SBC elects a black president

[William Thornton]

Southern Baptists elect black president

This is ABP. Fred Luter gets about 15% of Bob Allen's story. Allen sees to it that Emmanual McCall gets more than that. Allen usually does a great job and ABP is indispensible if an SBC wants to stay current on all the Baptist news but old Bob hit the wrong notes here.

The election of Fred Luter was an authentic, unadulterated good moment for the SBC, not that mod/libs need to acknowledge it, and deserves a stand-alone topic.

There is a long term trend in the SBC of a large proportion of new SBC congregations being non-white.

[Sandy]

He also got in some mention of past SBC power brokers Foy Valentine and Franklin Paschall as well.

I wonder if the wider acceptance of African Americans in the SBC has not been due directly to the theological stance the convention has taken since 1979. African American church goers tend to be pretty liberal politically, and pretty conservative theologically. Looking at statements of faith on line for major African American denominations, most of them have a definition of inerrancy that is comparable to the BFM 2000. Then, too, the old moderate leadership core of the SBC came out of a lot of churches that restricted African Americans from being members, and wasn't inclusive of African Americans in the lower level leadership of the denomination.

[Dave Roberts]

He also got in some mention of past SBC power brokers Foy Valentine and Franklin Paschall as well.

I wonder if the wider acceptance of African Americans in the SBC has not been due directly to the theological stance the convention has taken since 1979. African American church goers tend to be pretty liberal politically, and pretty conservative theologically. Looking at statements of faith on line for major African American denominations, most of them have a definition of inerrancy that is comparable to the BFM 2000. Then, too, the old moderate leadership core of the SBC came out of a lot of churches that restricted African Americans from being members, and wasn't inclusive of African Americans in the lower level leadership of the denomination.

If it weren't for the Foy Valentine's and Henlee Barnette's, there would be no African-American churches in the SBC. There were pastors in the 1960's and 1970's losing their churches because of their support for African-Americans. The inclusion of Blacks in the denomination didn't start until just before the Takeover. It's irrelevant to consider those days from today's standards.

[Sandy]

He also got in some mention of past SBC power brokers Foy Valentine and Franklin Paschall as well.

I wonder if the wider acceptance of African Americans in the SBC has not been due directly to the theological stance the convention has taken since 1979. African American church goers tend to be pretty liberal politically, and pretty conservative theologically. Looking at statements of faith on line for major African American denominations, most of them have a definition of inerrancy that is comparable to the BFM 2000. Then, too, the old moderate leadership core of the SBC came out of a lot of churches that restricted African Americans from being members, and wasn't inclusive of African Americans in the lower level leadership of the denomination.

If it weren't for the Foy Valentine's and Henlee Barnette's, there would be no African-American churches in the SBC. There were pastors in the 1960's and 1970's losing their churches because of their support for African-Americans. The inclusion of Blacks in the denomination didn't start until just before the Takeover. It's irrelevant to consider those days from today's standards.

Well, I'm not so sure about that. The voices for integration in the moderate-run SBC prior to 1979 were few and far between, with leaders coming from churches that didn't allow African American members being much more common. One of the few signs that today's leadership in the SBC might actually be more focused on church growth and evangelism, and reaching into unchurched communities is the widespread acceptance of African American churches and the growth of integrated congregations, in spite of sharp, secular political differences. Who'd have thought that Richard Land would have lost his radio program, and much of his standing in the SBC, just a month or so before Fred Luter was elected President of the SBC? The times have definitely changed.

I think there is a correlation between the conservative theology of both African American Baptists and the SBC's conservative leadership that has led to increased involvement of African Americans. I think that has made it more comfortable for the African Americans.

[Ed Pettibone]

He also got in some mention of past SBC power brokers Foy Valentine and Franklin Paschall as well.

I wonder if the wider acceptance of African Americans in the SBC has not been due directly to the theological stance the convention has taken since 1979. African American church goers tend to be pretty liberal politically, and pretty conservative theologically. Looking at statements of faith on line for major African American denominations, most of them have a definition of inerrancy that is comparable to the BFM 2000. Then, too, the old moderate leadership core of the SBC came out of a lot of churches that restricted African Americans from being members, and wasn't inclusive of African Americans in the lower level leadership of the denomination.

