Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

I'm curious - I just went on a quick read on the history of the Southern Baptists, and even the SB-drafted stuff indicated that the Baptist split occurred over slavery - with the SB's being pretty firmly on the side of what most people would now think was a pretty monstrous crime, nor did this church exactly cover itself in glory during the civil rights struggles. I mean, I've kidded Episcopalians about belong to a church founded for statist and personal reasons, but this seems even more tainted at the source - to the point people would be a little embarrassed rather than proud to be members. I know this sounds teribly naive, but for a host of reasons (geography, childhood religion, class, profession) I'm not even sure I know any Southern Baptists. So what's up with this apparent anachronism? I almost feel like I did when this guy on the web started posting anti-civil rights stuff from the sixties from the National Review, perhaps the most effective attack I've ever seen, even without commentary. Needless to say, NR has abadoned some of those stances, but not sure it's ever explicitly recanted them.

Hey - a nonsnarky post.
 

And it also looks like Baptists were part of the original drive to separation of church and state, since they were persecuted in early colonial times by the more establishment churches. Sad statement about human nature if that seems less urgent to them when they gain ascendancy.
 

TStock, on your second comment, you are dead right. Modern Southern Baptists do not know or appreciate that part of their own their own history.

On your first comment, I don't know where to start. Off the top of my head: Most antebellum Southern Christians believed that slavery nto only was not wriong, but was a positive right, as in God's will, for the sake of the slaves themselves, for their salvation, among other things. The belief was rooted in fundamentalist, pre-modern, literal reading of Scripture. They were wrong, but not malicious, for the most part. Just wrong. But no more wrong that the Christians who led the Inquisition, the Christians who denied, and continue to deny, science to the bitter end, etc., etc. And wrong or not, Southern Baptist are my Christian forefathers and foremothers, and so it's damn hard for me to condemn them, or the present expression of Baptistness, out of hand. Our Christian spiritual ancestry, if you will, si something that even John Shelby Spong acknowledges. It is what it is.

Opposition to the Civil Rights movement: More cultural and social than religious, although a fundy could, and still can, find justification fore it in Scripture.

What else? .. You can't sling a cat and not hit a Southern Baptist in these parts. Chances are, if you grow up a Christian in the rural South, you will grow up a Southern Baptist. There are something like 36 million of them int he U.S., I think, mostly in the Southm of course, and West, I think.

It is extremeley hard for any Christian who is honest about his own faith to baldly attack any other professed Christian, whicjh is diofferent from being critical. If I am not to judge, I am not to judge -- and although I believe that scriptural admonition refers to one's soul, culturally it's damn hard to judge another Christian's words and actions, at leasdt for one, like myself, brought up in that milieu. Plus, Respect your elders is a real thing, and Falwell was both my elder in life and my elder in the faith, no matter how effed up he may have been. Being effed up myself in other ways, it's just dang hard to jump ugly on him too much. As the rabi said in the story I linked: Maybe he was on his own path to enlightenment.

Oh, and the Southern Baptist Convention, much to the chagrin of some, "apologized" for slavery several years ago.

One other thing: The Southern Baptist Convention actually functions as a convention that meets once a year. There are standing agencies and commissions, but for one to say "I am a Southern Baptist" can mean only one thing, according to the denomination's own polity: "I am a member of a specific, local church that autonomously and democratically chooses to affiliate itself with the Southern Baptist Convention (and, usually, regional and state associations). The range of political and doctrinal beliefs used to run the gamut from moderate to conservative in Southern Baptist circles. Nowadys, most congregations are fundamentalist, which is why I've separated myself from the Southern Baptist Convention the only ay I can: by having my name removed from the rolls of the individual Southern Baptist Church I was a member of as a child and young man.

Rambling there, but there's you some thoughts.
 

