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

Baptist History and Heritage, Wntr, 1999 by Andrew M. Manis

The following week a member of the SBC Executive Committee proposed a resolution to be addressed to the pastor and membership of the Sixteenth Street Church. The resolution sought to join the stricken congregation "in mourning your dead," pledged "energetic efforts in healing the rift between the races" and "to encourage our people to contribute toward the restoration of your building." Not only did the Executive Committee defeat the resolution, but it also instructed Southern Baptist state newspaper editors to remain silent on the debate on the resolution. Instead of passing a resolution specifically naming the Birmingham situation, the Executive Committee approved a vague statement about the tragedy of racial strife. In Alabama a number of laypersons objected to efforts by some other Southern Baptists to help repair the damage to the Sixteenth Street Church calling such efforts "a misuse of money." (21)

The unfolding civil rights movement occasionally elicited timid responses from Southern Baptists. In 1964 when the Christian Life Commission proposed a strong anti-segregation resolution to the annual convention, conservatives mustered enough support to weaken its language. The most sustained reaction to the movement came in the wake of the April 4, 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Most Southern Baptist newspapers had studiously avoided specific mention of King during his life. Most pastors who sympathized with King and the movement tended to keep their sentiments to themselves. Even in the most liberal corners of Southern Baptist life, there were occasional complaints about King. The Pullen Memorial Church of Raleigh, North Carolina, heard activist pastor W. W. Finlator address the race issue more often than suited the tastes of most Baptists. One story has it that on a particular Reformation Sunday the relative of a member noticed Martin Luther's name in the order of worship and exclaimed, "Does he have to preach on that man every Sunday." (22)

Nevertheless, coupled with other expressions of civil unrest during the explosive year of 1968, King's murder struck a nerve among Southern Baptists. While some ministers and editors lamented King's death, the tragedy did not keep some ministers and laypersons from leveling harsh criticism of him. One Alabama preacher wrote the Alabama Baptist arguing that many of the state's Baptists were tired of hearing about racism from SBC officials and resented Baptist leaders who compared King to Moses or evangelist Billy Graham. Others complained about the federal government's calling for flags to fly at half-staff in memory of someone they considered a law-breaker. Robert Tenery, later a leader of the fundamentalist faction of the SBC from North Carolina, charged that Jesus was interested in sinners rather than the poor. An Arkansas pastor denied that King was a Christian because of his unorthodox theology. (23)

Responses from laypersons tended to be even more vitriolic. One wondered why King did not go preach the gospel in Africa, "the home of his ancestors, where they still live like savages." Another wrote North Carolina editor Marse Grant: "Forget about the niggers for that is all you seem to think about. The Biblical Recorder is full of it every week. You can stop mine. I don't want another one in my house." Of course some letters honored King and used his demise to call for Southern Baptist ministry in the area of human rights. Nevertheless, letters criticizing King and other Baptists sympathetic to him were much more numerous. (24)