Posted on 06/06/2019 4:45:43 PM PDT by robowombat
SBTS refuses request to pay reparations to black college over ties to slavery By Samuel Smith, CP Reporter | Thursday, June 06, 2019
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, has refused a request to transfer a meaningful portion of its financial wealth to a local historically black college as a form of reparation for the institutions historic ties to slavery and racism.
SBTS President Al Mohler and SBTS Board Chairman Matthew Schmucker sent a letter last week responding to a request from a black-white clergy coalition called EmpowerWest Louisville.
Mohler and Schmucker stated that they do not believe that financial reparations are the appropriate response to its historical connections to slavery and segregation outlined in an SBTS report published last year.
They noted that the seminary has been making efforts for decades to welcome and educate black Baptist ministers.
It is the will of Southern Baptists that these efforts take place within The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The Southern Baptist Convention would not allow nor support the transfer of funds to any other institution," the letter, which was obtained by The Christian Post, reads. "We agree with the policy of the Southern Baptist Convention in this regard."
In December, SBTS faculty produced the report commissioned by Mohler which recounted Southern Seminarys history of slavery and racism. It details things such as the schools slave-holding founders in the 19th century and also faculty who defended segregation in the early 20th century.
The report was part of an endeavor to recognize their past moral failings on race issues.
We must repent of our own sins, we cannot repent for the dead. We must, however, offer full lament for a legacy we inherit, and a story that is now ours," Mohler said at the time of the report's release.
EmpowerWest responded to the SBTS report and called on the seminary through a petition of faith leaders to transfer a meaningful portion of its financial wealth to Simmons College of Kentucky, a private historically black college.
A Message from Dallas Theological Seminary Latest Trends to Hiring a Pastor A generation ago there were just a handful of slots to fill in local church ministry staffs. A senior pastor, worship pastor, youth pastor, and maybe a pastor of adult education completed a staff... Such a transfer would serve as "an act of repentance and repair to descendants of American slavery," the petition states.
What is now Simmons College was founded a few months after the end of the civil war in 1865 by the Kentucky State Convention of Colored Baptist Churches as the states first post-secondary educational institute for its colored citizens.
EmpowerWest suggested that SBTS should transfer with interest a $50,000 donation that saved SBTS from financial collapse in 1880, as reported by Baptist News Global. According to SBTS December report, the donation was made by a man named Joseph E. Brown, who earned much of his fortune by the exploitation of mostly black convict-lease laborers.
The SBTS report stated that the legal system entrapped thousands of black men, often on trumped-up charges and without any due process protections and earned money for sheriffs and state treasuries by selling their labor. The SBTS report called it worse than slavery.
The seminary honored Brown, a former SBTS board chairman, at the time of his death.
Although they refused the request for SBTS to pay reparations to Simmons College, Mohler and Schmucker assured that they are open to the possibility of a partnership.
But such a partnership can come only with institutions that share our theological commitments as made clear in the Baptist Faith & Message (2000) and our other confessional statements, their letter reads. We would not partner with an institution that denies or repudiates doctrines essential to biblical Christianity.
The SBTS leaders stressed that the seminary is "committed to do what is right and honors God in this generation and in generations to come."
"We will not transfer these responsibilities to any other institution," the letter states.
SBTS is not the only higher education institution facing reparations demands related to ties to racism and slavery.
In March, a group of black seminarians started a petition calling on Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey to set aside 15 percent of the portion of its endowment used for operating expenses every year to fund tuition grants for black students.
According to The Daily Princetonian, 15 percent would amount to about $5.3 million per year that the seminary would have to set aside based on the seminarys 2017-2018 operating expenses. Additionally, the Association of Black Seminarians called for the establishment of a PTS black church studies program.
The petition was signed by over 600 people.
The petition was in response to an internal audit of PTS historical connection with slavery authorized by president Craig Barnes and the PTS board of trustees.
The ABS encourages the Board of Trustees and the Administration to follow the instructions of Lev. 26:41 fully, in which the covenant people of God are called to make amends for the iniquity of their ancestors, the petition reads.
As a number of colleges and universities are facing calls to pay reparations over connections to racism and slavery, Princeton Theological Seminary Associate Professor Keri Day argued earlier this year why white Christians should get behind the idea of reparations and even see it as an act of worship during a lecture at Riverside Church in Manhattan.
She referred to Jesus encounter with the Roman tax collector Zacchaeus in Luke 19.
In his encounter with Zaccheus, I want to suggest that Jesus sets forth a reparations ethic, she said. Zaccheus is expected to give back that which he has stolen so that he can be reconciled with others and God. Reconciliation cannot occur until he has given back what he has stolen.