If it weren't for the Foy Valentine's and Henlee Barnette's, there would be no African-American churches in the SBC. There were pastors in the 1960's and 1970's losing their churches because of their support for African-Americans. The inclusion of Blacks in the denomination didn't start until just before the Takeover. It's irrelevant to consider those days from today's standards.

Ed: Dave, I agree that Henlee and Foy Valentine had great influence on the the integration efforts in the SBC. Indeed they had little support BUT they did have support. Southern Seminary in fact had its first black graduate just a year after Henlee graduated in 1943.
In 1944, Garland Offutt became the seminary’s first black graduate to receive the Th.M. degree and went on to earn a Th.D. before serving as professor and dean at Simmons College.

Also see http://books.google.com/books?id=ac_hd2 ... LrTyr-HyT1 A Historical Study of Southern Baptists and Race Relations, 1917-1947
By Foy Valentine

[Dave Roberts]

Ed: Dave, I agree that Henlee and Foy Valentine had great influence on the the integration efforts in the SBC. Indeed they had little support BUT they did have support. Southern Seminary in fact had its first black graduate just a year after Henlee graduated in 1943.
In 1944, Garland Offutt became the seminary’s first black graduate to receive the Th.M. degree and went on to earn a Th.D. before serving as professor and dean at Simmons College.

Also see http://books.google.com/books?id=ac_hd2 ... LrTyr-HyT1 A Historical Study of Southern Baptists and Race Relations, 1917-1947
By Foy Valentine

When I was a student as SBTS for 1968-1972, we had a number of African-American students who were part of the student body. They were well-received and respected, and there was a transition in race relations happening as Black and White students came to know each other, drank coffee in one another's apartments, and worked side by side on maintenance crews, library staffs, and in audio-visual booths. Some of those were the first to lead their churches to dually align with the SBC. The SBC moderate voices were the ones advocating for racial change in the South while Criswell and his allies from the conservative side were thundering for the preservation of "separate but equal." Just read the history carefully, and you will see that conservatives were the ones demanding the preservation of segregation.

I was also a student at Carson-Newman College in Tennessee from 1964 to 1968. In that time, we received our first African-American students living in dorms and eating in the cafeteria. There were protests among Tennessee Baptists when the color line was lowered that the school had left its conservative moorings, and if you read Tennessee Baptist history, you will find there were those advocating the defunding of Baptist institutions that allowed Blacks and Whites to live together and eat together.

I also go back to being in the eighth grade when our school was integrated by court order. Had it not been for the moderate voices from my pastor, the local Presbyterian pastor, the local Methodist pastor, and one Quaker pastor, our community might have blown apart. The strong conservative voices were still saying it was wrong to let Blacks and Whites go to school together.

In much of the traditional South, there is still a long way to go to establish better race relations. I hope Fred Luter's election is a sign that those relations are moving in the right direction. Historical research will not support that the change in the SBC's leadership was the impetus to that happening. Sandy, you need to read your history of the SBC from someone besides Lifeway.

[Ed Pettibone]

Ed: I think perhaps Dave and Sandy May both be over looking three major influence on the change of racial attitudes in the south including the SBC. The first would be the number of returning service men who had worked along side of and drank beer in the PX, the NCO club and Officers Club and attended chapel with each other. Second would be the integration of both College and Pro athletic teams and the third would be the move south of major businesses in search of cheaper labor, but bringing management and supervisors with them. Yet for the most part churches drug their feet. And a large part of that came from Black churches which where concerned about "assimilation".

In 60-61 I attended a Baptist jr. college in Mississippi that was considering admitting African students who would recommended by SBC missionaries. But not African Americans, their rational was "We can know that students coming from Africa are pure blooded Blacks". That was part of why I did not stick around to take one last required course during the summer to get an A.A.. The firing of a Sociology professor for teaching too much sex in a class on Social Disorganization was another, and that my wife could eliminate 38 miles of commuting to work.

