Читать книгу The Craft of Innovative Theology. Argument and Process онлайн

110 страница из 123

Stigma normally attaches to “aliens” and “others” in society and is part of the common narratives of American religion that discuss race. It typically is not discussed from the perspective of racially oppressed groups. Here, however, we can see that stigmatization has been a two-way street, one that is both reciprocal and consequential. The cumulative effect of the SBC’s long-standing support of racism, slavery, the Civil War, and Jim Crow segregation led to the stigmatization of the SBC itself as being racist. It was especially the apathy the SBC displayed toward African Americans over the many years as they suffered through slavery and the daily humiliations of Jim Crow segregation that was damaging to African Americans. As Dorothee Sölle explains, “the toleration of exploitation, oppression, and injustice points to a condition lying like a pall over the whole of society; it is apathy, an unconcern that is incapable of suffering.”⁵⁶ In the eyes of many African Americans, the SBC is a discredited religious body that has stigmatized itself as a racist organization.