Fred Luter Jr, SBC’s first African-American first vice president, talks about race

The civil rights movement saw liberal churches stand shoulder to shoulder for justice with the black community. Ever wonder why conservative black churches often support largely liberal candidates? On big factor is blacks remember who fought for civil equality. It wasn’t the SBC (or IFB). Liberals bled and in some cases died beside blacks.

The history of the SBC during that time was mixed. The SBC either ignored injustice or in many cases supported it. Mending fences will take serious repentance and hard work. The SBC has a sordid past concerning race equality.

The SBC was a “denomination” of its time. Pointing out what is altogether obvious, namely ecclesiastical segregation based on race, and now aggressively remedied for some time serves little good.

In my increasingly humble opinion, the tragic position of conservative evangelicals on the “race issue” during the “civil right’s era” is at least partially responsible for our current lack of credibility on other social issues.

And we need to consistently remind ourselves of this so we don’t make the same mistake again.

Hold on Andrew. Civil rights is not a matter of biblical dogma and certainly no social order has been mandated by God that the church must demand of the society around it with regard to social structure, advantages and disadvantages to various groups. That is a national matter concerning government and its citizens with a wide range of philosophies regarding social structure upon which the Word of God places no binding social order with respect to peoples and governments. It might be government borrows concepts or principles from the Word of God or other weighty documents because they are deemed valuable but your response about civil rights is as if racial, ethnic or any kind of genetically based social segregation was or is explicitly forbidden in the Bible, and this is not the case at all. So to say “so we don’t make the same mistake again” is quite a matter of opinion and not theological/biblical dogma with respect to civil rights.

However, with respect to ecclesiastical rights, this is another thing since God gave the explicit protocol for the body of Christ and it is not a matter of opinion. Non-segregation is mandated in the Scriptures with regard to the church, its membership and all of the benefits, duties and privileges which accompany this membership. And this is because the body of Christ is a spiritual body, fundamentally a foreign structure to anthropologically or socially based divine institutions such as government and the church, being a spiritual body, has a distinct protocol, namely that each person is to be viewed as a spiritual species and is related to one another by virtue of spiritual ancestry.

And this is where some of - as you call them - conservative evangelicals, failed which was allowing racial segregation within a spiritual structure. But positions on civil matters is entirely a matter of opinion.

Why do people try to gain credibility on social issues with those who are wrong? The inhabitants of the world are people who need to be converted, not coddled.

They are spiritually dead, in darkness, and every other description that is opposite the believer. Their approval means nothing. Nothing.

…I could not disagree more. As you have represented it above (and if I understand correctly), how we behave toward others in a “church context” is one thing, and it is perfectly OK to act differently toward others in a “non-church” context. Are you implying that it would have been perfectly acceptable for a white believer at that time to insist that his “colored” brethren use a separate drinking fountain in the public park, so long as he was treated as an equal in the church? That is what I am getting from your response…I hope I have not wrongly interpreted your remarks.

How would it be at all coherent for anyone to preach that all men are created in the image of God, and then participate in, and defend, a system that routinely treated a particular subset of those men as secondary citizens? Or, to bring it a little closer to where I live, how can we preach that all are equal before Christ, and yet prohibit a man from one subset of humanity from marrying a woman of another subset. This is hypocrisy, and (now in reference to James K’s comments) it does indeed bring dishonor to Christ and discredit His Church.

But…for the sake of argument…let’s assume that the following statement is true:

Civil rights is not a matter of biblical dogma and certainly no social order has been mandated by God that the church must demand of the society around it with regard to social structure, advantages and disadvantages to various groups.

At this point the “conservative evangelicals” of the segregation era still stand condemned, because in defending the status quo, they were in essence defending a particular social order (segregation) as mandated by God, and demanding that society maintain it, with all its advantages to them and disadvantages to people of color.

Andrew, the church is already discredited by the world. Read closely the NT. People are not to be won over to a moralistic point of view. The gospel brings life to dead men. Sadly, too many do not understand this.

the new testament writers never wrote that slavery was wrong. on the contrary, they wrote that slaves should be submissive to their masters. slavery was a normal part of the culture of the time, something we seem unwilling to comprehend. the whole notion of slavery itself being evil is a modern notion. and it is typical of americans to try to view and rewrite history for our point of view. and if anything doesn’t fit into what we call normal or acceptable behavior, we see it as wrong. that being said, paul also wrote that masters should treat their slaves justly and fairly, for they too had a master in heaven.

we seem also to forget that slavery, or bond-service, still exists. every person who works for someone else, has in essence made themselves a bondservant of that person/company. they have given up their rights to those 40 hours a week which they have agreed to work for that person, in exchange for food and shelter, and some security. if any of you in the wok force think you are free men, then i say to you, “why don’t you tell your boss NO, next time he tells you to do something.”

