Many are aware of the ongoing debate over “racial reconciliation” going on in the Southern Baptist Convention, but few are aware of what it really entails. In fact, the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission will be hosting The Gospel and Racial Reconciliation Summit in March of 2015. Most of the Southern Baptist’s proponents of “Racial Reconciliation,” such as Russell Moore and Ronnie Floyd are in favor of labeling race problems as a Gospel Mandate, and require us to accept the Marxist idea of “White Privelege.” Take for example what Moore had to say in his August 14 post:
Moreover, we know that the the myth of a “post-racial” America is contradicted by a criminal justice system in which young African-American men are, by almost any measure, disproportionately more likely to be arrested, sentenced, or even killed when compared to white peers.
Moore wants us to believe that blacks are arrested, sentenced or even killed more often by our police and criminal justice system because white Americans are racist. Moreover, he wants us to believe that white Americans are privileged in American society over blacks, simply because of our skin color, despite African-American-only programs such as the United Negro College Fund, Affirmative Action, etc, black housing incentives, Equal Opportunity employment programs, etc. Perhaps the problem isn’t that whites are more privileged than blacks, but the problem is sin, especially within the black community. I would argue that the number one reason for higher arrests and convictions among blacks is that they are far more likely to be born out of wedlock, and be raised with without a father figure. This, I would argue according to MY Bible, is the “Gospel Mandate.” That we take the Gospel to those who need it, and live in a culture and lifestyle of unrepentant sin, and no understanding of the Grace of God, is the Gospel’s mandate (Mark 16:15). It is NOT a Gospel mandate that whites bend over backward, and accept responsibility for the sin in the African American culture.
Furthermore, Dr. Ronnie Floyd, president of the SBC writes:
The time is now for us to rise up together and cry out against the racism that still exists in our nation and our churches, and the subsequent injustices….Pastors, churches, leaders, and laypeople of the Southern Baptist Convention, the time is now for us to repent personally and collectively of all racism and injustice…We need to repent of our racism and injustice and return to the first commandment of loving our Lord Jesus Christ.
Is racism a problem in his church? I, for one, am a member of a Southern Baptist church of about 18,000 members, and I don’t know a single racist. Though we are a predominately white church, there are a number of black members, as well as pastors, leaders, and teachers. Yet, Floyd wants us to believe that the problems in the black community are due to racism running rampant in our churches. I’m not arguing that racism doesn’t exist in America, but racists are not Christians, and if a “church” is corporately racist in any way, it’s NOT a Christian church. Yet, the latest in this craze of racial reconciliation in the Southern Baptist Church comes from none other than Pastor Tony Evans, of Oak Cliff Bible Church in Dallas. During an interview with the Christian Post on January 14, Evans was asked:
CP: The suggestion has been made that society as a whole, American Christians as a whole, need to acknowledge and grieve over past corporate sins like slavery and Jim Crow before trying to move forward on reconciliation. What are you thoughts?
And his response was:
Evans: Absolutely, that’s what the solemn assembly is all about. Solemn assembly is recognizing where we failed and repenting of it. Repentance means to turn the other way. So that means, where those failures are clearly seen, have we turned, are we doing the opposite to what we did when those failures or when our current failures [are] the continuation of those historical failures? You repent of those, that is you turn the other way. When you’ve done that, now you’ve begun to operate on God’s standards. And when you repent and operate on God’s standards, now you have restoration and reconciliation.
Here in lies the problem, though; While racism does exist to some small degree in America, it does not exist on the scales that the news media would have you believe, and that the leaders. What is it that Evans, and the others like Moore and Floyd want us to do? The SBC has already publicly repented of it’s racist past. Americans have already repented of slavery and Jim Crow. But our SBC leaders want us as a whole in the church, and as a whole as white Americans, to accept that whites have it easy, repent of that, and stop holding black criminals responsible for their misdeeds and failures. This is diametrically opposed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which teaches us to take the message of personal responsibility of our sin to sinners, along with the word of grace and forgiveness in Jesus Christ. Only then can we see healing among our fellow Americans.
While there are exceptions, the vast majority of white Americans would whole-heartedly disavow slavery or any of these racist events in our history, ESPECIALLY Christians. But unfortunately, our Southern Baptist leaders have bought into the white privilege hype promoted by left leaning propagandists, and this is where our denomination is heading full speed. I would urge SBC members to speak out against this agenda in our churches. Bring it up to your pastors, and make them aware of what’s going on. If there is any hope for the SBC in the future, we MUST stay Gospel focused…that is, the True Gospel, not the Social Gospel. The Gospel is about man’s sin, and God’s power to save us from it, not man’s inequality and man’s ability to save eachother from it.
Related Video: Pastor Voddie Bauchum sees right through Black Liberation Theology: