“Pass the Salt”: Racism cure resides with church

ST. LOUIS Racial reconciliation rests at the doorsteps of the church and can only be achieved through the gospel in action, a diverse panel of Baptist pastors said during a trailblazing discussion June 14 on the opening morning of the 2016 SBC annual meeting in St. Louis.

Southern Baptist Convention President Ronnie Floyd convened the panel, historically including National Baptist Convention USA President Jerry Young. The two have collaborated for months to put talk into action and actually achieve racial reconciliation in a racially troubled America.

All members of the panel expressed a unity of vision and purpose, describing the church as the Light and Salt of the earth, and the only cure on this side of heaven for racism.

Referencing Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:16, Young, pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Jackson, Miss., said racism is a sin problem that can only be solved by the people God has put in place to offer the healing salvation of the gospel.

“The problem in America is a problem with the church being what God called it to be,” Young said. “The problem [is] contaminated salt, concealed light, whereby we do not express the love of Christ nor extend His light.”

“Somebody needs to pass the salt and turn on the light.”

David Um, senior pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in Cambridge, Mass., and chaplain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the smartest people in the world have invented no cure for racism.

“The students I encounter at these elite and intellectual institutions are most certainly not racist. Just ask them. They are the enlightened ones,” he said with sarcasm. “They have evolved beyond racial divisions … or so they assume.”

But they are “completely blind to their personal biases and bigotries.”

Um concluded, “You cannot educate away racism because you cannot educate away sin. Sin is the problem. Racism is just another sin.”

Former SBC President Fred Luter Jr., pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, also served on the panel. Other panelists were Marshall Blalock, pastor of First Baptist Church, Charleston, S.C.; Kenny Petty, pastor of The Gate Church in St. Louis; H.B. Charles, pastor of Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla.; Timmy Chavis, pastor of Bear Swamp Baptist Church, Pembroke, N.C.; Joe Costephens, pastor of First Baptist Church, Ferguson, Mo.; D.A. Horton, pastor of Reach Fellowship, Los Angeles, and Gregg Matte, pastor of First Baptist Church, Houston.

Floyd described the SBC as the most multi-ethnic and multi-lingual denomination in America, with 10,709 of the 51,441 churches and mission churches holding non-Anglo majority memberships. Of almost 1,000 churches planted in America two years ago, 58 percent were non-Anglo, Floyd said.