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

84 страница из 123

I trace the road taken by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) to cope publicly with the changing racial dynamics, especially in the South during the 1950s and 1960s, and then with its efforts in 1995 to formally repudiate racism and past sins of slavery and segregation. I suspected that a major theological impediment to dismantling segregated institutions in the South after the Brown decision in 1954 was whether Christian denominations were willing to accept views that African Americans were fully human and therefore were entitled to be extended Christian love, charity, and compassion in light of their suffering during Jim Crow.

anti-miscegenation laws

Golden Rule

As we will see, racial stigma works in two directions. It is reciprocal. In 1995, the SBC apologized for its support of slavery and segregation. But the SBC had held on to its stigmatized view of African Americans for so long that it had itself developed the stigma of being a racist institution, due to its long-held support of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and anti-miscegenation laws. Consequently, it did not achieve the increases in African American membership and integration within its own institutions that it had hoped for.