[Sandy]

There are lots of outside influences and social factors that have brought about the changes in attitude toward African Americans being included in the SBC, as well as in other denominations and church groups. But in SBC history, it will be the conservatives in 2012 who actually put an African American in a top leadership position. It has only been during the past 25 years that African Americans have appeared on the higher levels of executive employment at the mission boards, though there have been relationships especially involving NAMB with predominantly African American churches and denominations for quite some time.

As far as it goes, the growth of predominantly African American churches affiliated with the SBC is in areas of the country outside of Dixieland more than it is taking place in the South. Houston was pretty progressive with regard to the number of African American churches involved in the SBC and subsequently, in the higher levels of local denominational life. Under conservative leadership, the number of predominantly African American churches in the SBC is booming, and the number of churches willing to cross over from the National Baptists and be dually affiliated is growing exponentially. Here in the northeast, in the Philadelphia area, and across the river in South Jersey, and in Metro New York, Southern Baptist work is led by African Americans, and is growing exponentially.

But African American Baptists are theologically conservative, and that has opened the door for many of them to affiliate with the SBC and for their pastors and church leaders to occupy trustee board seats, and now, to be elected to office. Luter is typical of African Americans in the SBC in this regard. I would expect moderates to be a little muted on this particular subject, and perhaps a little biased, because they weren't able to get the denomination to this point. And I'm not aware of any predominantly African American congregations that are affiliated with CBF.

[William Thornton]

I feel certain that the SBC has many times more black congregations, most dually aligned, than the CBF has congregations.

I think that my mod/lib friends may be out of touch on this matter.

[Dave Roberts]

I feel certain that the SBC has many times more black congregations, most dually aligned, than the CBF has congregations.

I think that my mod/lib friends may be out of touch on this matter.

I don't think any of us have much to celebrate in the area of race relations. Our legacy is not good, and our current performace in both the SBC and CBF is poor. Luter is a step in the right direction, but I wonder how it will play in some of the backwater bayous across the South.

[Stephen Fox]

Is the story on this piece; and the whitewash of SBC takeover Fundy history. I am hoping Curtis Freeman and others weigh in soon; most especially Chandler Davison of Rice U. His memories of Judge Pressler and Marney's days at FBC Austin in the 50's are interesting indeed.
And don't forget Jack Harwell at Ga Bap CIndex was let go cause some of the fundies wounds never healed when in April 68 Harwell said Martin Luther King, Jr was his brother.

Countin on Dr. Thornton to dissect the Worthen piece.

Check my comment to this piece at NY Times. It got 4 recommends and an endorsing comment from Brooklyn

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/ ... ostComment

[Stephen Fox]

had this to say in the NY Times comments:

For a while, during the Sixties and Seventies, the SBC was making some
ground in being more open minded and flexible - then came the
fundamentalists and drove it all in the ground. Too bad. No wonder
they have lost so many people, they brought it on themselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/18/us/so ... wanted=all

[Sandy]

had this to say in the NY Times comments:

For a while, during the Sixties and Seventies, the SBC was making some
ground in being more open minded and flexible - then came the
fundamentalists and drove it all in the ground. Too bad. No wonder
they have lost so many people, they brought it on themselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/18/us/so ... wanted=all

Wow. The SBC elects an African American president, an inner-city New Orleans pastor, at a time when the number of African American church members and African American churches affiliated with the SBC is at a record level, and when there are more African Americans in leadership positions in the SBC than there ever have been, you're still going to try to bill the old, pre-1979 SBC leadership as being "open minded and flexible" and accuse the "Fundamentalists" of driving it into the ground. Talk about revisionist history.

