Southern Baptists repudiate 'alt-right,' white supremacy

Southern Baptists voted Wednesday to condemn the political movement known as the "alt-right" after failing to take up a similar resolution Tuesday afternoon and throwing the national convention into turmoil.

Barrett Duke, chairman of the resolutions committee, opened his comments Wednesday at the Southern Baptist Convention in Phoenix with an apology for "the confusion that we created for you and the watching world" Tuesday, when the resolutions committee chose not to pursue a decision on Resolution 10 that officially condemned the alternative-right movement and all who are involved with it.

The alt-right movement emerged dramatically during the most recent U.S. presidential election, mixing racial bias, white nationalism and populism.

The decision not to pursue Resolution 10 led to a swift backlash of criticism -- both online and at the convention -- from Southern Baptists and other Christians concerned about the denomination's commitment to confronting prejudice.

"Please know that it wasn't because we don't share your abhorrence with racism," Duke said Wednesday. "You spoke clearly yesterday that you wanted an opportunity to speak to this tragedy of our nation as well.

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"While you didn't achieve the two-thirds vote necessary in order to make sure you have that opportunity, we're grateful that you gave us the opportunity to bring you a resolution so that you do have the opportunity to speak on alt-right racism, in particular, and racism in general."

The executive committee initially rejected the resolution proposed by Dwight McKissic, a black Southern Baptist pastor at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas.

Duke said Tuesday that the committee would not accept the resolution on the grounds that it was too "open-ended" and contained "significantly inflammatory language."

The decision drew immediate rebukes, leading convention officials to work into the early morning hours of Wednesday on an amended resolution.

A late-night call went out for convention participants to return to the assembly hall, where Steve Gaines, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, won approval to consider a new resolution on the topic Wednesday.

The new resolution called on convention messengers to "decry every form of racism, including alt-right white supremacy, as antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ ... [And] that we denounce and repudiate white supremacy and every form of racial and ethnic hatred as of the devil."

McKissic's original resolution, posted on his blog May 27, included a call "that we reject the retrograde ideologies, xenophobic biases, and racial bigotries of the so-called 'Alt-Right' that seek to subvert our government, destabilize society, and infect our political system;" and pray in hopes that the alt-right will "repent of their perverse nationalism."

McKissic said Wednesday that black evangelicals were still processing how the convention handled the issue of white supremacy, but he acknowledged that the vote "might help to mitigate some of the hurt and some of the pain."

McKissic was not consulted when leaders were drafting the new resolution but conceded that the revised version was more generally worded and denounced white supremacy rather than the alt-right specifically.

"I'm willing to live with that for peace's sake," he said.

Duke and McKissic embraced during a news conference after the vote.

"Deeply, I apologize," Duke told McKissic.

Southern Baptists are the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, numbering 15.2 million. There are 3,747 black congregations in the U.S., making blacks the largest minority group in the convention, according to the convention. But that number represents less than 10 percent of the 50,464 Southern Baptist congregations in the nation.

The resolution wasn't the first time the convention has been confronted with race issues.

Its first resolution that addressed race relations was in 1941, according to the convention's website, and in 1995 it issued a formal apology for having supported slavery and segregation. The creation of the convention in 1845 stemmed from its pro-slavery roots when the issue of slavery split Northern and Southern Baptists.

Wednesday's resolution drew praise from many at the convention.

"I'm glad the vote went the way it did," said Melissa Meredith of Texas, a nonvoting guest at the convention who called the vote powerful.

Nathaniel Parrow, family pastor of Northern Hills Community Church in Phoenix and a delegate at the convention, called the vote "historic."

"Young leadership in the Southern Baptist Convention is not willing to sit idly by as culture tries to dictate incepture of the Gospel," Parrow said.

McKissic described the turnaround as a "24-hour roller-coaster ride" and said he was encouraged to see multigenerational Southern Baptists step forward to condemn white supremacy.

"I'm grateful that things have ended up like they have ... for the Kingdom of God's sake," McKissic said.

Yet while he was pleased with the final vote, McKissic pointed out that gambling and other issues were voted on quickly, and he wondered aloud about the convention's deliberation when it came to denouncing white supremacy.

"Why did a committee have to deliberate three or four days and say, 'Voila, we see this as a major issue,'" McKissic said. "It took an uproar from the floor, the convention, to say we [have] a problem with white supremacy, so that has created a huge fault line."

Information for this article was contributed by The Associated Press.

Metro on 06/15/2017

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