The Rejection of CRT in the Southern Baptist Convention

The May 1995 issue of Christianity Today, included the report of a leading African American voice in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) at the time, Rev. Dr. Joe Samuel Ratliff, pastor of Brentwood Baptist Church of Houston, Texas. He stated, “The Southern Baptist Convention’s history speaks of racism, but in terms of the present commitment and trends, it’s totally unfair to still call it racist.”

Historical analysis indicates that some of the leadership did make a negative shift from the posture the Convention took on race in 1995 to where it is today. At issue is the question of how churches should discuss the matter of Critical Race Theory.  In June 2019, the Convention passed a resolution permitting the use of Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a tool of sociological analysis. Almost a year later, presidents of the six SBC seminaries rejected the resolution in a highly publicized announcement. While celebrating the 20^th anniversary of the Baptist Faith and Message, the document that summarizes the theological standards of the SBC, they argued that CRT and intersectionality were “incompatible with the Baptist Faith and Message.” This view was voiced by the seminary presidents and the president of the SBC, J.D. Greear.

Fifteen years prior to this controversy over CRT, the Convention gathered in June of 1995 and passed a resolution apologizing for the SBC’s role in slavery:

That we lament and repudiate historic acts of evil such as slavery from which we continue to reap a bitter harvest, and we recognize that the racism which yet plagues our culture today is inextricably tied to the past; and Be it further RESOLVED, That we apologize to all African-Americans for condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime.

The function of the SBC resolution is to make pronouncements voicing the collective thoughts of the SBC on certain matters. Though not binding on the constituents of the SBC, it proclaimed the thinking of the SBC on its role in slavery.  Fifteen years after the passage of this resolution, the presidents of the SBC seminaries and the president of the body undermined the power of this resolution.

The SBC was formed on the issue of slavery. Baptists, with their talk of freedom and autonomy, struggled over the issue.  In 1844, the Baptist Home Mission Society and the Triennial Convention did not support the abolitionist or pro-slavery factions of their group.  They wanted to prevent the split that many already saw coming. A slave-owning missionary was put forward for consideration by the Triennial Convention. The Convention was prepared to allow it. However, the Alabama State Convention triggered a negative response when they asked the Board of the Triennial Convention’s opinion of the nomination. The Triennial Convention roundly said, “One thing is certain; we can never be a party to any arrangement which would imply approbation of slavery.”

This comment was what the pro-slavery faction needed to justify their split. In 1845, William B. Johnson led this faction to help form the Southern Baptist Convention in Augusta, Georgia. Johnson was one of the major architects of the SBC constitution. Under the new political body of the SBC, the foreign and domestic missional organizations would all come under one organization, the Convention.

To be sure, the organizational distinctiveness did not drive the need for this new movement. It was the ability to justify a pro-slavery stance. Richard Furman—namesake of Furman University in South Carolina—helped shape the pro-slavery theology of the South. He argued that not only was slavery justified, but it was also a benefit to those who were enslaved.  He claimed the “manner of obtaining slaves from Africa is just….[it had been] the means of saving life….even piety has been originally brought into operation in the purchase of slaves” and the Middle Passage “has been the means of their mental and religious improvement, and so of obtaining salvation.”

Furthermore, by 1861, this pro-slavery sentiment increasingly pushed the Southern Baptists to conclude that secession from the United States was necessary and theologically justified. The platform of the Confederate South was built upon slavery and white supremacy. The Southern Baptist Convention supported both. When Alexander Stephens declared the foundation of the Southern movement, one of the resolutions of the Convention held the cause of the Confederacy to be “noble.”

After the Civil War, the leadership of the SBC supported and pressed their churches to propagate the Lost Cause myth.  Moreover, they continued their support of white supremacist ideology. One statement by an Alabama Baptist newspaper in 1901 crystallizes the thinking of the SBC, “We are [the Negro’s] superior, made so by God.” The SBC planted its flag in support not only of slavery but also of its racist Jim Crow progeny.

For a Convention founded on the principles of white supremacy, the call for racial reconciliation and an apology for slavery in 1995 made all the sense in the world. In America, at that moment, the country was reeling from the L.A. police beating Rodney King and the controversial O.J. Simpson trial. The country was very much divided over the issue of racism; even though “legally” Jim Crow had been dismantled, African Americans still argued the American system was legally, culturally, and socially infected with it.

At this racial inflection point, the leadership of the SBC agreed that the SBC had a part to play in the current racial crisis.  They apologized for past and present racist beliefs. They proclaimed that they were committed to destroying both the individual and systemic practices of racism with the SBC.

To be sure, this resolution brought declarations of joy from the black clergy, but not without suspicion. Could the SBC really be repentant for all of the past wrongs? What should black clergy think about the shifts being made in the 1980s and 1990s with the rise of the Conservative wing of the SBC? Were they truly going to press for full recognition of the wrongs of the past and correct them?

Some of these questions were answered for black clergy when the SBC leaders rejected CRT. While they stated they accepted the existence of “systemic racism,” they rejected the very tools to ascertain its effects. Institutions like the SBC helped to infect the system this way with its insistence on a white supremacist posture from a theological perspective.

To date, the SBC has not passed a resolution undoing its 2019 affirmation of CRT. But the seminary presidents’ declaration speaks for the thinking of the Convention. The overturning of Affirmative Action as a policy and the current stream of anti-DEI legislation at the state level all point to an undermining of the thought that systemic racism exists or ever existed.

The statement by the SBC presidents suggests that, in a subtle fashion, the SBC has withdrawn some aspects of its apology. The resolution professes in the “lifetime” of those who passed the resolution, racism was propagated and utilized.  But the massive sweep expected concerning how racism would be repaired has never been discussed. There is still systemic racism, and CRT could help them see it. But when the mechanism for discovering problems is rejected, those problems will persist.