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Southern Baptists Urge Christians to Stop Displaying the Confederate Flag

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Southern Baptists are moving forcefully this week to promote racial reconciliation and destroy that which discourages it.

During its annual meeting in St. Louis, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution calling on believers to stop displaying the Confederate battle flag.

The resolution calls for Christians to discontinue flying the flag "as a sign of solidarity of the whole body of Christ, including our African-American brothers and sisters."

Dr. Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the SBC, called the flag a "lingering, divisive symbol."

He recently talked with CBN's David Brody about his work to promote racial reconciliation, noting that not all believers agree with his approach.

He defended it, saying "I think that what God is doing in the world is building a multi-ethnic body of Christ, of people who are able to bear one another's burdens."

Southern Baptists, keenly aware that church attendance and membership are dropping, are also realizing that multi-ethnic churches represent an opportunity for growth.

Out-going SBC President Ronnie Floyd has described the denomination as the most multi-ethnic and multi-lingual in America, with 10,709 of its 51,441 churches and mission churches holding non-Anglo majority memberships.

The North American Mission Board reports that 58 percent of Southern Baptist churches planted one year ago are non-white.

Floyd said recently that multi-ethnic growth must be encouarged because "we do not want to be a convention comprised of only Anglo/white churches or we will soon be dead and irrelevant to our culture."

On Tuesday, a diverse panel of Southern Baptist pastors spoke at the annual meeting about racial reconciliation and the need for the church to promote it.

Dr. Jerry Young, president of the National Baptist Convention USA, the largest majority African-American Christian denomination in the United States, joined Floyd at the denomination's annual meeting.

Young's participation is the first time in at least 35 years that the National Baptist Convention president has been invited to address the SBC.

"It is our responsibility to have this historic conversation today for our present and for our future," Floyd said.

Tennessee pastor Steve Gaines is the new president of the SBC. After a runoff vote that didn't produce a majority winner on Tuesday, North Carolina pastor J.D. Greear withdrew from the race for president.
 

 

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About The Author

Heather
Sells

Heather Sells covers wide-ranging stories for CBN News that include religious liberty, ministry trends, immigration, and education. She’s known for telling personal stories that capture the issues of the day, from the border sheriff who rescues migrants in the desert to the parents struggling with a child that identifies as transgender. In the last year, she has reported on immigration at the Texas border, from Washington, D.C., in advance of the Dobbs abortion case, at crisis pregnancy centers in Massachusetts, and on sexual abuse reform at the annual Southern Baptist meeting in Anaheim