An Alabama church has fired its pastor because — GASP!! — he thought it would be a friendly Christian gesture to invite black children to Vacation Bible School.
This morning, I was alerted to a story that seemed to belong to another era – but sadly it happened yesterday. A young pastor in a small Southern Baptist church in small town Alabama tries to lead his church to do outreach and invite children from the community to their upcoming VBS. The church is all white and the surrounding community is mostly black. Opposition arises from church members and they tell him that they do not want to reach out to black people and invite them to church. He persists and says the gospel of Jesus Christ demands it. They tell him that if he keeps going with this, then he will be removed. He says that he will take his appeal to the church and on the next Sunday, he preaches boldly against racism and calls the church to repentance. A vote is scheduled on the future of the pastor and he is voted to be removed immediately by a unanimous vote last night. As of today, he has no job.
The details are still a bit fuzzy, and one of the deacons says race had nothing to do with it. Who knows?
I certainly have no difficulty believing it. All ‘right-minded’ southerners are Southern Baptists, and the Southern Baptist Convention undeniably fueled and sustained racism and the Jim Crow laws. Many SBC churches will not, even today, allow interracial marriages. And just one month ago a (successful) resolution discouraging display of the Confederate flag was greeted by many Baptists with rage.
I have heard from two independent sources that, at a Baptist church less than 1-mile from where I sit, an almost identical scenario played-out several years ago; that church, ironically, today has a heavily-promoted outreach to … Hispanics.
Here in the south, religion and racism go together like peanut butter and jelly.