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The article says, "In the 1968 convention, the SBC voted to integrate its churches and welcome all races to membership..." Anybody know what this actual vote was? Since the churches are autonomous the Convention couldn't vote to integrate them. Was this a recommendation/resolution? Something else?

Thanks.

I can't find anything that the SBC did in 1968 like that. Perhaps a resolution was passed encouraging churches to integrate, but the convention couldn't have forced churches to do so, though they could have required it of their institutions, the seminaries and mission boards. I can't find a resolution or motion to that effect in 1968, though.

I think I found what that is referring to. In 1968 the SBC adopted "A Statement Concerning the Crisis in Our Nation". If that is what is referenced the Religion News Service writer overstates the case and probably doesn't even understand Baptist polity. (But this probably can be considered a turning point in the SBC's approach to race relations.) The statement can be read here:

Dave, I'm not real familiar with "A Statement Concerning the Crisis in Our Nation" and had some of the same feelings reading it as you (e.g. doesn't mention segregation or integration). I noticed books as varied as Twentieth-century Shapers of Baptist Social Ethics and The Baptist Story: From English Sect to Global Movement seem to think it deserves a great deal of emphasis in the evolution of the SBC and race relations.

He will find Wuthnow's Rough Country asap and read it carefully.

And let me state again, the inside cabal of the Pressler/Patterson takeover were race men of the White Citizens Council Stripe. And those include Ed McAteer, Albert Lee Smith and Jesse Helms. The record is clear on that point, and through the nineties Richard Land played inside baseball with Karl Rove in advancing Lee Atwater's "****** memo". See Wuthnow on that point.