There were some in the moderate-run SBC who were visionary and progressive when it came to race relations in the Southern Baptist Convention. Pity that their voices counted for so little, and that so little had actually been accomplished by 1979. The legacy of the SBC, even up into the 70's, was one of "they do church differently, so let them have their own churches." And a lot of prominent SBC leaders were pastors and leaders of churches that had bylaws restricting African Americans from membership. The only real denominational cooperation at that time was the Commission on the American Baptist Seminary, which was mainly a financial arrangement to help a struggling school in Nashville, within sight of the SBC headquarters building. Most of the agreements made with African Americans during that time consisted of the attitude that, "O.K., we'll work with you in these few areas, but you stay in your churches and we'll stay in ours."

Over the past two decades, under solid, conservative leadership, African Americans have flooded into the SBC. There are a number of churches, mostly in the South and Southwest, which have opted for dual affiliation, beyond the "fraternal relationship" the SBC once had with the National Baptist Convention and in most cases, that is directly related to the perception that the SBC is theologically compatible with African American Baptists who tend toward the conservative side theologically. But there are a lot of African American Baptist churches that are uniquely aligned with the SBC through their respective state conventions. Generally, here in the Northeast, most new church plants of SBC churches are predominantly African American, and many large African American churches once affiliated with either the National Baptists or the ABC-USA are also now uniquely aligned with the SBC. Times have changed, and so have attitudes, but the SBC's theological shift in 1979 appears to have also been a catalyst in the now increasing numbers of African Americans who are coming into leadership in the Southern Baptist Convention.

I think it will be interested to watch, as Dave has suggested, how this is received in some of the "backwater bayous" across the South. But I think William's comment, that there are more African American churches in the SBC than there are total churches in the CBF, is also interesting. And what percentage of CBF is African American? I'm not aware of a single predominantly African American congregation that belongs to CBF.

[Ed Pettibone]

I feel certain that the SBC has many times more black congregations, most dually aligned, than the CBF has congregations.

I think that my mod/lib friends may be out of touch on this matter.

I don't think any of us have much to celebrate in the area of race relations. Our legacy is not good, and our current performace in both the SBC and CBF is poor. Luter is a step in the right direction, but I wonder how it will play in some of the backwater bayous across the South.

Ed: I think those of us in the ABC-USA have a good bit to celebrate in the area of race relations. In ABHMS the long term Executive Director is Dr. Aidsand F. Wright-Riggins III an African American. And we have many black pastors , Not all of whom are in "black churches" I personally know three Black pastors in ABC-NYS who's churches are predominantly white.

Also, I seriously doubt that Luter would have been this years nominee for the SBC presidency had it not been for for the years of service as Director of Black Church Relations for the SBC by Dr Emmanuel McCall. William Suggested that Bob Allen was unfair to give Dr. McCall more space than Luther in the ABP story about Luters election. I think however, Fred Luter might concede that he rode in on McCall's shoulders. But some SBC folk are reluctant to credit Dr. Macall with as much as he deserves because after he departed the SBC, he affiliated with with the CBF. In 2006 after 15 years in CBF he became CBF's first African American Coordinator. Then we began to see Luters rise into prominence in the SBC.

[William Thornton]

Ed, You put words in my mouth. I did not suggest that Bob Allen was unfair. His piece was tendentious to toss in all the paragraphs about McCall.

[Timothy Bonney]

I feel certain that the SBC has many times more black congregations, most dually aligned, than the CBF has congregations.

I think that my mod/lib friends may be out of touch on this matter.

Don't count all your Mod/Lib friends in this William. Last I looked folks like Ed and Hauro are in a denomination that has something like 40% African-American membership and no ethnic majority known as the ABC/USA.

Frankly United Methodists and the SBC are both behind our ABC friends in that respect.

[Sandy]

This is just going to be hard for moderate Baptists to take, William. I mean, the SBC is rapidly becoming one of the most racially diverse Christian denominations in the country, under the leadership of conservatives. Essentially, under moderate leadership, African Americans were never given admission to the highest levels of denominational leadership. Now, under the conservatives, they are found on trustee boards, important committees, and in the highest offices. Luter is the first African American president, but the SBC had previously elected Eric Redmond of Maryland as second VP a few years back. Redmond was pastor of Hillcrest Baptist Church in Temple Hills, Maryland, one of a growing number of SBC churches that are not predominantly African American, but are pastored by African Americans.

