African-American Southern Baptists examine their history_62804

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Posted: 6/25/04

African-American Southern Baptists examine their history

INDIANAPOLIS (BP)–Citing progress in minority representation and optimism toward racial inclusiveness, speakers at the annual African American Southern Baptist History Project said God is continuing to work among Southern Baptists.

Chronicling the growth of racial inclusiveness in the 16-million-member denomination, several speakers pointed to new growth since Southern Baptists became proactive about seeking change. The meeting at Gabriel Missionary Baptist Church was held prior to the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting in Indianapolis.

“The SBC's racial image is becoming more Christian as churches increasingly reflect the values of Christ toward other people groups,” said Sid Smith, director of the Florida Baptist Convention's African American ministries division.

He spoke on “Southern Baptists Reaching African-Americans,” an article from the Journal of African American Southern Baptist History, which was released at the history gathering.

“The absence of major backlash along with increased acceptance of minorities in mainline leadership are significant factors pointing to the dawning of a bright day of progress,” Smith continued. “The modern SBC is bigger, better and more Christian because of embracing inclusiveness. … As the maturation process continues, the potential of doing even more is great.”

Vaughn Walker, professor of black church studies at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., spoke on cooperative ministries and racial reconciliation.

The second volume of the Journal of African American Southern Baptist History is available through the Black Southern Baptist Denominational Servant's Network. For more information, call (800) 226-8584.

“Life as a slave was a blend of labor exploitation, sexual exploitation, illiteracy, limited diet and primitive living conditions,” Walker said. “Only in their private time of leisure in the evening or on Sundays and holidays could slaves find respite from the relentless demands of bondage. … Essentially, slave culture revolved around three elements: family, music and religion.”

Walker described G.K. Offult, a 1948 Southern Seminary graduate who–because of a Kentucky law–was not allowed to sit in classrooms with white students nor participate in graduation ceremonies but was tutored by seminary professors in their offices. Later, J.V. Bottoms, B.J. Miller and Claude Taylor, 1952 Southern Seminary graduates, sat in hallways to listen to professors' lectures.

“It appears that certain Southern Seminary professors as well as other individuals affiliated with the convention became the leaders for the SBC in the area of racial reconciliation long before the convention proper assumed any significant leadership role,” Walker said.

“If the Christian community–black, white, brown, red–cannot model authentic racial reconciliation, there is little or no hope for our society's survival,” he said. “Racial reconciliation will be realized when each of us decides that racial bias and prejudice has no place in our walk with God, has no place in our individual congregations, and no place in our homes.”

By 1972, cooperative ministries was an official component of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board, Walker said. He cited the work of Sid Smith with the SBC Sunday School Board and Emmanuel McCall at the Home Mission Board as pivotal in the development of racial reconciliation in the SBC.

“Many in the SBC, black and white, reviewed the 1995 SBC statement of apology for the 'demonic' institution of American slavery as a significant step toward true racial reconciliation,” Walker said.

David Cornelius, mobilization specialist in church services at the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, traced the history of African-American involvement in international missions.

George Liele, a freed slave and preacher from South Carolina, left the United States in 1783 under persecution and within a year had started the First Baptist Church of Kingston, Jamaica, Cornelius said.

Another freed slave from South Carolina, Prince Williams, was the first African American Baptist missionary to the Bahama Islands. In about 1790, he organized in Nassau what became Bethel Baptist Mission.

Lott Carey in 1815 led in organizing the African Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, the first organization for international missions founded by African Americans in the United States.

Despite the fact the SBC was founded in part over the issue of slavery, a year after the founding in 1845 of its Foreign Mission Board, the new SBC had appointed two African-Americans as missionaries, John Day and A.L. Jones, Cornelius reported. “Over the next 40 years, the board either appointed or gave support to more than 40 black missionaries.”

But in the aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves, coupled with Jim Crow laws that intensified discrimination, “the vision for world evangelization that many of the early black Christian leaders had exhibited became blurred,” Cornelius said.

“During the 19th century, African-American missionaries serving under appointment of white-administered missionary-sending agencies most often had to have white supervisors available before being sent to the field. It was well past the mid-20th century before most white-administered sending agencies, especially those that are denominationally based, would accept African-American candidates. These hindrances no longer exist.”

Bill Sumners, director of the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives in Nashville, spoke on “Bridge Builders: Baptist Women and Race Relations at the Turn of the 20th Century.”

Annie Armstrong, memorialized in NAMB's annual Easter offering for North American missions, “more than any other Southern Baptist leader of her time, took action to cross racial barriers,” Sumners said. That was in the late 1800s.

“An immense amount of good can be done–not only in developing the colored women here at home, but in doing work in Africa–if we can get the colored women organized as missionary workers,” Armstrong wrote in 1897 to R.J. Willingham, then-secretary of the Foreign Mission Board.

Nannie Helen Burroughs, daughter of skilled slaves, was Armstrong's counterpart in the black community, Sumners said. She worked to develop summer training opportunities for black youth. Una Roberts, who wrote extensively in WMU and HMB publications in the early 1900s, “championed improved race relations among black and whites and was active in the Commission for Inter-racial Cooperation.

“The efforts of these three women spanned more than three decades of the early 20th century,” Sumners said. “Their cause was not primarily improved race relations, but … it was this spirit of cooperation and inclusiveness on behalf of the gospel that drove these women to challenge the racial code of America.”

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