A Rift over Racism Divides the Southern Baptist Convention

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The New Yorker

President, Barack, News, Politics, Wnyc, Obama, Lizza, Washington, Wickenden

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2021

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

Next week, the Southern Baptist Convention will hold its annual meeting. It’s the largest Protestant denomination in the country, and, as the group gathers to elect a new president, it is facing a crisis of identity. At issue is critical-race theory, which the presidential candidate Pastor Mike Stone and many other conservatives have called an extra-Biblical and even demonic source of division and strife. Eliza Griswold has been reporting on a moral crisis within the S.B.C. and emerging fissures between American evangelicals. In 2017, the Reverend Dwight McKissic put forward a resolution condemning alt-right white supremacy, which failed twice before being passed. “It was a feeling of shock. I was stunned, actually,” he told Griswold. “Black pastors were coming to me saying, ‘We’re out. We feel like the Other here.’ ”

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1:17.5	I'm Dorothy Wicenden. On today's Politics and More podcast, the New Yorker's Eliza Griswold discusses the Southern Baptist Convention's 2021 annual meeting. At issue at the conference,
1:24.8	critical race theory and its place within the church.
1:34.8	This week, the Southern Baptist Convention is holding its annual meeting. Now, this is the largest
1:40.6	Protestant denomination in the country, and the event is going to be huge.
1:45.3	The 2020 meeting, of course, was canceled, but this year more than 16,000 people are expected
1:51.3	to come to Nashville to elect a new president. The election will also be extremely contentious.
1:58.4	Well-known members have left the group already in protest of the
2:01.2	denomination's politics, and at the center of the rift is an essential question. How should
2:07.1	evangelical Christians deal with systemic racism? I spend my days and nights thinking about this
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