Dying from the neck up": Southern Baptist resistance to the civil rights movement

In both these statements we, as Southern Baptists, acknowledged our own historic complicity with racism. We pledged ourselves to repentance in order to commit ourselves to be agents of Christ's reconciling peace.

The immediate crisis which prompted last year's confession is with us still. Indeed, it is rooted in actions taken in years past. Among the historic acts of racism was the failure, in 1963, of the Southern Baptist Convention's executive committee to speak to the terrorist bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church here in Birmingham. As Scripture warns, the sins of our forebears are still being visited upon our nation.

We acknowledge that we cannot simply forget the past. Even though we may not have personally participated in Such distant acts of evil, the consequences of injustice are with us still. And we continue to map the bitter harvest of the resulting inequality.

We acknowledge that, according to Scripture, forgiveness only comes

by remembering, by confessing to God and to each other, openly and in public, the specific failures which mark our lives and betray our calling. The wounds of our souls cannot be cleansed until they emerge from the shadows and into the light of God's mercy.

Therefore, as Baptists reared in the SBC--mercifully joined in this confession by friends in the larger Baptist and ecumenical family:

We hereby confess to our brothers and sisters in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Thirty years ago our Southern Baptist leaders suffered a profound failure of nerve in refusing to speak out against the violence perpetrated against you. We confess that this failure was not simply an administrative mistake but a sin against the Holy Spirit. We believe that God's heart grieved at that failure. Yet we make this bold confession with humility, wondering if the outcome of that vote could have been different if ours had been the moment for such derision.

Each spring our congregations remember and retell the story of Pentecost, celebrating the birth of the church, recalling the time when people of many races, cultures, languages and nations were reconciled by the atoning work of Christ and the faithful preaching of the disciples. Our preaching has not been so faithful. Our most ambitious missionary endeavors are undermined by the continuing reality of racial injustice within our own ranks.

Therefore, we ask for your forgiveness. In doing so, we acknowledge that our own healing is at stake, that racism impedes our own development as a people and discredits our own preaching. We affirm with the Apostle Paul that "godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret" (2 Corinthians 7:10). We long to lean into this salvation, to know the joy of life lived in the fullness of the Spirit, a life freed of shame, restored to fellowship, authorized to redemptive and reconciling presence in the world.

Finally, we acknowledge that the dream of the beloved community is painfully slow in coming. The roots of racial discrimination are deeper than we thought. The larger work of confession, repentance and restoration is yet to be completed.