In a delightfully caustic piece, Mark Silk, a Professor of Religion and Public Life at Trinity College, explores the deep failing of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in 2020 when it comes to issues of race. While the SBC passed a resolution in 2019 acknowledging racial issues and, at least partially, affirming Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Intersectionality, the current SBC President J.D. Greer encouraged the Presidents of the six SBC seminaries to publish a statement condemning CRT. Conservative elements within the SBC are organizing and see any acknowledgment of CRT as stepping onto a slippery slope that leads to feminism, acknowledging climate change, supporting LGBTQ rights, and socialism.
In Mark Silk’s words:
The last we knew, the Southern Baptist Convention was trying to lay the ghost of its pro-slavery beginnings. It had repented of that original sin, included a condemnation of racism in the 2000 revision of its “Faith and Message,” sought to bump up Black membership and, in 2012, even chose the Rev. Fred Luter, a New Orleans pastor, to be its first Black president.
So we were somewhat surprised when, a few days after Thanksgiving, the presidents of its six seminaries celebrated the 20th anniversary of the revision by declaring that “affirmation of Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, and any version of Critical Theory is incompatible with the Baptist Faith & Message.” When a number of prominent Black SBC pastors — four and counting — thereupon announced their departure from the denomination, we were not at all surprised.
The latter put out a documentary that will tell you all you need to know (and more) about how CRT&I has impregnated the SBC. Long story short, employing a bit of CRT&I for analytic purposes is like claiming you’re a little bit pregnant.
In other words, you’re all in from the moment of conception, so far as the conservative opposition is concerned. Once you start seeing racism in the structure of worldly power relations, you’ve slid down the slippery slope into feminism (women pastors), LGBTQ++ rights (same-sex marriage), socialism (voting Democrat), climate change (Gaia worship) — in other words, into full-blown wokeness (Marxist materialism).
Among the presidents, the big dog is R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. He was among the Young Turks who took no prisoners during the Resurgence, ridding SBTS of anyone and anything that smacked of liberalism.
Mohler has set his heart on the SBC presidency. He was supposed to be nominated for the position this year but COVID-19 forced cancellation of the denomination’s annual convention in Orlando, where his election would have taken place. In October he announced he’ll be put on the ballot in June, when the SBC is scheduled to convene in Nashville.
The CRT debacle won’t help his cause. As the saying goes, revolutions devour their children. What we may be witnessing is the Resurgence finally getting around to Al Mohler.
Read the full article HERE.
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