The Church's Role in Racism

Beginnings

American Christianity has been complicit in racism from the very beginning. Even before the Revolutionary War, missionaries to the colonies crafted their gospel message so as not to offend slave owners. It was understood at the time that Christians could not own one another as slaves. In order to gain access to the slaves, missionaries assured the slave owners that while it was true that “all men were equal at the foot of the cross,” all men were not equal on the grounds of race. Therefore, every baptized slave was made to declare that his or her baptism had nothing to do with freedom. They had to swear allegiance, not to Jesus, but to their slave master for as long as they lived. “So, from the beginning of American colonization, Europeans crafted a Christianity that would allow them to spread the faith without confronting the exploitative economic system of slavery and the emerging social inequality based on color.”[1]

Richard Allen was born a slave in 1760, but then grew up during the Revolution hearing about freedom and liberty. He was converted by two abolitionist evangelists and then, smartly, arranged for the men to speak with his master. His master also came to faith and was convinced by the men to allow Allen to purchase his freedom. Allen went on to become a Methodist minister in Philadelphia, preaching in a mixed, or what we would now call a diverse, church. However, even though they were no longer slaves, the white Christians did not treat their black brothers and sisters as equals. One day, Allen and another black pastor were forcibly removed from church while they were praying because they were in the “white seats” at the front of the church. The black Christians left the church and never looked back. Allen led them to found the first African Methodist Episcopal or AME church.

You see, it’s not that the American church has always hated non-European, non-white races, though plenty of Christians have participated in racial hate crimes. But that’s not the whole story. The whole story is that the white American church, and our own denomination, has gone out of its way to treat the Christians that don’t look like us as slaves or even patronize them as children . . . but never see them as equals.

The SBC

In 1845, Southern churches from the Tricentennial Convention of Baptist Churches broke away to form their own convention. They had twice tried to get a slave owner appointed as a missionary to force the convention’s leadership to make a stand on the then taboo subject of slavery. When leadership did rule that no one currently owning slaves would be appointed, Southerners split. The SBC was not formed primarily out of a concern for missions. Baptists were sending missionaries before the SBC. The SBC was formed solely on the issue of slavery: to send slave owners as missionaries using money earned by slaves.

That same year Southern Baptists broke from the Northern Baptists to form the SBC, a former slave put into book form his life as a slave. Consider the words of Frederick Douglass on American Christianity as a whole in the year that SBC formed their own convention for the purpose of sending slave owners as missionaries:

What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of "stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in." I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. The man who robs me of my earnings at the end of each week meets me as a class-leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life, and the path of salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes of prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate of purity. He who proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the name of the God who made me. He who is the religious advocate of marriage robs whole millions of its sacred influence, and leaves them to the ravages of wholesale pollution. The warm defender of the sacredness of the family relation is the same that scatters whole families,—sundering husbands and wives, parents and children, sisters and brothers,—leaving the hut vacant, and the hearth desolate. We see the thief preaching against theft, and the adulterer against adultery. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the POOR HEATHEN! ALL FOR THE GLORY OF GOD AND THE GOOD OF SOULS! The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together.[2]

The SBC has made at least thirty-one resolutions on race from 1845 to 2007. While the convention was formed on the principle of using money earned from slavery for missions, these resolutions show an awareness for black Christians. However, the overall attitude toward “colored peoples” (aka non-whites) was one of paternalism and patronization.

That may be most clearly seen in the 1939 Resolution Concerning Lynching and Race Relations, which after saying that things are going great between the races since Baptist pastors and churches are being so helpful and friendly toward “the Negros,” urges “Baptist people everywhere to maintain and extend these friendly and helpful contacts and relations, remembering always the law of Christian obligation that the strong should bear the burdens of the weak, and yet doing this without any spirit of patronizing or air of condescending.”

The IMB

In general, the IMB has not ignored black Christians. We have treated them like the “weaker brother”—a mission field to be reached—and have treated our own efforts to support them as the best thing ever while ignoring our own role in their exploitation.

Our own IMB 175 timeline reads:

In 1845 the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention formed to carry out “one sacred effort in sending forth the word of life to idolatrous lands.” Almost immediately, missionaries were appointed to China and Africa. One little-known aspect of FMB history is that some of the very first missionaries were black Americans — free men and women already living in Liberia who were appointed to serve as Southern Baptist missionaries there.

