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At a recent annual meeting, seminary presidents in the Southern Baptist Convention doubled down on the SBC’s dismissal of “critical race theory,” which examines the issues of embedded racism across institutions and culture in American society. CRT shows how white supremacy — the belief that some people are more valuable than other people because of their skin color — is not just a personal prejudice but a structural and societal practice in America.
The seminary presidents’ statement, declaring the “affirmation of Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, and any version of Critical Theory [as] incompatible with the Baptist Faith & Message” was not quite the prophetic witness we needed from our churches given the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racism we’ve experienced in the U.S. — a deadly combination that has disproportionally killed Black and brown people based on demonstrably inequitable life circumstances tied to both past and current injustices.
Apparently, Southern Baptist leaders see the problem as bad sociology, but what their statement truly reveals is the bad theology that still haunts the denomination founded in support of slavery. The Southern Baptist statement’s failure is biblical, not just sociological. Racism, in its many forms, is sin; indeed, it is America’s original sin based on the lie, the myth, the ideology, and the idolatry of white superiority, or the assumption of whiteness as normative, and white privilege practiced through domination.
White supremacy assaults the image of God, throws away the imago dei, and undermines God’s purpose for humanity clearly stated in Genesis 1:26, to make all humankind in the “image” and “likeness” of God and have stewardship together over all the rest of God’s creation. Therefore, white supremacy — which condones some people exercising violent dominion over other people God created as equal — offends the Creator and is anti-God.
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