Southern Baptists and Racism

Two things crossed my mind and heart this week.

First, reading through “The Warmth of Other Suns” helped me see the poison of racism that awaited African Americans who escaped the “Jim Crow” South for other parts of the United States in what was called the “Great Migration.” The poison of racism had leeched into the cultures of the North as well as the West. So African Americans found their promised land had been corrupted with some of the same issues they faced in the South with the exception they were not told what the rules of racism were in the North and West. They knew the rules for African Americans in the South. They had lived it and felt the weight of the oppression, the disparity of being Black, the limited opportunity, and the violence that kept them in their place.

The North and West, however, did not have a clear code so African Americans learned by living in the North and West some of the rules from the South applied but were inconsistently enforced.

The other bit of news I saw in the Baptist Standard was evidence has surfaced which identifies R.C. Buckner as a slave owner. Baptists don't have “patron saints,” but we do venerate many Baptists from the past by naming institutions, offerings, and hospitals after these trailblazers. R.C Buckner was one of those. His name is attached to the international ministry of Buckner Benevolences.

I don't know why we should be surprised at this revelation because, well, the Southern Baptist Convention was born out of a split between Northern Baptists and Baptists in the South over slavery. It's founding was in May of 1845. What that means is: Southern Baptist churches were attended by people in the South who owned slaves. Not all Baptists owned slaves, however the culture could look to Southern Baptist theologians and pastors to give Biblical grounds for the owning of slaves. The seminal leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention were more likely to be slave owners than not. Research using the 1860 census helps us sketch this out. The 1860 census shows a total population in the United States as 31,443,321. Of that, 12.6% were identified as slaves. However, that stops short of painting the real picture. Since slavery was illegal in many states in the Union at that time, more than 4.9% of people in slave holding states owned slaves. More specifically, if one targets the slave holding states, the demographics change significantly. 19.9% of family units in slave states owned slaves. 24.9% of households (which are a broader category than family units) owned slaves. Go here for the data:(https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/aug/24/viral-image/viral-post-gets-it-wrong-extent-slavery-1860/)

More than that, after the Civil War, churches in the South either by silence or participation helped enforce Jim Crow laws until the back of that system was broken beyond repair by federal law and enforcement. Of course law enforcement was also recruited to keep slaves and later African Americans in their proper station in the caste system of the old South. As with Baptists, law enforcement has a legacy of racism. We are seeing that explode on the national front today.

The point is Southern Baptists even before breaking from their Northern Baptist brethren, were at the forefront of giving a Biblical foundation for slavery. The research which now uncovers the luminaries of our Southern Baptist Heritage were implicated in the holding of slaves and justification of slavery should not surprise us. What should surprise us is how long it took for us to connect the dots.

Sadly, I don't believe R.C Buckner was alone. In the days and years to come, we will see a more severe accounting of our participation and sanctioning of the poison of slavery, and the hate which grew from it and continues today in parts of our nation and in parts of Southern life and Southern Baptist life.

I credit a metaphor I remembered from my middle son, Dr. Joseph Chancellor, when he and his family were in the UK working on a post doc at Cambridge University. He told me, “Dad, until you get away from America, you cannot imagine how slavery has poisoned our national life, and our national experience.”

Talking with one of our pastors after his sermon on “Race and Grace” where he spoke of growing up in Alabama, I shared with him I understood his experience. Growing up in West Texas was perhaps not as toxic as Alabama, but it really comes down to “lots of poison or just enough poison.”

How bad was the hate and racism? Look at what it took to break the back of Jim Crow. Brown vs Board of Education was the Supreme Court ruling that invalidated “separate but equal.” The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at that time was Earl Warren. It is more interesting to note that two phrases were added about the same time to our pledge and currency. 1954 saw the addition of the words “Under God” to our pledge, and 1956 saw the addition to our currency of “One Nation Under God.” Perhaps as a reaction to the Warren Court and desegregation, and later the Warren Court responsibility for ending school prayer, with two cases in 1962, and 1963. The Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, and Voting Rights Act of 1965. Together those victories in the Supreme Court and Legislation broke the back of Jim Crow laws. It is interesting to note that growing up in West Texas, I heard that Earl Warren was an atheist. These rulings perhaps with invalidating “Separate but Equal” and invalidating “state sponsored school prayer” contributed to the perception that Chief Justice Earl Warren was an enemy of the faith. I personally cannot document that rumor.

However, it is important to note that Southern Baptist Churches were and are a force in the South. It was their home turf and it, to me, is inescapable that my roots have always been deep in the soil of racism. Many of my heroes of my Baptist faith were no doubt slave owners. If the founding fathers (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and twelve others) owned slaves,

(https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Founding-Fathers-and-Slavery-1269536), how likely was it that Baptist theologians, pastors, deacons, and members were a part of that institution. Eventually, it will come out as researchers take a renewed interest in our roots and who supported and owned slaves.

So the question is, “In this day of racial reckoning, how will Baptist move forward? How can we repent of our legacy? How can we cast off the sin of racism that has so easily beset us, and become a trustworthy and safe Gospel source for all people? How can we open wide our hearts as Jesus opened His heart and sacrifice to us? How can we humble ourselves and hear the stories of our African Americans without defensiveness and condescension? How can we at last as a covenant people join with the struggle for equal rights allowing our African Americans to lead and teach us about oppression, the closed doors of opportunity, the stigma of being black, the glass ceilings in industry, and the inequity in income, medical and mental health services currently in America?”

Those, to me, are the questions of our time for the Baptist faith community.