by Tobin Perry, posted Wednesday, January 23, 2013 (11 years ago)
ALPHARETTA, Ga. (BP) -- The number of non-Anglo congregations in the Southern Baptist Convention has jumped by more than 66 percent since 1998, according to the North American Mission Board's Center for Missional Research.
Just over 10,000 congregations (10,049) of 50,768 congregations in the convention identified themselves by an ethnicity other than Anglo in 2011, the most recent year for which detailed data on ethnicity is available from LifeWay Christian Resources' Annual Church Profile database.
In 1998, non-Anglo congregations totaled 6,044.
"It's clear that Southern Baptists have been multi-ethnic and are becoming an even more multi-ethnic convention of churches," said Joseph Lee, senior pastor of Connexion Church in Lawrenceville, Ga., a mostly Korean Southern Baptist congregation. "The trend is gaining speed week by week. For example, the ethnic churches grew from zero to more than half of the total number of churches in our county in the past 10 years."
The diversification of the convention comes at a time when the United States as a whole is growing more diverse. USA Today, for example, has reported that the number of all-white communities in the country has plummeted since 1980, according to an analysis of census data by Penn State University's Population Research Institute. Less than a third of U.S. counties are 90 percent Caucasian.
The largest jump in non-Anglo congregations within the SBC from 1998 to 2011 has predominantly come from an 82.7 percent increase in the number of African American congregations.
For Fred Luter, pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans and the first-ever African American president of the SBC, the diversification of Southern Baptists has become very personal.
"I remember at one time I was the only [African American pastor] in my city who was Southern Baptist," Luter said. "I caught a lot of flack as a result of that. Thank God I'm able to see some of the fruit of my labor -- not only at my particular church but in the associations and conventions across the country."
Hispanic congregations also have seen a significant increase over the same span -- nearly 63 percent. The number of Asian congregations affiliated with the SBC has grown by 55 percent.
Because of the nature of Annual Church Profile (ACP) statistics, it's impossible to know the diversity of individuals within the SBC -- only the diversity of congregations. Read More
