By Bob Allen
Baptist leaders are among 28 original signers of a response to Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” 50 years after the civil-rights leader challenged white church leaders to confront racism.
Patrick Anderson, interim coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship; Stephen Thurston of the National Baptist Convention of America; and Ruth Clark, president of American Baptist Churches, USA; took part in an ecumenical gathering marking the letter’s 50th anniversary April 14-15 in Birmingham, Ala.
Convened by Christian Churches Together — a group formed in 2001 to promote fellowship, unity and witness among diverse Christian faiths — the gathering included confessions from church bodies about their hesitancy and silence about addressing racial justice during the Civil Rights Movement.
King’s letter, written April 16, 1963, responded to criticism by white leaders calling his method of non-violent civil disobedience “unwise and untimely.”
King reminded white ministers that “freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor” but “must be demanded by the oppressed” and shared disappointment with “the white moderate” he assumed would be an ally.
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’” King wrote.
“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will,” King wrote. “Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
While much has changed since 1963, the 20-page CCT letter says the church’s call is the same — “for followers of Christ to stand together, to work together, and to struggle together for justice.”
“Inspired by Dr. King, we resolve courageously to face the injustice that is within ourselves, our institutions, and our nation,” the statement said. “The church must lead rather than follow in the march toward justice.
The faith leaders pledged both to challenge systemic racism in America’s schools and judicial system and to examine themselves and work toward a goal of “becoming a church that is anti-racist.”
Anderson, at the time a politically unaware student at Furman University, said in a Fellowship blog that he doesn’t remember hearing about King’s letter in 1963, but today he feels like he missed out on something important.
Like many of his generation, Anderson said he later became sensitized to racial and other social issues that eventually forced their way into the public consciousness, but he is “ashamed of us Baptists in the South during the 1960s.”
“I repented, not for the first time, with the others at the event at the Saint Paul’s Methodist Church this week and resolved to be less timid in the face of injustice, to be more forthright in speaking for justice, to be a better member of the family of God the rest of my life,” Anderson wrote.
Carlos Malavé, executive director of Christian Churches Together, said the list of signatories will grow as names are added of leaders of member churches who were not present in Birmingham.