Remember, from the outset we made the distinct choice to send white slave owners to reach “idolatrous lands,” including Africa, with the money earned by the blood, sweat and tears of African slaves. We might pat ourselves on the back for being so quick to send an African American slave as a missionary. But the truth is far more complex, as John Day was not a slave but was born a freedman and was viewed more as a “gentleman” by white Southerners because of his mixed heritage and complexion. In fact, earlier in the 19th century, the decision had been made by white Christians to send free blacks to places like Liberia, because Day was serving in Liberia because that country offered more opportunities for freedom than our own.[3]

We also sent an African American missionary after the Civil Rights movement in 1967. During the watershed movement, Southern Baptists had a wide range of views. Some advocated for equality at the government level. Some fought for segregation in the Citizen’s Council or the Klu Klux Klan. “With the exception of forward-thinking missionaries, as a general rule conservative Southern Baptists were opposed to, or at least lukewarm toward, civil rights while progressive Southern Baptist were more favorable to desegregation.”[4]

In 1967, the FMB sent Mary Sue Thompson to Nigeria. She was the first SBC African American missionary appointed in over 80 years. She is quoted as saying, “Nigerians, other Africans and people around the world have asked me, ‘Why don’t Southern Baptists have more black missionaries?’”[5] That is the exact question our own George Smith is getting right now.[6] Currently, the IMB has 13 African American missionaries, 0.3% of its organization, which doesn’t even represent the 6% African American membership of the SBC. Secular organizations are leading the charge on equal representation and putting minorities in places of leadership, while our churches lags behind.

Think for a moment of IMB or SBC leadership. Who are the African American leaders you look up to? Or are there any? When was the last time you attended a meeting or joined a group led by a non-white leader?

In 1982 we went on record as “strongly opposing the activities of the Ku Klux Klan.” However, even as recently as July 30, 2020, an Alabama Southern Baptist pastor was asked to resign after he posted on Facebook that he attended a KKK celebration. This celebration was concurrent with the memorial of Civil Rights leader John Lewis—a memorial service and celebration of Lewis’s legacy was held the same weekend and in the same city as the KKK gathering.[7] The SBC has only ever removed one church from the convention in response to racial discrimination, in 2018.[8]

In 1995, a more sweeping Resolution on Racial Reconciliation on the 150th Anniversary of the Southern Baptist Convention renounced, repudiated, apologized and repented for racism. We do need to celebrate the efforts of those who put this resolution forward. However, we also need to recognize it took 130 years for us to acknowledge and repent of our complicity in slavery, much less other racists practices.

With the reality that America’s population is becoming a minority majority within the next decade,[9] the American church, and specifically our organization, has to do a better job in retelling the story truthfully and working to treat our minority brothers and sisters as equals. This means promoting them to leadership and submitting ourselves to serving under them.

[1] Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020), 39.

[2] Frederick Douglass, Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass, 95-96.

[3] http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/liberia/index.php?page=Stories&section=John+Day

[4] Anthony Chute, Nathan Finn, Michael Haykin, The Baptist Story (Nashville: B&H Publishing 2015), 275.

[5] https://www.imb.org/175/missionary-profiles/mary-sue-thompson/?returnto=mary-sue-thompson&pageid=127247

[6] David Roach, “Southern Baptists Have Only 13 African American Career Missionaries. What Will It Take to Mobilize More?” Christianity Today, February 28, 2020, https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2020/february/southern-baptist-imb-african-american-missionaries.html.

[7] Sarah Pulliam Bailey, “Alabama politician resigns as a Southern Baptist pastor after KKK leader’s birthday celebration,” Washington Post, July, 30, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/07/30/alabama-republican-resigns-southern-baptist/.

[8] Erin B. Logan, “An all-white church intended to give its building to a black congregation. The plan fell apart,” Washington Post, June 14, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/06/13/an-all-white-church-planned-to-give-its-building-to-a-black-congregation-instead-they-clashed/.

[9] Stef W. Kight, “America’s majority minority future,” Axios, April 29, 2019, https://www.axios.com/when-american-minorities-become-the-majority-d8b3ee00-e4f3-4993-8481-93a290fdb057.html