Thread by @robertpjones

White Christian opposition to “critical race theory” is an attempt to protect a counterfactual myth of white innocence.
Debates in SBC today cannot be understood apart from its history: Founded as a place where slavery could flourish alongside the gospel.
amazon.com/White-Too-Long…

And I say this from experience as well as a scholar. Come from lineage with Baptist preachers, grew up active in SBC churches, went to SBC college and seminary. Not until my 20s did I have a professor who told me the truth about the founding of my childhood home denomination.

On CRT: Not since the United Daughters of the Confederacy spearheaded a national movement to erect thousands of “Lost Cause” monuments to the Confederacy have we seen such a concerted effort by white religious and political leaders to protect a history of white innocence.

*SBC at 1845 founding: Northern Baptists have “failed to prove…that slavery is, in all circumstances, sinful.” These are "our privileges and our sacred rights.”
*SBC leaders opposing CRT in 2021: We don’t need anything other than the Bible on racism.

baptiststudiesonline.com/wp-content/upl…

Here’s my take @RNS.
The reckoning on racism & sexual abuse at #SBC21 is a poignant example of how white evangelicals are desperately holding onto a 19th-century worldview that its white male leadership continues to insist is read straight from the Bible.
religionnews.com/2021/06/04/sou…

@RNS Still reeling from #SBC21 EC sexual abuse response: “Children’s Sunday schools are run by the mothers of the children and their grandmothers. There’s no safer place on earth than most SBC churches for children. If there is a problem, we can address it without hiring a 3rd party.”

SBC male leaders are still saying “IF there is a problem” even after investigations like one by Houston Chronicle that revealed nearly 400 perpetrators within the SBC had victimized >700 ppl over two decades from 1998-2018.