Читать книгу The Craft of Innovative Theology. Argument and Process онлайн
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The SBC’s racist reputation was not limited to segments of African American Christian communities. SBC Pastor Jonathan Merritt discussed the problem of the SBC’s general reputation in an article some sixteen years later. He noted:
Then there’s the stigma attached to the name. A 2006 Center for Missional Research/Zogby poll found that many Americans have a negative impression of the denomination. More than 40% of 18- to 24-year-olds said knowing a church was Southern Baptist would negatively affect their decision to visit or join.48
The same article recounted that even the name, the SBC, was problematic and that it needed a break with its past to embrace a more culturally diverse American society. Merritt wrote, “I was reminded of this recently when an African-American friend asked me about the denominational alignment of our church. I saw pain in her eyes when I told her ‘Southern Baptist.’”49
After the 1995 resolution, the SBC’s public resolutions on race continued to reflect a change in tone, especially during the 2007 recognition of the 150th anniversary of the Dred Scott case. In this resolution, the SBC repudiated the court’s decision that declared that African Americans had no rights that whites had to respect. Instead, it wrote that it “wholly lament[ed] and repudiate[d] the Dred Scott Decision and fully embrace[d] the Lord’s command to love our neighbors as ourselves.”50