Southern Baptists Seek To Diversify With Bl... Bla... Blacks

[DeSwiss]

Mostly white Southern Baptists diversify for future

By JACQUELINE L. SALMON • The Washington Post • February 17, 2008

WASHINGTON — Seven years ago, the Rev. Eric Redmond never imagined himself leading a congregation in the overwhelmingly white Southern Baptist Convention.

Now, the young Temple Hills, Md., minister is the second vice president of the 16 million-member denomination and the highest-ranking African-American in the convention. He is a representative of the changing times confronting Southern Baptists and other mostly white Protestant denominations.

Faced with a crisis of aging and departing members, the nation's largest non-Catholic Christian bodies — Southern Baptists, United Methodists, Lutherans and Presbyterians — are reaching out to minorities in ways they never had.

Yet, while local churches often remain predominantly black or white, the outreach does result in a more diverse national organization. By establishing churches in minority communities, changing worship practices, electing minorities to leadership positions and purging racism from their attitudes, the faiths are seeking to draw in communities of color to boost stagnating or falling membership. The consequences of ignoring minorities, they warn, are dire.

"You can almost calculate the time when we close the door and turn off the lights if we don't become a more diverse church," said Sherman Hicks, executive director of multicultural ministries for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a 4.9 million-member denomination that is 97 percent white.

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080217/NEWS06/802170423">LINK

- "Aging and departing" membership? Southern Baptists? Are we sure they weren't raptured?

I suppose by departing members, they mean: "The Big Departure." Like with Jerry. Now won't he be surprised when colored folks start showing up in Southern Baptist heaven....
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DeSwiss

[NMMNG]

1. LOL.

You get a K&R just for that subject line. :rofl:

[DeSwiss]

2. And I'm sure at the meeting.....

...where the Southern Baptists debated and then voted to diversify their convention with black people, that several said it just like that!!!

They probably said something a lot different later...


on edit: spelling

[NMMNG]

3. Oy, some people are so antiquated.

They really belong on Nick at Night. :P

[jody]

4. The New Baptist Covenant welcomes people of all races. That will surely attract many former

Southern Baptists.

See New Baptist Covenant Celebration focuses on unity