by Diana Chandler, posted Friday, August 23, 2013 (11 years ago)
WASHINGTON (BP) -- A dichotomy existed within the Southern Baptist Convention when 250,000 blacks and others, including those from a range of faith traditions, converged for the 1963 March on Washington championing civil rights and equitable economic opportunity.
Credit: National Archives and Records Administration
While doors of many Southern Baptist churches and schools were closed to African Americans, all SBC seminaries supported by Cooperative Program dollars were racially integrated, according to 1963 SBC statistics housed in the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives. In all, 22 of the SBC's 70 seminaries, universities, junior colleges, academies and Bible schools were integrated.
In spite of many Southern Baptist pastors supporting racial segregation, some Southern Baptists were just as resolved in championing racial inclusion, though they were in the minority.
As Americans mark the 50th anniversary of the 1963 march with a week of special events in the nation's capital and other activities in select cities, the SBC has long led a ministry of reconciliation and made significant strides in modeling love across racial lines, but it still has much work to do, current African American Southern Baptist leaders told Baptist Press.
"There are more cultures worshipping together in our SBC churches than ever before. And to that I say, Praise the Lord!" said SBC President Fred Luter, the first African American president of the body, now in his second one-year term. "Yes, we have come a long way since 1963, but as the saying goes we still have a long way to go. Therefore the pastors, leaders and members of SBC churches need to continue to be intentional in our efforts to reach people regardless of their skin color.
"It was Dr. [Martin Luther] King's dream, but it is also the heart of God," said Luter, pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans. "Red, yellow, black and white, we are ALL precious in His sight!"
K. Marshall Williams, chairman of the SBC's African American Advisory Council and pastor of Nazarene Baptist Church in Philadelphia, echoed that past progress must be followed by continued growth.
"For a convention that has a history of being on the wrong side of slavery, to a 1995 resolution renouncing and repenting of its racist roots of defending slavery, segregation and white supremacy, to in 2013 seeing the second-term election of Dr. Fred Luter as the first African American president of the Southern Baptist Convention," Williams said, "I believe that [the] SBC has made progress in modeling the love of the Lord by becoming more inclusive of ALL blood-bought believers who have been [birthed] into the body of Christ.
"However, in the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 'We have some difficult days ahead,'" Williams said. "Racial injustice, employment, economic and educational inequalities as well as a culture that is in moral decay is the day in which we live. Many in the church have left their first love and need to repent (Revelation 2:4-5)." Read More
