RICHMOND, Va. — The Southern Baptist Convention is poised to elect its first black president this June, a move some black leaders in the Mid-Atlantic region praised as a step toward racial reconciliation among American Christians.
Fred Luter, pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, will be nominated at the denomination’s June 19-20 annual meeting, held this year in his hometown. Luter currently serves as the SBC’s first vice president.
Fred Luter (BP photo)
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Luter told his congregation Jan. 29 that he is willing to accept the nomination, reported Baptist Press, the convention’s press service, Feb. 6. The announcement confirmed what some Baptist observers had predicted for months.
“This is a significant move for Christianity, given the size and reach of the SBC,” said Mark Croston, president of the Baptist General Association of Virginia. “From 1845 to 1954 there were essentially no African Americans in the SBC. That one could possibly be selected as president is a great move forward.”
Croston himself broke that barrier in the BGAV last fall, when he was elected the state association’s first black president.
“The SBC could not make a finer choice for president than Fred Luter,” he said. “That he may be the first African-American president of the SBC is just a bonus.”
Two other Baptist organizations In the Mid-Atlantic region also have blacks serving in their top elected positions. Washington pastor Kendrick Curry is at least the sixth African American to serve as president of the District of Columbia Baptist Convention and Kasey Jones, pastor of National Baptist Memorial Church in Washington, is moderator of the Mid-Atlantic Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
In the early 2000s, the Baptist Convention of Maryland-Delaware elected its first African American as president.
Curry, pastor of Pennsylvania Avenue Baptist Church, said Luter’s election, “while very late in human history, would speak of the SBC’s commendable attempt to move beyond the horrific shadows of history past and to live into the promise of an ethnically-diverse life among Southern Baptists.”
“It also would suggest an intentional effort on the part of the SBC to engender the hope of eliminating the roots of bigotry within and to fully regard the human dignity of another, irrespective of difference,” Curry added.
Religion News Service reported Feb. 3 Luter’s election as a near certainty. “If he runs, he’ll get elected overwhelmingly. He may be unopposed,” Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., told RNS. Russell Moore, dean of the school of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., told the news service, “I’d be surprised if there were any other substantial candidates.”
Kendrick Curry
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Mark Croston
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Both Curry and Croston said the election would enhance Americans’ perception of the 167-year-old Southern Baptist Convention — the largest non-Catholic denomination in the country — and would revitalize its ministries.
The move would make “an important statement in Christendom because it says that Christian leadership goes beyond hue,” Curry said. “The affirmation of such leadership from the former Confederate South is what Christianity needs. …
It’s also key to the “SBC being in the forefront of helping Christianity retrieve its rich transformation,” he said. Otherwise, he added, the convention “will find itself at the back of the movement and it may not survive the 21st century.”
Croston emphasized that Luter’s election, while enhancing the SBC’s image, is “not a public relations gimmick.”
“Fred Luter will have earned this opportunity through his hard work and dedication,” he said.
But Croston acknowledged it will highlight the SBC’s claim to be “the most racially-diverse religious institution in the United States.
“On any given Sunday the gospel is preached in 40 different languages,” he said. “What Fred Luter’s possible election will do is let people look at the top of the SBC in the same way we see its rank and file every day.”
Curry agrees, though he believes changed perceptions will take time. “People’s minds and attitudes toward the SBC will not change until the SBC clearly demonstrates that she is a full partner in the diverse Kingdom of God. The demonstration of such a partnership and of racial equality must be sustained over time before people of all ethnicities begin to trust the motives of the convention.”
Luter has been pastor since 1986 of the New Orleans church, which draws about 7,000 worshippers each Sunday. He and his wife, Elizabeth, have two children.
Robert Dilday ([email protected]) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.