It is
right to admit we might be wrong
by John Pierce, Executive Editor,
Baptists Today
Joseph
Lowery, a veteran of the turbulent Civil Rights Movement, once said:
“If everybody who’s ever told me they marched with Dr. King had done
so, those police dogs would have turned around and run.”
Like others
with first-hand experience, Lowery also knows that most good white
Christians were unwilling to share their struggle for freedom and
equality. More often our Baptist preachers and deacons labeled
Martin Luther King Jr., Lowery and other Civil Rights leaders as
troublemakers.
“They say
they are for peace, but they just cause trouble everywhere they go,”
I recall hearing as a youngster trying to make sense out of early
curfews and the brutal police beatings on the black-and-white
television screen.
Much of the
church was not only absent from the struggle for racial equality,
but also an obstacle. Instead of being prophetic, most white Baptist
preachers — with a few notable and courageous exceptions — blamed
the victims.
Fundamentalist Baptist preachers explained to me that blacks were
inferior to whites by divine decree. Their biblical case rested
solidly on the so-called “curse of Ham.”
It was not
until my experience as a Baptist Student Union summer missionary
that I learned the full folly of that case. Bill Moore, who built
partnerships between black and white Baptists in Michigan, showed me
the absurdity of that argument.
A closer look
at the Genesis passage revealed that the curse was made by a drunken
Noah rather than by God; that the curse was placed on Canaan rather
than Ham; and that the descendents of Canaan were not black.
But why let a
few inconsistencies like that get in the way of a good biblical
argument to support one’s presupposition?
While not
every conservative white Baptist heralded this specific theory,
there is little evidence of prophetic activity from within our
houses of worship during the 1960s regarding race. Or did the
cameras just overlook all the Baptist fundamentalists marching in
Selma?
My greater
concern, however, is not in looking back but in looking ahead. The
1995 Southern Baptist Convention resolution on racism corporately
acknowledged some past sins.
What we don’t
hear from prominent Baptist leaders today, however, are personal
confessions of how an unwavering commitment to the authority of
scripture was wrongly used to oppose racial equality.
Why? Simply
because if we admit to being wrong in our biblical interpretations
concerning a social issue decades ago, then we open ourselves to the
possibility of being wrong on other issues now or in the future.
And that’s
the last thing a Baptist who claims a superior commitment to
biblical authority wants to do.
That’s why
SBC powerbroker Paige Patterson can tell a North Carolina television
station that he is a “determined opponent of racism” based on a
literal interpretation of the Bible. Then, without a hint of
uncertainty, proclaim that the Bible is “crystal clear” about
excluding women from pastoral leadership (as well as from teaching
church history to budding ministers because she would be included
among the — gasp! — theology faculty).
That’s also
why young Southern Seminary theologian Russ Moore can comfortably
affirm in 2003, “(C)hurches of Jesus Christ must stand against the
white sheets of the Ku Klux Klan …,” and then buddy up with the
Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood that defends male
dominance in home and church as an unquestionable, biblical mandate.
Social issues
have arisen in the church for centuries. Identifying our personal
biases and honestly seeking biblical truth should be a challenging
and humbling experience.
Sometimes we
misinterpret scripture in spite of our best intentions and efforts.
More detrimentally, some choose to purposefully misrepresent
scripture to support their preferred positions.
Indeed,
confession is good for the soul. Whenever new light reveals that we
have seen through a glass darkly, it is right to admit our
short-sightedness and faulty conclusions.
Honest
confession is not an admission that we do not believe in biblical
authority; it is an acknowledgment that we are imperfect in
discerning all divine truth. It is no less a confession than that we
are human rather than God.
It is
healthy to confess, “I was wrong.” It is even healthier to admit our
potential for being wrong again.
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