Simon Cox Blog: Southern Baptists Repudiate the Confederate Flag

Wednesday, 15 June 2016

Southern Baptists Repudiate the Confederate Flag

(UPDATED) SBC is first of three evangelical groups seeking racial unity after Ferguson and Charleston.

Update: Southern Baptists have voted to repudiate the Confederate flag.

“We call our brothers and sisters in Christ to discontinue the display of the Confederate battle flag as a sign of solidarity of the whole Body of Christ, including our African-American brothers and sisters,” states Resolution 7, passed today by an overwhelming majority of messengers to the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). [Baptist Press has the details.]

“It’s not often that I find myself wiping away tears in a denominational meeting, but I just did,” wrote Russell Moore, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. In a statement, Moore noted:

The Southern Baptist Convention made history today and made history in the right way. This denomination was founded by people who wrongly defended the sin of human slavery. Today, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination voted to repudiate the Confederate battle flag and it’s time and well past time.

The Confederate flag is a symbol of horrific injustices against our African American brothers and sisters in Christ and has been used as a threat of terrorism against them. Today Southern Baptists affirmed that we are more committed to the gospel than we are to a flag and more committed to the future than we are to the past.

The controversial resolution, proposed by Texas pastor Dwight McKissic, was presented for a vote in a “less strongly worded” form, but was strengthened from the floor, notes the Associated Press.

Much discussed was the speech given by Atlanta-area pastor James Merritt:

The resolution notes that in 1995, the SBC “repudiated ‘historic acts of evil, such as slavery,’ and committed ...