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The following monologue was given by Dr. Bruce Prescott during the opening monologue of the "Religious Talk" radio program on March 19, 2000. Let me begin this morning by commending the Roman Catholic church for confessing some of its sins as an institution last week. If you missed the news, in a mass last Sunday Pope John Paul II asked God’s forgiveness for the sins of the Roman Catholic Church through the ages, including wrongs that the church inflicted on Jews, women and minorities. He specifically asked for “pardon for the divisions among Christians, for the use of violence that some have committed in the service of truth, and for attitudes of mistrust and hostility assumed toward followers of other religions.” The mass last week was part of the Pope’s campaign for a collective examination of conscience at the dawn of the new millennium. I applaud the Pope’s call for a collective examination of conscience. I think it would be healthy for all people do so – whether we are Catholics or Protestants and whether we are Christians or are persons of other faiths. Catholics are not the only faith group that has fallen short of the ideals that they strive to attain. Divisions, violence, mistrust and hostility can be found in the relations between peoples of all faiths, all genders, all races, all social classes and all ages. We all stand in need of forgiveness and pardon and we all need to strive to find ways to build a community in which relations are based on mutual respect and trust. Today, I hope we can begin face some of our shortcomings and start looking for ways we can work together to build the kind of community that secures just and harmonious relations between people of different faiths, races, genders, social classes and ages. Let me begin by addressing the chief sin of my own people. I am a Southern Baptist. The Southern Baptist Convention began in 1845. When I was a child and a teenager and learned about the history of my denomination, my pastors and teachers used to underscore that date. They used to tell me that since Southern Baptists broke away from Northern Baptists 15 years before the beginning of the Civil War, that it didn’t have anything to do with the fact that Baptist churches in the South approved of slavery and the church in the North disapproved of slavery. They used to tell me that Southern Baptists broke away from Northern Baptists because they were more conservative, move faithful to the Bible, more evangelistic, and more concerned about missions that the Baptists in the North. No one likes to face up the sins of their fathers. We usually do our best to cover them up or justify them. And that is what most Baptists have done as a people for more than 150 years. It wasn’t until I was in Seminary that I learned the real cause for the divisions within the Baptist denomination in America. While I was in Seminary I learned from the historical documents themselves – contrary to what I heard from the mouths of the pastors and teachers that I had trusted, and contrary to much of the literature that was produced by my denomination and given to me by my church – I learned that Baptists, North and South, did divide over the issue of slavery. In 1845 Baptists in the South wanted to appoint as a missionary a man who owned slaves. Baptists in the North refused to support a missionary who owned slaves. When that happened, Baptists in the South divided from Baptists in the North and began appointing their own missionaries – missionaries who interpreted the Bible literally and approvingly when it said “slaves, be subject to their masters.” Those Baptists in the South – preachers, missionaries, and lay people – helped create the social atmosphere that led to the war between the states. The same preachers, missionaries and lay people that led Southern Baptists to break away from Baptists in the North, were some of the most influential voices calling for Southern states to secede from the Union. Southern Baptists have contrived many pious ways of rationalizing and justifying their actions, but there is no way to escape the simple truth that the South Baptist Convention was founded by cultural elitists and White Supremacists who elevated themselves economically and exalted themselves socially at the expense of African slaves. That is not a past of which we should be proud. It does no good to whitewash it and pretend it didn’t happen. It is a past that Baptists need to confessed and repent and then strive to overcome. That is why I am disturbed that the Southern Baptist Convention’s publishing house is producing historical novels glorifying the culture of the Old South and her generals. It sends a signal to the world that attitudes about race among Baptists haven’t changed in 150 years. That is why I am also embarrassed as a Baptist when the editor of the editorial page of the Daily Oklahoman is using literature produced by Southern Baptists to send signals to the African American community in Oklahoma that attitudes about race among Oklahomans haven’t changed in 150 years either. A couple weeks ago I read a letter that I wrote to the editor of the editorial page of the Daily Oklahoman after he wrote his first editorial on Stonewall Jackson. I sent him that letter and posted it on the Mainstream Baptists website. He didn’t print my letter. He did print another editorial about Stonewall Jackson this week and cited the same book produced by Southern Baptists. I’m not going to bother writing him any more letters on this issue. Instead, I have decided to nominate him for the “Thick as a Brick” award. You’ve got to be “as thick as a brick” -- or else you are deliberately stoking a fire -- to write two editorials on “Stonewall Jackson” at a time when racial tensions have escalated to the point of violence at the High School in Wynnewood. You can fan the flames of conflict, but you cannot put out the fire with such editorializing. |
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Online since April 7, 1999
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