Southern Baptists, race and the dinner table gap
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. faced a barrage of questions about race and politics during his landmark 1960 appearance on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” but one of the most memorable exchanges concerned a blunt question about church life.
“How many white people are members of your church in Atlanta?” asked a reporter from Nashville.
“I think it is one of the tragedies of our nation, one of the shameful tragedies, that 11 o’clock on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hour, in Christian America,” King replied. Any church that has “a segregated body is standing against the spirit and the teachings of Jesus Christ, and it fails to be a true witness,” he added.
Millions of Americans are still wrestling with this Sunday morning divide.
But another practical question emerged during a recent Southern Baptist Convention program entitled “Pursuing Unity: A Discussion of Racial Reconciliation Efforts and the SBC.” Can Black and white church folks find gaps in their jammed schedules and start breaking bread together?
“It doesn’t matter how many panel discussions you watch. It doesn’t matter how many books you read, how many conferences you go to. None of that will do better than dinner table ministry,” said the Rev. Jon Kelly of Chicago West Bible Church.
If people want progress, he said, they need to consider their circle of friends and ask “why everyone looks like me, votes like me, thinks like me . ... When we talk about racial reconciliation, we want the fruit of reconciliation without the relationships. Until our dinner tables become diversified ... until we eat bread together and (experience) fellowship together, we won’t make any progress.”
Fellowship meals will not make headlines or ignite rhetorical fireworks in social media, and that’s a good thing, said the Rev. Ed Litton, who recently said he wouldn’t seek a second term as SBC president. He plans to focus on racial-reconciliation projects linked to his own church near Mobile, Alabama.
Years ago, he said, Black and white pastors began sharing meals while discussing the “deep wounds” in that racially divided community. The key was focusing on faith and the ties that bind, until basic bonds of trust were in place.
“We hashed out why we were there,” said Litton. “We weren’t there to bring about some kind of social change. We were there to focus on the Gospel, and how we should as believers confess Christ and live together . ...
“What emerged from that was God transformed our hearts . ... We fell in love with one another, and we started serving the Lord together.”
In recent years, SBC leaders — Black and white alike — have endured fierce debates about terms such as “white supremacy” and “critical race theory.” Southern Baptists maneuvered through minefields caused by COVID-19 policies and internal fights about the work and style of President Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, seismic changes were taking place. The SBC’S Great Commission Relations and Mobilization research team has shown that, between 20002010, there were sharp increases in the number of Black SBC churches (52.2%), along with Latino churches (53.1%) and other ethnic groups. White churches grew only 3.7%. Beginning in 1990, ethnic church memberships increased by 1 million, while white churches decreased by that same amount. In recent decades, 8 in 10 new SBC congregations were primarily made up of “minority groups.”
There also have been slow — but clear — changes at the top of the national convention’s leadership, stressed the Rev. Fred Luter, who in 2012 was elected as the SBC’S first Black president. At the moment, another Black Southern Baptist is the interim president of the convention’s executive committee, and another Black pastor is its chairman.
This kind of progress doesn’t make Satan happy, said Luter, which can lead to strife.
“The main challenge I have seen ... from Day 1 is that we, as the people of God, must recognize the enemy’s attack in all of this,” he said. “This is spiritual warfare of the enemy ... As bloodwashed, born-again, baptized believers in Jesus Christ, (we must) come together, realizing that the separation we have because of our skin color is an attack of the enemy.”
These struggles are with sin, not skin, Luter said. “Until we recognize that, in our convention, we will always have this divide.”