The Economist Book Review: American Baptists Dipped in controversy

Books and Arts on The Economist ^ | 13 June 2015

[Cronos]

IN 1995, a century and a half after it was founded by supporters of slavery, the Southern Baptist Convention apologised to African-Americans. “We genuinely repent of racism of which we have been guilty,” wrote the group, which had by then become America’s largest Protestant denomination.

It was a landmark moment, reflective of a complex and chequered history. American Baptists’ roots lie in the noble struggle for religious liberty. In colonial times they were a tormented minority, their preachers sometimes clapped into prison. Baptists held that only declared believers should be baptised, which offended other Protestants, who thought that infants should get a dipping. Some also complained that the Baptist rituals were too ostentatious. One 18th-century Anglican clergyman wrote that the Baptists gave the rite to “lascivious persons of both sexes” who wore “very thin linen drawers…which when wet, so closely adheres to the limbs, as exposes the nudities equally as if none at all.”..

But as the Baptist movement spread, racism became virtually inextricable from the church’s existence, particularly in the South. The Southern Baptists broke from their northern brethren in 1845, as war between the states loomed. English Baptists urged their American counterparts to ditch slavery, but to no avail. After the war, white Southern Baptists enthusiastically endorsed segregation, and some Ku Klux Klan leaders came from their ranks. At the same time, black Baptists’ numbers ballooned—Martin Luther King grew up a member of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia.

..Why were white preachers often installed at black Baptist churches before the civil war? Why did urban black Baptist churches initially resist gospel music, with its rural overtones? How did black Baptists’ missionary efforts fare in Africa? compare Baptists’ stances with those of their counterparts in other denominations on issues such as holding slaves.

[Cronos]

May be an interesting book

[tumblindice]

Opposition to abortion and homosexuality is “opposing the mainstream”?
Reminds me of why I cancelled my subscription to this leftard magazine.
But looks interesting. I’ll see if it’s on Kindle, sure not paying $30 for it.

[Talisker]

I don’t know about the book, but in this review the Economist is torturing logic to reverse the long-since rejection of slavery and deny the heartfelt apology for same by the Baptists, while then equating the current Baptist rejection of gay marriage and abortion as equivalent mistakes.

In other words, typical liberal lies that may also, in this case, have slandered the book itself - not just the Baptists.

Leftists are just lying punks.

[Cronos]

well, I still keep subscribing to it — to read with a sceptical mind — because it does have a lot of information. I use it to find out about things and then do my own research before coming up with my own opinion

[Chickensoup]

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