I would say that the total number of African Americans, predominantly African American churches, integrated congregations and African American pastors of integrated churches in the SBC now exceeds that in the ABC-USA. In fact, I would guess that the total number of African American church members in the SBC is greater than the total membership of ABC-USA.

[Timothy Bonney]

I would say that the total number of African Americans, predominantly African American churches, integrated congregations and African American pastors of integrated churches in the SBC now exceeds that in the ABC-USA. In fact, I would guess that the total number of African American church members in the SBC is greater than the total membership of ABC-USA.

Sandy that is possible. But not as meaningful as you'd like to make it out to be. There is probably an African-American denomination that has less African-American chuches in it than the SBC because the SBC is so huge. The question is how welcoming is the SBC to leaders who are not white male? If the election of a black President means a welcoming attitude in leadership I'm happy for the SBC. It is a good start. But it doesn't suddenly prove the SBC is fully welcoming to black leaders.

For example, how many other black leaders hold positions of authority in the SBC? How many Executive Directors of SBC Conventions are African-American? How many directors of missions are African American? How many SBC agencies are run by African-Americans?

Again, I think it is good thing that the SBC elected a black President. But don't forget that nearly everyone else did it before the SBC did. Being near the tale end of Baptists (and many other denominations) welcoming non-white leaders isn't really something for bragging rights. Don't expect us all to be impressed.

Now when you elect your first woman President, I'll start taking notice.

[William Thornton]

I feel certain that the SBC has many times more black congregations, most dually aligned, than the CBF has congregations.

I think that my mod/lib friends may be out of touch on this matter.

Don't count all your Mod/Lib friends in this William. Last I looked folks like Ed and Hauro are in a denomination that has something like 40% African-American membership and no ethnic majority known as the ABC/USA.

Frankly United Methodists and the SBC are both behind our ABC friends in that respect.

I pointedly referenced CBF, not ABC.

[Timothy Bonney]

I pointedly referenced CBF, not ABC.

OK, well then you were talking about your mod/lib CBF friends and not mod/lib ABC friends. Got it.

BTW, there are about 3,500 African American congregations in the SBC and about 1,900 partner churches in the CBF. So you are correct. I think that puts the SBC membership of black churches at about 7%. I couldn't find CBF stats on the same subject.

[Ed Pettibone]

I feel certain that the SBC has many times more black congregations, most dually aligned, than the CBF has congregations.

I think that my mod/lib friends may be out of touch on this matter.

Don't count all your Mod/Lib friends in this William. Last I looked folks like Ed and Hauro are in a denomination that has something like 40% African-American membership and no ethnic majority known as the ABC/USA.

Frankly United Methodists and the SBC are both behind our ABC friends in that respect.

I pointedly referenced CBF, not ABC.

Ed: And you pointedly referenced your mod/lib friends which the last I knew included our mutual friend David Flick who 's last pastorate was in a duly aligned ABC/CBF. And as a Trustee of Bacone College (Affiliated with both ABC and CBF) was part of hosting the 2007 CBFOK annual meeting where the featured speakers where Dr. Molly Marshall, President of Central Baptist Seminary and Dr. Thelma Chambers - Young, President of the Women's Department of the National Progressive Baptist Convention. The latter convention Being a Black group in case you where not aware. And of course Central accepts funding from both ABC and CBF. And Trudy and I are both ABC and CBF

And Tim With CBF being colorblind I doubt you will find such stats for the organization. But then, I attended the NE area celebration of the New Baptist Covenant meeting last year which was held in the Sharon Baptist Church a black church in Philadelphia. Indeed the SBC being the largest Baptist denomination racks up some impressive numbers until one takes time to check our what is happening with the majority of all Baptist, from which the SBC has excluded themselves.

[Big Daddy Weaver]

I wonder if the wider acceptance of African Americans in the SBC has not been due directly to the theological stance the convention has taken since 1979.

