Southern Baptists and Slavery

[Luke2427]

The hidden history of the Southern Baptists. Why does this not matter? The Southern Baptist Convention was the only religious organization to have been founded on the defense of slavery. I would appreciate comments on my book on this subject. "Southern Baptists and Southern Slavery: The Forgotten Crime Against Humanity.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1482384663/?tag=baptis04-20

I don't see the problem. Owning slaves is MOST ASSUREDLY not incompatible with biblical Christianity.

This feigned outrage against slavery so popular today seems aimed at self-exaltation. It screams "look how noble I am in my vehement stand for this righteous cause!!" The outrage certainly doesn't find footing in the Bible.

Could slavery have been done better in the 1800's? Sure.

Did owning slaves mean you were not a fine Christian? Absolutely not!

Should the triennial convention have refused to sanction a home missionary JUST because he owned slaves. A thousand times no.

 

[Crabtownboy]

I don't see the problem. Owning slaves is MOST ASSUREDLY not incompatible with biblical Christianity.

This feigned outrage against slavery so popular today seems aimed at self-exaltation. It screams "look how noble I am in my vehement stand for this righteous cause!!" The outrage certainly doesn't find footing in the Bible.

Could slavery have been done better in the 1800's? Sure.

Did owning slaves mean you were not a fine Christian? Absolutely not!

Should the triennial convention have refused to sanction a home missionary JUST because he owned slaves. A thousand times no.

You started a thread about knowing history or keeping quiet ... not your words as your words were insulting.

With your reply to this thread you have shown a great ignorance of slavery in Biblical times versus slavery in the last few centuries. Thus, you fail in your history.

Many see this as the Bible condoning all forms of slavery. What many fail to understand is that slavery in biblical times was very different from the slavery that was practiced in the past few centuries in many parts of the world. The slavery in the Bible was not based exclusively on race. People were not enslaved because of their nationality or the color of their skin. In Bible times, slavery was more a matter of social status. People sold themselves as slaves when they could not pay their debts or provide for their families. In New Testament times, sometimes doctors, lawyers, and even politicians were slaves of someone else. Some people actually chose to be slaves so as to have all their needs provided for by their masters.

The slavery of the past few centuries was often based exclusively on skin color. In the United States, many black people were considered slaves because of their nationality; many slave owners truly believed black people to be inferior human beings. The Bible most definitely does condemn race-based slavery. Consider the slavery the Hebrews experienced when they were in Egypt. The Hebrews were slaves, not by choice, but because they were Hebrews (Exodus 13:14). The plagues God poured out on Egypt demonstrate how God feels about racial slavery (Exodus 7-11). So, yes, the Bible does condemn some forms of slavery. At the same time, the Bible does seem to allow for other forms. The key issue is that the slavery the Bible allowed for in no way resembled the racial slavery that plagued our world in the past few centuries.

In addition, both the Old and New Testaments condemn the practice of “man-stealing” which is what happened in Africa in the 19th century. Africans were rounded up by slave-hunters, who sold them to slave-traders, who brought them to the New World to work on plantations and farms. This practice is abhorrent to God. In fact, the penalty for such a crime in the Mosaic Law was death: “Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death” (Exodus 21:16). Similarly, in the New Testament, slave-traders are listed among those who are “ungodly and sinful” and are in the same category as those who kill their fathers or mothers, murderers, adulterers and perverts, and liars and perjurers (1 Timothy 1:8-10).

http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-slavery.html

There are many links where you can be educated on the differences between slavery in Biblical times an in the past few centuries. Just a few:

http://www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/2010/april/7041910.html

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Torah/Deuteronomy/Biblical_Slavery.shtml

http://www.baptistbiblebelievers.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=oZbCPrE7GnE=&tabid=232&mid=762

 

[Monster]

OPPS! Never mind. <----read poorly.

 

[Thomas Helwys]

Listen, folks, I do not object to the subject being discussed, studied, or written about. But it should be done on a historically accurate basis. Alvin has made the claim that the SBC was the ONLY denomination founded on the defense of slavery. Clearly that is not factual, as I have shown. Thus, the premise is false. How can the book therefore be credible if the premise is false? It cannot. When confronted with that evidence of a false premise, Alvin refuses to accept that. I'd like to know why and what is then his purpose.

Alvin went to a SBC seminary and says he is Southern Baptist. So, why the slander of the SBC?

