Why I"m no longer a Southern Baptist...

The United States Constitution makes clear that citizens of this country can believe anything they wish, whether others find those beliefs laudable or offensive. When, however, the EXPRESSION of those beliefs denies other individuals or groups their human and civil rights, a critical line has been crossed and they have entered into the realm of oppression. When they exert power and control in their attempts to define “the other,”they are then working to deprive others of their own rights to believe as they wish.

The Southern Baptist Convention has a life long history of oppression. The denomination was founded on the premise of supporting slavery. The issue of slavery became a lightening rod in the 1840s among members of the Baptist General Convention, and in May 1845, 310 delegates from the Southern states convened in Augusta, Georgia to organize a separate Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) on a pro-slavery plank. They asserted that to be a “good Christian,” one had to support the institution of slavery, and could not join the ranks of the abolitionists.

Then there is the belief in the submission of wives and women. Of course, Southern Baptists believe their amendment concerning the necessity of wifely “submission” and the wife’s duty to “respect, serve and help” her husband, is what the Holy Scriptures demand. But Southern Baptist slaveowners once believed the same thing regarding the “submission” of slaves and the slave’s duty to “respect, serve and help” their masters. In 1844, the national Baptist General Convention for Foreign Missions refused to license slave-owning missionaries. One year later, that refusal led to the split between the northern and southern Baptists. The southern Baptists were absolutely convinced that the Bible taught that God had divinely sanctioned slavery.

      More than 90 years ago, Southern Baptist leaders in the U.S. opposed the attempt by women to gain the right to vote.  Stalworth W. L. Hargis, a Southern Baptist minister of that era quoted various Bible texts and concluded, "Does this sound like God intended that man and woman should be on a parity in everything, civil, religious, social and everything else?" ("Woman Suffrage," The Baptist Record, XXIV, August 10, 1922, p.6)

      Why is it that a large group of humans who know the Bible and claim to believe it, have missed the whisper of the Holy Spirit on all of the great American social issues of the last two centuries?  Southern Baptists, more so than most any other American denomination, are a cultural tribe with such deeply ingrained cultural biases and prejudices that it is difficult for them to even recognize they have them.

This denomination is once again at the forefront of prejudice, bias, discrimination and oppression, all in the name of Jesus. The points I make about the Southern Baptist Convention speaks to issues of power and control; one they have struggled to maintain over the lifetime of the denomination. These attitudes within the denomination are more about this control and less about the love and grace of Jesus Christ. Each generation of this denomination has had particular groups subject to oppression and each generation of religious leaders has used Scripture to force their own particular prejudices and discrimination on the church members who often blindly follow their teachings without serious prayer and study as individuals.
I have family members and close personal friends who are gay, lesbian and transgendered. Science has proven that this is a biological determination made before birth and is not a choice these folks willingly make and it is clear to me that these family and friends were BORN this way the same as I was born clearly heterosexual. As a practicing Christian I believe that we ARE ALL made in Gods image, each of us and that our differences are here to teach us to LOVE as God loves us, not to condemn and persecute some based on their race, gender or sexual orientation. I think the Southern Baptist Denomination represents the Pharisees of this modern world, caught up in the legalism of the law rather than the mercy and grace that loves each of us. 

As a twice divorced woman I was first the victim of domestic abuse and serial adultery and who was told by my minister that I was not submissive enough and the problems in my marriage were MY Fault.  I was then the victim of lying, adultery and deceit by a Southern Baptist minister who was and still is a “secret” homosexual. It is I who have paid the price of ostracism and lack of validation and worth as a woman within this denomination. Both of my ‘husbands’ retain public roles within the church that has granted them “forgiveness” but shunned me.

      Southern Baptists, a denomination that split with its Baptist cousins to the north over the right of ministers to own slaves (and presently the nation's largest Protestant Christian denomination) "apologized" in June 1995 for their pro-slavery, pro-racist, pro-segregationist past. Measured from the date Southern Baptists began waving their Christian banner for slavery (1845) to the date they apologized (1995), it took them longer to apologize than it took the white South African government to apologize for their segregation policy known as "apartheid;" it took them longer to apologize than it took the Japanese Emperor to apologize to the Asian nations who suffered at the hands of Japan during World War II; it took them longer to apologize than it took the U.S. government to apologize to the 120,000 Japanese-Americans sent to prison camps during World War II; it took them longer to apologize than it took the U.S. government to apologize to the native Hawaiians whose government was forcibly overthrown in 1893; it took them longer to apologize than it took an Israeli president to shake hands with the head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Besides which, the Berlin Wall rose and fell and so did communism in Russia, before Southern Baptists finally apologized--an apology uttered one hundred and fifty years, six hundred thousand corpses, and countless lynchings, whippings and beatings, too late.

      I wonder then if in a 150 years or so if the denomination is still viable that the Southern Baptist Convention will apologize to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, to Jewish people, to women, and to all the other individuals and groups they have offended?
With religious rights come responsibilities, and with actions come reactions. Whenever clergy pronounce and preach their conservative dogma on sexuality and gender expression, on women, on Jews, and on others, they must take responsibility for the bullying, harassment, violence against and suicides of these individuals and groups.