Laughable. Even Southern Seminary's Russell Moore disagrees. He gives much credit to Southern Baptist progressives - that Genealogy of Dissent - for bringing the SBC to this point.

http://www.russellmoore.com/2012/06/12/ ... pel-issue/

The report from ABP was superb. Allen did an excellent job of giving the appropriate historical context for Luter's election. Name one news outlet that provided this type of context?

Has Baptist Press ever referenced A Statement Concerning the Crisis in Our Nation? That statement was HUGE. Oran Smith - a conservative activist and political scientist - dubbed the Crisis Statement of 1968 the beginning of a "moderate political awakening." He called the "Conservative Resurgence" a counter-movement to that moderate awakening.

When conservatives trot out the line that Southern Baptists never confessed to their sins until 1995, it's hogwash. The confession in 1968 was extremely important. In fact, conservatives made a push to amend that statement and scrub it of the "confession" section. Mr. Robert Tenery was the one leading that effort. Fortunately, Tenery failed.

Any article on the SBC and race that can work in the Crisis Statement, Home Missions Magazine, and Brown v. Board is top quality. Most reports just begin with 1845 and jump straight to 1995.

Well, when conservatives like Russell Moore acknowledge that racial progressives were responsible for getting conservatives on the right track, shouldn't our news and analysis accounts take into consideration those post-World War II decades leading up to the 1995 statement?

I certainly think so.

Much of the African-American membership in the SBC is strictly on paper. McCall and others helped recruit National Baptist churches to dually-align. How involved are those churches now? Were many ever involved? Heck, even Dwight McKissic's church is dually-aligned and by his own admission gives most of their missions money to other non-SBC organizations.

[Big Daddy Weaver]

Why did it take the SBC 17 years after that 1995 resolution to get an African-American candidate for President?

Richard Land claimed he'd spent half his career working for this day. That's BS. If Paige, Paul, Richard, any of those guy had wanted an African-American as president, it would have happened.

Why didn't the SBC follow that 95 statement up with an African-American candidate in 96 or 97? If the SBC is so ethnically diverse, surely there is no shortage of qualified leaders out there?

Yes, the election of Fred Luter was a great day for the SBC. It was an important moment in American religious history. No doubt. I've said that a number of times. Symbols can be powerful. Or symbols can provide for the occasion to feel good without really doing good.

We will have to wait and see what happens.

I'll admit that the CBF is not on paper as ethnically diverse as SBC. Although, I'm willing to bet that our General Assembly is as ethnically diverse as your Annual meeting.

What we do have is great, improving partnerships with a diverse group of denominations and organizations. That's the benefit to being ecumenical rather than isolating oneself. We don't have a strong sense that the world revolves around the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. We understand our limits and instead have chosen a path of partnership and ecumenical engagement.

The SBC is about as anti-ecumenical as they come. Even with Luter's election, I think it's highly unlikely we'll be seeing a joint SBC-National Baptist gathering anytime soon.

[Sandy]

I wonder if the wider acceptance of African Americans in the SBC has not been due directly to the theological stance the convention has taken since 1979.

Laughable. Even Southern Seminary's Russell Moore disagrees. He gives much credit to Southern Baptist progressives - that Genealogy of Dissent - for bringing the SBC to this point.

http://www.russellmoore.com/2012/06/12/ ... pel-issue/

The report from ABP was superb. Allen did an excellent job of giving the appropriate historical context for Luter's election. Name one news outlet that provided this type of context?

I'll agree more with William's assessment of the ABP report. Racial diversity is one of the mile markers for the more progressive end of CBF, which is ABP's primary financial partner. As this particular story has developed, they've had the time to sit back and calculate how they're going to approach it, from their own biased position that the conservative SBC can't be given too much credit for passing this milestone.

There were some progressive voices in the SBC on this issue prior to 1979, but somehow, they never got around to bringing African Americans into high level leadership positions in the denomination. Part of that was due to the fact that the SBC's leadership was drawn from a very small circle of well-connected elites, and there weren't any African Americans in that group.