Earlier this year, Thabiti Anyabwile, a prominent black Southern Baptist pastor in Washington, D.C., weighed in on the matter.
Im sad for folks who hear the word reparations, w/o any specific proposal attached, who start exclaiming, Blacks just want to steal whites money! Its a retort that reveals possible idolization of mammon and willful blindness to 250 years of stealing Black ppl themselves, Anyabwile argued in a series of tweets.
And the hypocrisy of some self-professed conservatives who argue all day long that a person should be able to control their labor but who do not think any recompense is owed for CENTURIES of stolen labor is mind-blowing. Its a glaring inconsistency."
"We must repent of our own sins, we cannot repent for the dead"
No thanks, my family already gave at Gettysburg.
Good to hear that someone has courage.
David Horowitz - 2001
easier read of David Horowitz's arguments against reparations
refused a request to transfer a meaningful portion of its financial wealth to a local historically black college as a form of reparation for the institutions historic ties to slavery and racism.
________________________-
OK FREEPERS!
I REQUEST A MEANINGFUL PORTION OF EACH OF YOUR FINANCIAL WEALTH AS A FORM OF REPARATION FOR YOUR ROLE IN MARGINALIZING CHICKENS.
Many years ago I was in the Peace Corps training to go to Afghanistan. Since Afghans were known to be partial to homosexuality we were given instruction on how to resist advances. (Yes, it was so long ago that homosexuality was considered a bad thing).
Anyway, after our role playing, the psychiatrist who was running the exercise, told us we had all missed the simplest and easiest way. Just say no. No expansion, just no. People have forgotten the power of the word.
Emotional blackmail is a standard liberal bullying tactic. You’re the evil meanie if you don’t do what they want, no matter what they want.
Glad they held the line. Hope they don’t fold.
Somebody stole some peoples' freedom; someone captured free people and made them into slaves. (I'll get to that "someone" later).
Down the line, others benefited from this theft by buying those slaves, firsthand or secondhand or thirdhand....
Further down the line, anyone who ever received any money from anyone who received any money from anyone who ..... received any money from a slave-holder or ex-slave-holder or descendant of an ex-slave-holder, can be deemed to be a beneficiary of slavery.
"King Cotton" of the antebellum era generated enormous profits using the stolen labor of slaves. Where did all those dollars go? They didn't disappear. They were recirculated into the economy of the US and with every nation the US South traded with. This "tainted money" is still with us today. Every US citizen of every race has "blood dollars" in their savings or invested in their possessions.
The US Government is by far the guiltiest beneficiary of slavery, by dint of the fact that over generations, they have taken trillions of dollars in taxes out of the pockets of descendants of slave-owners, and still do.
OK, let's pause for a moment.
Obviously, following this road of logic that the Race Baiters have charted, will lead to nowhere.
Therefore the only logic that really makes any sense is to place the burden of reparations completely on the people who originally changed free people into slaves (and the thieves' descendants).
The African Gold Coast nation of Benin, which was formerly called the Kingdom of Dahomey from 1600 to 1900, did by far the vast majority of the converting of free Africans into enslaved Africans. They used a good portion of their income from selling slaves, to buy advanced armaments to keep their armies stronger than their preyed-upon neighbors.
Thus, the nation of Benin today owes the lion's share of reparations to American descendants of slaves. Given Benin's current & projected GDP, I am proposing an easy-payment plan by which they should be able to pay off their debt in just 1.6348 billion years.
Do I want "reparations"? Nope! Do I *deserve* "reparations"? Nope!
The US Government is by far the guiltiest beneficiary of slavery, by dint of the fact that over generations, they have taken trillions of dollars in taxes out of the pockets of descendants of slave-owners, and still do.
OK, let's pause for a moment.
Obviously, following this road of logic that the Race Baiters have charted, will lead to nowhere.
Actually it leads to the underlying assumption of ‘reparations’ whitey is guilty, doesn't matter if you are an FFV or came here from Germany in 1960. What you well describe is a major part of what is described as ‘white privilege’. This is a powerful, toxic, and destructive theory and we all we hear more and more about it.
Following that train to its logical conclusion then means that in the inevitable race war, whitey needs to win it.
l8r
Not lace curtain I take it then? Neither were my ancestors.
The black church has failed it’s people by not teaching this about slavery:
The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
21 Then Peter came to Him and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?
22 Jesus said to him, I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.” Matt. 18:21-22
Hard truth: even slavery and discrimination must be forgiven.
Pay the reparations as. $1000 cash and a 1 way first class ticket to the country of your choice as soon as you renounce your US citizenship and please never to return, otherwise piss off
Thousands of blacks owned slaves. Thousands of whites never owned slaves.
I believe that every former slave owner and their heirs should make payment to every living former slave.
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