Fred Luter's SBC bio page?

[Tim Bonney]

[Tom Parker]

Tim:

You said:"I suppose that is progress of a kind that some African-American congregations would feel comfortable enough with the SBC to add a new alignment. But it isn't really the same as the SBC reaching into the African-American community and starting new churches. It sounds to me like the usual African-American congregations doing what they've always done in their communities but now the SBC will get a piece of the credit because they affiliated with the SBC."

So is it all about statistics for the SBC? Has anything and I say anything happened in the last year that Luter has done to integrate the African-American community into the SBC? Surely if he had we would have heard about it.

[Tim Bonney]

I've been hunting up statistics this morning just out of curiosity. As Sandy has said the number of African-American congregations in the SBC has reached nearly 20% of the SBC congregations. What I cannot seem to find is how that translates into total percentage African-American membership of the total SBC membership. I assume the SBC keeps those kind of stats? So I'm just wondering why the congregational percentage is being reported and not also the individual percentage? Maybe it just relates to congregational polity?

And I am wondering what percentage of those congregations are new church starts and what percentage amounts to affiliation growth. Also what percentage are now dually aligned and what percentage dropped their previous affiliation? I'm guess most are dually aligned.

Tom, as to changes Luter has made, I don't read anything about the SBC most of the time other than when some subject comes up here that I'm interested in. So I have no idea what Luter has or hasn't done.

The UMC does not have a very high percentage of African-American members but we also do not allow dual alignments of local churches. If we could some how find a way to count local churches in the AME as also UMC I'm sure we could up our stats! The only way we get African-American local churches is by starting them.

[Sandy]

[Blake]

Sandy, our seminary and college faculties are very white. SBC leadership boards and committees are very white and very Southern. In a denomination that prizes autonomy over their Bibles the make up of the leadership isn't going to matter much until any person of any rank in the SBC can't do anything without engaging a person of color. With the dual-alignment stuff, it'd be nice to see a timeline and explanation for those changes. Did NAMB start employing door to door salesmen to convince minority churches to join us too? And why shouldn't they? Two denominations offer more advantages than one.

Yes, I have heard of World Changers and PowerPlant. I'm familiar with the strategy. Demographic changes in the SBC are not necessarily going to equal heart and mind changes about other races and cultures. Changing the world through making everyone Christian and being blind to the things that made us different to begin with is the status quo strategy of every conservative evangelical denomination that isn't anti-mission. Where is the SBC's anti-racism task force? Who in SBC agencies and institutions has had cultural sensitivity training? Where is the curriculum? The SBC is doing everything, but actually dealing with the latent racism in themselves. They can continue to increase demographic proportions of people of color, but that just means they're kicking the can down the road until this blows up in their faces and the denomination splits because the traditional white congregations feel like it's liberal to have so many people of color around trying to influence them.

[Tim Bonney]

I need to make a correction. We do allow duly aligned churches. It is just rare do to the connectional nature of our polity.

[Tim Bonney]

Sandy, I don't know about that many African-American churches being conservative on welcome and affirming issues. The ABC of the South, mostly African-American, some years ago I believe to a rather welcoming and affirming stance in the ABC. I'd say that, like all Americans, African-American views are mixed.

I recognize that Baptist churches vary on how good a job they do reporting membership stats. But you'd think that the denomination would have some idea what the percentage of membership is. Again, why emphasize the number of churches over the percentages of membership??

[Ed Pettibone]

[Sandy]

[Tim Bonney]

If the SBC is making such great progress in the area of race then they really need to step it up on the leadership end of things. We are back to Luter as the first black SBC Prez and, as far as I can tell out of 83 people on the SBC Executive Committee all but three of them (including he President) are anglo. (http://sbcec.org/roster/members.asp). So that means 3.6% of the EC is from any non-white ethnic group and 20% of the churches are African-American?

If anything this is worse than I thought. If the denomination was only marginally ethnic I could see the EC being marginally ethnic. But now that you've proven that 20% of the membership is African-American why aren't nearly 20% of the members of the EC (that would be almost 17 members) African-American, or 5.5 times the current representation?

[Sandy]

[Blake]

[Dave Roberts]

[Sandy]

[Sandy]

[Dave Roberts]

Back in the 1940's, Southern Seminary was allowing African-Americans to attend seminary classes, but they could not report them to the SBC. Around 1960, there was a hue and cry to fire Dr. Henlee Barnette because he invited Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. yo speak to his classes. Also, there were some staff positions being filled by moderates who had been fired from churches because they supported the end of segregation. A lot of the time period prior to 1979 was under the cloud of Jim Crow in the SBC. I know both pastors and laypeople who were under death threats for reaching out to Blacks, and I can point you to churches in the SBC and at least one in CBF who have refused to take part in pulpit exchanges with Black churches. The Spirit of Massive Resistance is still out there. Don't blame those who stretched the envelope to pave the way for better race relations for societal and church stands they were not able to change when they were working hard for better race relations. Fred Luter was a great first step for the SBC. I pray the day will come when Sunday morning ceases to be the most segregated time in America.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Tim Bonney]

[Blake]

Sandy, similar to what Dave said, suggesting that forced integration is the alternative is alarmist, flatly untrue and absurd. I believe that God wants His Church to look like the Kingdom of Heaven now. I think white privilege and the sin of racism that entails from our unintentional support of a normative monocultural narrative and system can deafen us to what the Holy Spirit does want for the Church. If we are unwilling to allow our own prejudices and status quo to be challenged then we will not be able to be lead by God in this area. However, if believers and congregations were intentional about seeing through the eyes of the Other we might also begin to be able to imagine and hear the call of God beyond our puny socially conditioned imaginations. I thank God for the churches you describe, but from my experience and studies I'm afraid such churches are the exception and not the rule in the SBC. Forced integration would be disobedience to the Holy Spirit, but what have we to fear from opening our eyes, ears and minds to understanding others struggles and the ways we may unconsciously play into perpetuating the systems of injustice that cause their struggles, inhibiting them from the fullness of God's calling?

The ratio of people of color to white people at SBTS, SEBTS and NOBTS doesn't tell me that those schools are in need of an affirmative action program. What it tells me is that the leadership of those schools have a view of what is and is not valuable for the mission of that school and the perspectives and worldviews of people of color are clearly included among what is not valued. Do I think it is intentional? I hope not and doubt it is. I suspect they just can't fully appreciate and imagine God's plan and the value of the contribution of a person of color sufficiently to make it a reality at their institutions. If they bothered to expand their own minds to what others besides white males considered valuable to the Kingdom and authentic calling they would put in far more effort to seek out professors of color to help disciple that vision of the Kingdom into their students. They would enable more professors of color to respond to God's call to disciple the future leaders of churches and the denomination.

[Tom Parker]

Tim:

You said to Sandy:"As to the privileges of members in the SBC, what are they? It appears from the outside the "privilege" for black churches is to send money to CP and NOT be represented at the highest levels of the denomination in any proportional way."

Tim:

The true record of the SBC and the integration of blacks into the SBC and upper level positions is right up there with the number of women in upper level positions in the SBC.. It is a dismal record, period. It is indefensible.

[Blake]

Tom, the SBC is confessionally complementarian, so the lack of women is to be expected. Since they aren't confessionally racist or segregationist the lack of diversity in places of influence is more surprising and disappointing.

[Tim Bonney]

[Tom Parker]

Blake:

I always think of the word complimentary as a good term, but the SBC has turned it into what is felt by the SBC to be an appropriate word for exclusion.

[Sandy]

[Sandy]