Has Baptist Press ever referenced A Statement Concerning the Crisis in Our Nation? That statement was HUGE. Oran Smith - a conservative activist and political scientist - dubbed the Crisis Statement of 1968 the beginning of a "moderate political awakening." He called the "Conservative Resurgence" a counter-movement to that moderate awakening.

When conservatives trot out the line that Southern Baptists never confessed to their sins until 1995, it's hogwash. The confession in 1968 was extremely important. In fact, conservatives made a push to amend that statement and scrub it of the "confession" section. Mr. Robert Tenery was the one leading that effort. Fortunately, Tenery failed.

Any article on the SBC and race that can work in the Crisis Statement, Home Missions Magazine, and Brown v. Board is top quality. Most reports just begin with 1845 and jump straight to 1995.

Well, when conservatives like Russell Moore acknowledge that racial progressives were responsible for getting conservatives on the right track, shouldn't our news and analysis accounts take into consideration those post-World War II decades leading up to the 1995 statement?

I certainly think so.

They had plenty of time in the pre-1979 SBC years to bring more African Americans into the SBC, as well as to put them in positions of leadership. Emmanuel McCall is about the only name they have. I think part of the problem is that the model they were looking at, encouraging dual-affiliation from historically and traditionally African American churches, was never going to produce a racially diverse SBC, it was more of the "separate but equal, they have their churches we have ours" mentality. It doesn't seem there was anything intentional afoot to actually break the glass ceiling for African Americans in the SBC.

Perhaps the one thing that pre-1979 moderates did for African American church growth in the SBC was to offer the same seminary scholarship to National Baptist Convention church members to attend the six seminaries that Southern Baptist students received. The conservatives continued that agreement, as far as I know it is still in effect, and that produced the current generation of African American church planters. Most of them have stayed in the SBC. I have a couple of classmates who planted churches in Chicago, and are still pastoring and working there. They started from scratch, and build congregations of several hundred members, one of them racially diverse, including whites, blacks, hispanics, Eastern Europeans, the other one predominantly African American, both uniquely aligned with the SBC.

Much of the African-American membership in the SBC is strictly on paper. McCall and others helped recruit National Baptist churches to dually-align. How involved are those churches now? Were many ever involved? Heck, even Dwight McKissic's church is dually-aligned and by his own admission gives most of their missions money to other non-SBC organizations.

On paper? How are you a member "on paper"? As far as those dually affiliated churches go, I can't really find any information that shows any numbers. Neither National Baptists nor the SBC reports them, maybe the state conventions do. In Texas, there were at one time about 50 in the BGCT although many of them went with the SBTC when it formed. I would say, probably depending on the state convention, three to five hundred nationally. But, Lifeway's own research points to as many as 8,000 churches, about 20% of the total in the SBC, that are "non-white." The National African American Fellowship of the SBC, formed in 1995, with Luter's leadership, includes about 5,000 uniquely aligned churches. If that's a representative group of the size and membership of the SBC across the board, that means that the African American membership of the SBC would exceed two million members, and the "resident" membership would be about 1 million.

[Dave Roberts]

Sandy, I'm not certain why you keep bashing the pre-1979 leadership on race. Most of us are rejoicing that the SBC elected Luter and believe it was good, if you read what we are saying. The climate now has changed considerably from the days prior to 1979. Southern Seminary was allowing African-American students all the way back to the 1940's, even when they could not acknowledge having them, at least not to the SBC annual sessions. Several prominent pastors wanted heads to roll when Martin Luther King, Jr, was invited to speak in chapel at SBTS.

The racial climate is certanly stronger for many of our churches. The church where I am now interim pastor is actively trying to recruit more African-American members. This morning, we had a new lady and her daughter come, and several folks surrounded her after worship with a strong welcome. Our problem is that we are within five blocks of three strong predominantly African-American churches who, interestingly, would like to recruit more Caucasian members. That is a long way from the climate of the 1960's. It was not until 1965 that the Voting Rights Act was passed and the Civil Rights Act followed in 1966. Read a bit more history of what it was like before being quick to condemn just because someone did not act in the same way your generation has done. Your closed-mindedness is showing on this one.