Stories tagged with: racial reconciliation

• WRAP-UP: Sex abuse prevention tops SBC Exec. Comm. agenda

  by BP Staff, posted Wednesday, February 20, 2019 (one month ago)

  

  Photo by Morris Abernathy

  NASHVILLE (BP) -- Preventing and responding to sexual abuse was a major focus during meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee Feb. 18-19 in Nashville. Among the EC's actions was recommending an amendment to the SBC Constitution stating churches are not "in friendly cooperation with the Convention" if they "have evidenced indifference in addressing sexual abuse." Read More

• Trauma healing, conciliation focus of racism forum

  by Diana Chandler, posted Friday, February 08, 2019 (2 months ago)

  

  Screen capture from "Unchained" documentary

  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.

  Racial 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

• 'Every town in America & our world' needs a Jerome

  by Paul Baxter, posted Friday, February 08, 2019 (2 months ago)

  

  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

• RACIAL RECONCILIATION: Thinking Christianly

  by Curtis A. Woods, posted Friday, February 08, 2019 (2 months ago)

  Curtis Woods reflects on a 50-year-old prediction that the Southern Baptist Convention would become more interracial in membership and leadership. Read More

• EC search committee has 'actively pursued' non-Anglos

  by David Roach, posted Thursday, February 07, 2019 (2 months ago)

  

  BP file photo

  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."

  In 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

• FIRST-PERSON: Blackface mars 'the soul & the mind'

  by Marshal Ausberry, posted Thursday, February 07, 2019 (2 months ago)

  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

• RACIAL RECONCILIATION: A redeemed humanity

  by J.D. Greear, posted Thursday, February 07, 2019 (2 months ago)

  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

• Breaking down walls, Detroit Baptists honor MLK

  by Diana Chandler, posted Wednesday, January 23, 2019 (2 months ago)

  

  Photo from Roland Caldwell

  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.

  The 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

• FIRST-PERSON: Dr. King's mountaintop

  by J.D. Greear, posted Friday, January 18, 2019 (3 months ago)

  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

• Jon Nelson: from atheist to 1st black Mo. Baptist VP

  by Christopher Pearson, posted Wednesday, January 02, 2019 (3 months ago)

  

  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