Albert Mohler addresses demands that the names of prominent, and extravagantly racist, founders of the Southern Baptist Convention be removed from the seminary’s campus buildings.
New: "The Heresy of Racial Superiority — Confronting the Past, and Confronting the Truth." http://t.co/fiM34h2TAj
— Albert Mohler (@albertmohler) June 23, 2015
This is a striking piece and, though there is much to disagree with, there also is much else that is needfully and unexpectedly frank. I suspect Mohler is trying to thread a very fine needle here, fully aware that his denomination was founded on racist ideology and that a very strong current of crude racism remains, but that the SBC is doomed if it can’t shed that.
Jeri Massi had an arresting phrase in her post yesterday, “an infrastructure of traditions;” that is exactly what is preached in the overwhelming majority of Southern Baptist churches — and those traditions include egregious racism. Make no mistake: That sweet old lady who hasn’t missed a sermon in 60-years muttered furiously about “those people” during the civil rights movement, and the parents and grandparents of that handsome young couple with the new baby stood on the side of the highway and threw rocks at the marchers who walked from Oxford down to Raleigh. They expect preaching that comports with their infrastructure of traditions, and aren’t going to put up with some preacher who calls ’em out.
I’ll have much more to say about the subject of flags and dishonored names in a day or so.