A Rift over Racism Divides the Southern Baptist Convention, Plus, the Fallout from Gamestop

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, Storytelling, New, Society & Culture, Yorker, Wnyc, Books, Remnick, Politics, Arts, David

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

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Summary

The largest Protestant denomination in America is in crisis over the group’s reluctance to acknowledge systemic racism; our reporter talks with the Reverend Dwight McKissic, who considered himself a loyalist but may have reached a breaking point. Plus, our producer looks at the GameStop squeeze of last winter and tries to figure out the motives of the small investors on r/WallStreetBets. Are they out for vengeance on the Man? Are they after lulz? Or are they just trying to make a buck?

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:12.2	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. This week, the Southern Baptist Convention is holding its annual meeting.
0:19.9	Now, this is the largest Protestant denomination in the country, and the event is going its annual meeting. Now, this is the largest Protestant
0:21.7	denomination in the country, and the event is going to be huge. The 2020 meeting, of course,
0:27.1	was canceled, but this year, more than 16,000 people are expected to come to Nashville to elect
0:33.7	a new president. The election will also be extremely contentious. Well-known members
0:39.7	have left the group already in protest of the denomination's politics, and at the center of the
0:44.8	rift is an essential question. How should evangelical Christians deal with systemic racism?
0:51.8	I spend my days and nights thinking about this split.
0:55.9	The New Yorker's Eliza Griswold has been reporting on the Southern Baptist Convention,
1:00.4	and she spoke recently with one of its leading pastors.
1:03.9	Eliza, what's on the table at this meeting?
1:05.6	Why is the election of a new president for this group so complicated and so essential?
1:10.7	This seems to an outsider like, I don't know, a routine piece of business.
1:16.2	So on one level, it's just, it's a fight over the role of racism inside of the Southern
1:23.1	Baptist.
1:23.9	But on another level, it's really a fight over the heart of the convention, over who holds
1:30.9	the moral authority going forward. And what we're seeing now play out is this really new
1:36.0	reckoning within the evangelical community. And what's happening is you have a group of hardliners.
1:42.0	This is pre-Trump, right? This is 70s and 80s Christian
1:45.5	right. For a long time, these hardliners have been using the Bible to double down on
1:52.3	basically misogyny and racism. You know, women must be submissive, just old school ideas of
	...

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