TS your analysis of the "Southern Baptist" is right on target. The Convention is an artifact of the Great War of Secesion (aka Civil War). Prior to the pre-war Baptist split, they were they major recipients of the benifits of the seperation clause. In Fact Thomas Jefferson thought so much of his writting of the Virginia statute for religious tolerance (inspired by intolerance of the Baptist) that he put it on his grave stone but left off the fact that he had been President of the United States.

Roger Williams, a Baptist at the time, founded Rhode Island as the only colony with full religious freedom for anybody (even Jews, a real BIG deal then). Even then however the Baptist were a contentious lot, and Williams soon left and decided he was just a "seeker" after spiritual truth.

I wonder what Jefferson and Williams would have thought of Jerry Farwell? I suspect that they would have liked him personally and worked hard against his positions.
 

ER says: "And wrong or not, Southern Baptist are my Christian forefathers and foremothers, and so it's damn hard for me to condemn them,...."

It is time for you abandon your parental legacy. It is like the boat that takes you across the river to the broad plains. It has served its purpose. Don't camp under it permantly on the far river bank. Don't drag it with you out onto the plains. Turn your back on it, leave it at the river's edge, and go on without it. It served its purpose.
 

Note: The Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845. The split was, indeed, over slavery, but it was not on the eve of the Civil War.

Correction: 16 million Southern Baptists, in 42,000 churches.

Drlobojo: I've severed my formal tie. But I would no sooner disown my Baptist heritage than I would disown Great-Grandpa ER, who fought for Arkansas in the Civil War. Baptistness continues to inform, but does not determine, the way I see and interpret right and wrong, as well as the way I see Jesus. And I hold out hope for a return to moderation among the Southern Baptist brethren and sistren. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, however, is probably as far as any of them will go in my lifetime.
 

First, let me just say that I am honored and humbled by being both quoted and linked. I didn't say anything really profound, but it's nice that I can fool some people ;)
Second, I think that, as Falwell will not get any more, or less, dead, enough ink and broadbandwidth has been wasted either condemning or praising him and we can move on with our own lives. In many ways, ignoring him and starting the work of repairing the damage his legacy has left us would be the best way to remember him. As to the whole Southern Baptist thing, I have no dog in this fight, except to say that I think the Baptist tradition in America is so diverse, so full of variety and difference, it is America in a microcosm. Radical democracy, swings between a certain dispassionate rationalism and a certain emotional reactionary doctrinalism (if one can use that word in regard to Baptists) have marked Baptists as a group far more than any other, except perhaps my own beloved United Methodists. BTW, the late Clarence Clark Goen, of my seminary alma mater Wesley Theological Seminary published a work close to a generation ago now, Broken Churches, Broken Nation, detailing the way the slavery issue divided the churches in America, a division which presaged the split leading to the Civil War. One of Goen's theses was that the split was reflective rather than a forerunner, of the coming national divide. Because the legal mechanisms were easier for secession within the churches, it was achieved earlier. If you can find it (I think it's still in print), give it a read.
 

Not that I ever met the man, but if I had, I'd say to him what I say to all Fundies: "I'll see you in hell."

Because, if I'm not mistaken, 'wrath' is still one of the Seven Deadly.
 

"I agreed with everything Falwell ever said. Actually, there was one small item I think Falwell got wrong regarding his statement after 9/11 that "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians — who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle — the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'"

First of all, I disagreed with that statement because Falwell neglected to specifically include Teddy Kennedy and "the Reverend" Barry Lynn.

Second, Falwell later stressed that he blamed the terrorists most of all, but I think that clarification was unnecessary. The necessary clarification was to note that God was at least protecting America enough not to allow the terrorists to strike when a Democrat was in the White House." - Ann Coulter
 

Actually I consider 1945 "the eve of the Civil War" in historical terms. Much Like I consider the Mexican -American war to be to the Civil War what the Spanish Civil War was to WWII.
On the former point I stand on the work of historian Benard De Voto although he prefered 1846. ;)
 

That Coulter! What a riot! She should take her act on the road, and write books or something!