The actual figure of 1,394 times may not exactly be accurate. It’s probably more than that.
From rebuking “alt-right racism” to formally apologizing – on multiple occasions – for slavery via messenger resolutions to electing the first black SBC president to the first black SBC Pastor’s Conference president, the nation’s largest denomination is busy signaling their virtue by apologizing (again) for slavery.
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which now largely focuses their strength and effort on teaching social religion, is again apologizing for slavery. Producing a report from a 12-month long “taskforce” to investigate the racist beginnings of the institution, SBTS repented mulitiple times for things for which they’ve already repented mulitiple times.
The Report on Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Convention was submitted and published by 5 faculty members appointed to the worthless, meaningless, redundant committee to investigate what, quite frankly, needed no investigation. The history of racism and SBTS has been written about ad nauseam. There was simply no research that needed to be done.
In fact, Pulpit & Pen did their research for them in June of 2015, utilizing already-published and publicly available material. We posted the article entitled, Mohler Says He Will Not Remove Racist Names, Still Demands Removal of Flag, to demonstrate his hypocrisy in demanding that Confederate flags and monuments be removed from public property, but refused to remove Confederate monuments and namesakes from his private seminary. That was a follow up on our post, Southern Baptists, Tear Down These Buildings, in which we detailed the slave-holding history of SBTS. Baptist News Global picked up on that article and Mohler’s immediate refusal to remove Confederate names from his seminary was a direct response to Pulpit & Pen criticism.
Feeling the sting of exposed hypocrisy – demanding a removal of Confederate names from public property but not his own seminary and undergraduate college – Mohler issued a commission to support his decision to not remove institution names hearkening back to slaveholders.
The report dealt with the certain SBTS founders owning slaves and fighting for the Confederacy, and continued to lament for something already repented of. And yet, ironically, the report went on to say that SBTS would not change names, writing, “In light of the burdens of history, some schools hasten to remove names, announce plans, and declare moral superiority. That is not what I intend to do, nor do I believe that to be what the Southern Baptist Convention or our Board of Trustees would have us to do.”
However, according to Russell Moore, there is consideration of changing the name of the SBTS seminary “Alumni Chapel” to “Mohler Chapel,” so the institution doesn’t seem to be conscientiously opposed to name changes.
With the Southern Baptist Convention being in record-breaking decline, one might think SBC seminaries would be busy focusing on teaching evangelism and focusing on baptism figures. Instead, they’re implementing taskforces to study 160-year-old sins that have been endlessly repented of.
Genius. Just genius. Good priorities, guys.