Having said that, I hope Alvin is not banned. Everyone should be able to have their say on a debate forum.

 

[Oldtimer]

In other words, Let me make my buck first.

Reminds me of "pass the bill to know what's in it".

Rev. Alvin L Carpenter
http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Carpenter_Alvin_979643402.aspx

Referenced: http://www.space.com/17659-interstellar-travel-religion-conflict.html

Should Humanity Take Religion on Interstellar Space Voyage?

"The only way humanity can survive is if they leave behind the Earth-based religions," charged Rev. Alvin Carpenter, pastor at First Southern Baptist Church West Sacramento. "If there's any way to make this fail, bring Earth-bound religions."

Religions, he argued, breed aggression and conflict, citing the violent history of his own faith, Christianity, in episodes such as the Inquisition and the Crusades. Many religions' negative stance on homosexuality has driven young gay people to commit suicide, he said.

"When you bring a religion on a starship, you bring the toxicity that we have seen on Earth," Carpenter argued. "This is something that we do not wish to export to the stars."

"All it takes is one charismatic fundamentalist, with a Bible or a Koran in his or her hand," to spark conflict aboard a starship, he added.

----
Carpenter, however, advocated leaving religions behind on Earth, to allow room for new ways of thinking.

"I think space-born religion is going to be based on science," he said.

Matthew 28: KJB

18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.​

Matthew 7: KJB

14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?​

 

[Crabtownboy]

As I said, your statement: "The Southern Baptist Convention was the only religious organization to have been founded on the defense of slavery" is false. Care to address your false statement? If your entire book is based on a false premise, what does that make your book?

The same division that happened with Baptists in the North and South also happened with northern and southern Methodists and Presbyterians.

Thomas, I am sure there was great tensions within various Christian denominations over slavery. I am not sure there was another denomination founded because of the slavery issue. I am not sure there was not another denomination founded. I am sure that slavery was the primary reason the SBC was founded in 1845. My question is:

Can you supply me with a link showing that a denomination, other than the SBC, was founded over the slavery issue.

 

[Oldtimer]

Can you supply me with a link showing that a denomination, other than the SBC, was founded over the slavery issue.

Please pardon a layman's confusion......

SBC is a denomination?

 

[Crabtownboy]

Please pardon a layman's confusion......

SBC is a denomination?

If we accept the dictionary definition, then yes it is.

Denomination: a religious organization whose congregations are united in their adherence to its beliefs and practices.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/denomination

Denomination defined: a religious group, usually including many local churches, often larger than a sect.

www.dictionary.com

What I want is a link telling all of us whether the SBC was the only denomination founded primarily because of the slavery issue.

 

[Jerome]

Please pardon a layman's confusion......

SBC is a denomination?

But of course it is:

the Southern Baptist Convention is open to Calvinism. So it should be assumed that her churches that do not identify themselves as closed to it are like the denomination of which they are a part.

http://www.sbc.net/aboutus

A Closer Look - links to information about why we are a denomination, why the SBC organized as a convention, the roles of local churches, individuals, ministers, state conventions, and local associations within the Southern Baptist Convention.

 

[blackbird]

The hidden history of the Southern Baptists. Why does this not matter? The Southern Baptist Convention was the only religious organization to have been founded on the defense of slavery. I would appreciate comments on my book on this subject. "Southern Baptists and Southern Slavery: The Forgotten Crime Against Humanity.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1482384663/?tag=baptis04-20

Alvin----Brother, you are whippin' a dead horse!!!:saint::saint:

 

[Mexdeaf]

alvin----brother, you are whippin' a dead horse!!!:saint::saint:

post of the thread award winner!

 

[Thomas Helwys]

Thomas, I am sure there was great tensions within various Christian denominations over slavery. I am not sure there was another denomination founded because of the slavery issue. I am not sure there was not another denomination founded. I am sure that slavery was the primary reason the SBC was founded in 1845. My question is:

Can you supply me with a link showing that a denomination, other than the SBC, was founded over the slavery issue.

All you have to do is a little reading. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, would fit the category.

 

[Crabtownboy]

All you have to do is a little reading. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, would fit the category.

Thanks. I did some reading and found the following:

I found that Episcopalians in the South formed their own Protestant Episcopal Church. However, in the North the separation was never officially recognized and by May 16, 1866, the southern dioceses had rejoined the national church.