We have been so thoroughly trained by our masters, that we don’t even recognize our true condition. The only free men in this country, are the men who have retired, or the men who are without work. Everyone else is just living in a programmed pattern set by the company(our lives revolve around our jobs), day after day. I bet that most of us give more time and energy to our jobs(pleasing our masters) than to our own wives and children.

[christian cerna] we seem also to forget that slavery, or bond-service, still exists. every person who works for someone else, has in essence made themselves a bondservant of that person/company. they have given up their rights to those 40 hours a week which they have agreed to work for that person, in exchange for food and shelter, and some security. if any of you in the wok force think you are free men, then i say to you, “why don’t you tell your boss NO, next time he tells you to do something.”

Bold added
This is a ridiculous statement; you argue against yourself. I can quit my job any time I want and do anything I want or nothing at all. There is absolutely no comparison here.

I can’t believe what I’m reading on this thread. Christian did you seriously just equate slavery in America with employment? Unbelievable.

I hope I am not being too awfully reductionist when I summarize the following arguments:

Alex: “God didn’t prescribe a specific system of government, so Christians shouldn’t be concerned about social issues…unless said concern is in maintaining the status quo.”

James K.: “The world already despises Christians, so this gives us license to be as despicable as we would like.”

Christian Cerna: “Your job is equal to being bought and sold as human chattel.”

Fair?

This is an encouraging and signifiant event for the SBC and really the evangelical church as a whole. The sad reality is, we who should be leading in this area are far behind. And this thread evidences some of the reasons why. To sum it up…it’s just not that important to us. We may have various reasons why we believe that…but the end result it, we don’t think about it much at all. But that is simply not the case in the black community. They think of it often. WE think we have achieved integration when a black family attends our church…even though our leadership remains completely white. Our black brothers and sisters notice this, still feel separated, but also feel they lack the freedom to say anything about it.

We are white. We think white, see the world from our white perspective, and we really have no clue what concerns the black the community and how often they feel neglected and separated. Dr. Luter’s election will help the SBC change that all white perspective. It’s encouraging and needed…and for those of us who are ministering in diverse areas of the country, it should challenge us to expand our perspectives. There is a large group of people in desperate need of biblical, Christ-exalting churches…but they want to feel really and truly included…and they want to know we care about what matters to them. And if/when true integration really happens, I believe it brings glory to a God of nations/ethnicities, etc.

[Andrew Comings] I hope I am not being too awfully reductionist when I summarize the following arguments:

Alex: “God didn’t prescribe a specific system of government, so Christians shouldn’t be concerned about social issues…unless said concern is in maintaining the status quo.”

James K.: “The world already despises Christians, so this gives us license to be as despicable as we would like.”

Christian Cerna: “Your job is equal to being bought and sold as human chattel.”

Fair?

eh… close enough.

[Andrew Comings] I hope I am not being too awfully reductionist when I summarize the following arguments:

Alex: “God didn’t prescribe a specific system of government, so Christians shouldn’t be concerned about social issues…unless said concern is in maintaining the status quo.”
Fair?

If what you said represented a reduction of my earlier statement it might make sense but I said nothing about “maintaining status quo” or “Christians shouldn’t be concerned about social issues”.

What you did was not reduce but embellish, to say the least, but more accurately you simply added new categories to what I said when I said no such thing nor implied it.

The first part, “God didn’t prescribe a specific system of government (for non-theocracies)” is the only reasonably accurate but clearly unqualified statement representing anything I said.

Now, time does not permit my further elaboration until the weekend but it is my objective to hold class here and provide some very needed instruction as to the matter. So then, after that and with any inquiries you might have addressed, it might be better to try a bit of reductionism. In part I do not blame your error on you seeing you may have, at worst, assumed my further views. But still it is what is called a swing and a miss on two of three parts of the “reduction” which actually exists as an “addition”. So here is to the weekend.

[Jamie Hart]

We are white. We think white, see the world from our white perspective, and we really have no clue what concerns the black the community and how often they feel neglected and separated. Dr. Luter’s election will help the SBC change that all white perspective. It’s encouraging and needed…and for those of us who are ministering in diverse areas of the country, it should challenge us to expand our perspectives. There is a large group of people in desperate need of biblical, Christ-exalting churches…but they want to feel really and truly included…and they want to know we care about what matters to them. And if/when true integration really happens, I believe it brings glory to a God of nations/ethnicities, etc.

Sorry Jamie, “we” are Christians, our race is a spiritual one with respect to method of identifying our brothers and sisters in the Lord. Anthropological properties are anecdotal. You are practicing what is called “Race Based - Special Interest Theology and it is a grave error based on humanism. You completely miss the phenomenal transformation and categorical change from God and new protocols for the church, God’s people, the body of Christ, when you approach it based on anthropological properties.