the inclusion of African Americans continue to signal the SBC’s change of heart on racial matters.
Conclusion
When writing history, a careful examination of the problem of race, stigmatization, and its complex consequences changes how we understand the intersection of religion, race, and oppression and helps elucidate how major religious institutions, in this case the SBC, can damage their own reputations among oppressed communities. Religious institutions that have harmed whole segments of society are not left undamaged, and that damage might be long term and may require a great deal of rehabilitation. Thus, when writing history, it is important not only to tell narratives as completely as possible, but also to assess the complex consequences of institutional activities as realistically as possible. We should not settle for conventional descriptions of how certain white religious institutions supported their constituents’ identities that were driven by notions of “purity,” “whiteness,” or “theological racism” without also showing the complex consequences. It is not only important to understand the support of racism and white supremacy by major religious institutions, it is equally important to understand how racist stigmas attach to religious institutions like the SBC and how they create mistrust and skepticism among African Americans, even as whites apologize, atone for their policies, and ask for forgiveness and reconciliation.
One religious historian, for example, asserts that during the civil rights era it became difficult for southern Christians to defend racial segregation. He adds, “Their beliefs played a significant role in making white southern Christians obsessed with conceptions of purity. Their beliefs had been set in a mythological context that gave them properly religious sanction.”58 I would add: “or so they believed.” This same historian also states that white southern Christian ideas of social and racial hierarchy did not have to sound hypocritical because particular biblical passages clearly explained why spiritual equality does not imply temporal equality but agrees with “godly order.”59 The problem, however, is that there was a litany of ungodly practices against enslaved people.
Religious institutions have choices in terms of how they create, sustain, and destroy vestiges of racism. I have described the journey of the SBC, its support of white supremacy and racism, the Christian disunity it fostered with African Americans because it would not regard them as equals, how the SBC stigmatized itself as being a racist organization, and then how it recently has worked to remove this stigma in order to build relationships with African Americans and other ethnic groups.
Postscript
Today, like many American mainline denominations, the SBC is in the midst of declining membership. According to reports, it is doing everything possible to stem the tide of decline by becoming more ethnically diverse in its membership. Russell Moore, president since 2013 of its influential Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, has tried to change how the SBC talks about race, speaking with empathy, and sometimes anger, over recent racial conflicts. For example, he has asked the denomination to listen more to African Americans’ experiences of racism. Yet, because the SBC believes that racism is due to the sinful nature of human beings, it seems reticent to deal with the oppressive societal structures that it helped to build and support. It believes that changing the ill will within individual minds and hearts is key and often sees it as the only step to be taken.
Within the denomination, efforts have been made to offer scriptures that promote racial equality, in distinction to those scriptures used to defend racism, slavery, and segregation. For example, those who are more inclusive and are what is referred to as “contemporary Southern Baptists,” believe that the Bible has been misinterpreted on the issue of race. They express hopefulness that the SBC is capable of making internal shifts in theology while continuing to adhere to the idea of biblical inerrancy.60
The SBC also has placed a great deal of emphasis on Hispanic membership, which has grown by 40% since 1998. However, according to Pew Research Center, as of 2014 the SBC remains one of the least racially diverse denominations in the United States, with only 6% African American and 3% Hispanic membership.61 In the American Baptist Churches USA, for example, African Americans constitute 10% of the membership. Meanwhile the Catholic Church’s ethnic composition is more diverse, with 3% African American and 34% Latino membership. Despite the SBC’s recent efforts, it remains an overwhelmingly majority white denomination.
Notes
1 1 Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60, 19 How. 393, (US 1857).
2 2 Nineteenth-century theologian Albert Barnes argued that the Golden Rule was entirely essential to the system of Christianity and anything done contrary to it violates the spirit of Christianity: “No one, under the influence of this rule, ever made a man a slave.” See, Albert Barnes, Inquiry into the Scriptural Views of Slavery (Philadelphia: Perkins & Purves, 1846), 248–249. David Walker also argued the holding of African Americans in the most “abject slavery and wretchedness” violated the Golden Rule. He stated, “Our divine Lord and Master said, ‘all things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.’” See, David Walker, David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, 1829, 43, accessed February 10, 2017, http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/walker/walker.html.
3 3 John Woolman 1720–1772, The Essays and Journal of John Wooman (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 340.
4 4 Anthony Benezet and David Cooper, “A Mite Cast into the Treasury: Or, Observations on Slave-keeping, 1772,” 6–8, accessed June 23, 2016, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N09682.0001.001.
5 5 Charles Elliott, Sinfulness of Slavery, Vol. 1 (Cincinnati, OH: L. Swormsdedt & J. H. Power, 1850), 274.
6 6 Elliott, Sinfulness, 275.
7 7 Elliott, Sinfulness, 276.
8 8 Elliott, Sinfulness, 278–279.
9 9 Elliott, Sinfulness, 278–279.
10 10 Allen Dwight Callahan, The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 35–36.
11 11 Robert Furman, Exposition of the View of the Baptists, Relative to the Coloured Population in the United States in Communication to the Governor of South Carolina (Charleston, SC: A. E. Miller, 1838), 10.
12 12 Furman, Exposition, 12.
13 13 James Henley Thornwell, The Rights and Duties of Masters: Preachers at the Dedication of A Church