The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, or Methodist Episcopal Church South, was the Methodist denomination resulting from the split over the issue of slavery in the Methodist Episcopal Church which had been brewing over several years until it resulted in a schism at a conference held in Louisville, Kentucky in 1844. This body maintained its own polity until it reunited with the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Protestant Church to form the The Methodist Church in 1939, which in turn merged in 1968, with the Evangelical United Brethren Church to form the United Methodist Church. Some more theologically conservative MECS congregations dissenting from the merger formed the Southern Methodist Church in 1940.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodist_Episcopal_Church,_South

Interesting, I must say.

blackbird, Mexdeaf ... history is always interesting, even if it is about topics we are not comfortable reading about.

 

[Thomas Helwys]

Thanks. I did some reading and found the following:

I found that Episcopalians in the South formed their own Protestant Episcopal Church. However, in the North the separation was never officially recognized and by May 16, 1866, the southern dioceses had rejoined the national church.




Interesting, I must say.

blackbird, Mexdeaf ... history is always interesting, even if it is about topics we are not comfortable reading about.

Yes, I said in post #16 that "The Episcopalians divided also, but there was no formal break, and after the war they were soon reunited."

The Methodist Church is a different story, however. The Methodists in the South formed the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, over the slavery issue, and it remained a denomination distinct and separate from the northern Methodists for almost a century.

 

[Thomas Helwys]

One wonders why Alvin remains Southern Baptist since he has a problem with its past and also its present. He doesn't like the position on homosexuality, for instance.

I disagree with the denomination's stance on women pastors, and I have a few more doctrinal disagreements. And yet this is one of the few major denominations that has stood and continues to stand for traditional Christian morality. It is strongly pro-life, as am I. I applaud it for its stances on morals and the family.

 

[Jerome]

Presbyterian Church in America

The PCA formed as part of a major realignment among U.S. Presbyterians, who had been divided on regional grounds since the Civil War between the southern PCUS and the northern-based (though it had grown to have congregations in all 50 states) UPCUSA. Yet the two regional denominations were also internally divided between theological liberals and conservatives. As momentum slowly built towards unification of the two regional denominations, conservative pastors and lay leaders became alarmed by the PCUS's drift from orthodoxy and historic confessional and biblical standards of the church. By the 1970s, conservative pastors in the PCUS began to plan an exit from the denomination.

Southern Presbyterian stalwart R. L. Dabney writing in 1867:

we know that the African has become, according to a well-known law of natural history, by the manifold influences of the ages, a different, fixed species of the race, separated from the white man by traits bodily, mental and moral, almost as rigid and permanent as those of genus. Hence the offspring of an amalgamation must be a hybrid race, stamped with all the feebleness of the hybrid, and incapable of the career of civilization and glory as an independent race. And this apparently is the destiny which our conquerors have in view. If indeed they can mix the blood of the heroes of Manassas with this vile stream from the fens of Africa. . .

 

[Mexdeaf]

blackbird, Mexdeaf ... history is always interesting, even if it is about topics we are not comfortable reading about.

History- no problem- I love history. What I disagree with is the trying to lay the sins of the fathers upon the third and fourth generation. That's foolishness.

 

[Crabtownboy]

History- no problem- I love history. What I disagree with is the trying to lay the sins of the fathers upon the third and fourth generation. That's foolishness.

Unless they hold the same views or views that are very similar. Anyway, what does scripture say about to the 3rd and 4th generation.

History can be very uncomfortable to read, enlightening but uncomfortable.

Of course not all of us can be like Winston Churchill who said, “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” :laugh:

 

[Zaac]

Does it matter?
First, the premise doesn't seem plausible; in fact it seems dubious.
Second, giving him the benefit of the doubt, what does it matter now?

And this would appear to be as far as the conversation needs to go. It was dealt with when they moved on from their stance.

 

[alvin]

Southern Baptist Apology

I wonder how many respondents on this topic that are saying, "this is in the past," and "we have already apologized" and "no reprations are in order" are white southerns. It is not for us to say "it is in the past," and reparations are not in order. Southern Baptists offer up a pathetic apology for racism and claim it is an apology for their practice of and denfese of slavery. I am surprised a sing African American would want to become a part of and SOuthern Baptist Church. There are a great many Southern Baptists who will do all they can to keep the truth of this matter out of sight from African Americans.