Stories tagged with: racial reconciliation
Found 57 stories matching your search criteria.Displaying page 1 of 6 total pages.
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Trauma healing, conciliation focus of racism forum
PHILADELPHIA (BP) -- Pastor K. Marshall Williams has experienced what researchers term "post traumatic slave syndrome," the trauma and pain African Americans suffer from societal and institutional racism and marginalization.
Screen capture from "Unchained" documentaryRacial conciliation, the process of empathizing with this trauma and pain, is necessary to achieve racial reconciliation, Williams told Baptist Press in advance of a forum he's hosting Feb. 23 on the subject at his pastorate, Nazarene Baptist Church in Philadelphia.
"Listening, learning, understanding and empathizing with the deep hurts and wounds of generational trauma due to our history of slavery, racism, oppression, injustice and its repercussions," is conciliation, Williams said. "After being reconciled to God through the Lord Jesus Christ, this is the next step. Read More
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'Every town in America & our world' needs a Jerome
LAGRANGE, Ga. (BP) -- Many pastors have climbed the heights of real and admirable ministry. The late Jerome Shipman was one of them.
I have never seen so many ministers seated down front nor scattered throughout the audience as at his memorial service last August, nor a processional that lasted perhaps 10 minutes, as did the one for this dynamic African American leader in our community. It may well have been the largest such service in the history of First Baptist Church on the Square in LaGrange, Ga. Read More
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RACIAL RECONCILIATION: Thinking Christianly
Curtis Woods reflects on a 50-year-old prediction that the Southern Baptist Convention would become more interracial in membership and leadership. Read More
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EC search committee has 'actively pursued' non-Anglos
NASHVILLE (BP) -- Responding to "recent online stories and related social media activity," the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee's presidential search committee says it has "actively pursued resumes from non-Anglo candidates."
BP file photoIn a Feb. 7 statement to the full EC, the search committee also said it "will not have a nomination to share" at the EC's Feb. 18-19 meeting in Nashville. It is seeking a successor to Frank S. Page, who resigned in March 2018. Read More
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FIRST-PERSON: Blackface mars 'the soul & the mind'
The message communicated by a person in blackface, Marshal Ausberry writes, "ranges from cultural ignorance to overt racism." Christians are called to forgiveness, he notes, "but I hope we learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others." Read More
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RACIAL RECONCILIATION: A redeemed humanity
The church is "God's 'Plan A' for rescuing the world," SBC President J.D. Greear writes, as "a place of refuge for people of every color, of every background, of every segment of society." Read More
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Breaking down walls, Detroit Baptists honor MLK
DETROIT (BP) -- Not far from Eight Mile Road, a historic racial dividing line in Detroit, more than 100 diverse Southern Baptist pastors, state leaders and laypersons worshipped together on Martin Luther King Jr. day.
Photo from Roland CaldwellThe 7 p.m. service marked a milestone for 78-year-old African American pastor Robert Coverson, the event's preacher, who marched in Detroit with King during the civil rights movement. Many suburban residents are afraid to cross Eight Mile Road and venture into the deep inner city during the day, Coverson said, let alone after dark.
"I saw last night God touching the hearts of people and I saw walls falling," Coverson told Baptist Press the next morning. "I saw hearts being tenderized for the idea of we are our brother's keeper. I saw a new love relationship starting. It was awesome." Read More
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FIRST-PERSON: Dr. King's mountaintop
Just as Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned a day of racial harmony, J.D. Greear calls Christians to pray for the courage to speak and live a similar "counter-cultural, racially diverse, bold and unified faith." Read More
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Jon Nelson: from atheist to 1st black Mo. Baptist VP
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (BP) -- The Missouri Baptist Convention's first African American officer, Jon Nelson, is not only a husband, father and church planter. He's also a testimony to the grace of God that can take an adversary of faith, such as Nelson once was, and bring him into the service of the one he had hated.
Growing up in his parents' inner-city church in Kansas City, Nelson admits he often intellectually wrestled with Christians there.
"When I attended my parents' church, I would privately engage in debates to destroy others' faith by asking venomous and loaded questions," Nelson remembers of his effort to agitate doubt that anyone had about God, the Christian faith or the Bible. Having become a self-defined -- but not publicly identified -- atheist, he wanted others to taste and see the same freedom he felt by rejecting belief in any God. Read More
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Christmas, nativity spotlight Baptist racial unity
NASHVILLE (BP) -- One-month-old Luke Molette was the nativity centerpiece, an African American baby portraying Jesus in the arms of his mother as a white "Joseph" sat at their side, flocked by an interracial chorus.
Photo submitted by Valerie HayesThe 2018 Christmas parade float was the latest collaboration between Nashville First Baptist Church, a majority white congregation led by senior pastor Frank Lewis, and nearby First Baptist Church Capitol Hill, a majority black church led by senior pastor Kelly Miller Smith Jr. The longtime friends point to a shared church history predating the Civil War, when Nashville First established Capitol Hill as a mission congregation.
At a college dinner announcing two scholarships in honor of their leadership in racial unity, the pastors explained the Christmas float's creation. Molette is Smith's grandson, born in November to Smith's daughter Valerie Hayes. Read More
