It's the liberal, mainline Protestants whose actions show their commitment to the Christian Gospel

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2026/01/silence-from-southern-baptists-and.html

In 1845, the Northern Baptist Missionary Society of the Triennial Baptist Convention refused to ordain James Reeve, of Georgia, as a missionary because he owned slaves. As a result, Baptists from churches in the southern states where slavery was legal gathered in Augusta, Georgia that same year to withdraw from the Triennial Convention, which, in spite of attempts to remain neutral on the issue of slavery, took action that increasingly favored its abolition.

So it was that the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, was founded as a result of theological error and doctrine formed from a grave, serious misinterpretation of the Christian gospel that rested on racist bigotry. That's not unusual in American Christianity, where the combination of a lack of seminary trained ministers with the emotionalism of frontier revivals led to the formation of many denominations, including cults that departed completely from the teaching of the Christian gospel. But there's more to this story that characterizes Southern Baptists as a denomination and explains their insensitivity to human equality and social justice that is at the core foundation of the Christian gospel.

The rest of this story is that the Southern Baptist denomination, as a whole, did not apologize for their promoting and supporting of slavery in the south until 1995, one hundred and fifty years after their founding, based on the approval of the practice of slavery. One hundred fifty years of history, during which most of its affiliated congregations practiced segregation and discrimination in their membership requirements, and during which most of their churches opposed the Civil Rights movement and took an active role in attempts to stop it.

That says a lot about why, in the face of racial bigotry, injustice and the struggle for equality, Southern Baptists are either silent, or they come out on the side that is contrary to the principles and teachings of the Christian gospel. They are blind to the fact that MAGA Trumpism and the faithful and truthful practice of the Christian gospel are mutually exclusive.

Conservative Evangelicals, Southern Baptists among them, are separating themselves from the mainline Protestant clergy and churches who are showing their love for their neighbors by standing against the injustice being done to them. The American people can see who the real Christians are by their love and their actions. Silence is condemning those who are complicit.

[Norrrm]

1. Early Prosperity Gospel? Slaves were valuable property.