Monthly Archives: February 2017

Doctrine and Race: African American Evangelicals and Fundamentalism Between the Wars

Mary Beth Swetnam Mathews

Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 2017

White privilege. I am not a racist. Both are statements I’ve made numerous times in my life. Mary Bet Swetnam Mathews challenges these affirmations as she digs deeply into the roots of the label I wear as a Southern Baptist pastor. Her investigation into the vast differences between white, fundamentalist reaction to modernity and the way African Americans reacted demonstrated clearly and sadly a racist, white-privileged approach from my doctrinal forefathers.

Mathews writes,

“fundamentalism itself was a racialized term. The men who coined the term were whit, and in their worldview, and indeed in the worldview of most white Americans of the era, Christianity was defined by the goals and aspirations of white, middle-class educated Protestants.”

Throughout the book she demonstrates with quotations from white pastors, theologians, and editors of Christian news-journals demonstrating how their own upbringing suggest a superiority to and a patronizing air toward African Americans.

The author reminds us that black Protestants had walked out of white Protestant churches in the South and had formed their own denominations, which were well established by the end of WW I. Instead of dialogue, white Protestants spoke and wrote about the need to preserve the difference between the races and they often positioned themselves as experts of what they mistakenly considered a divinely inspired racial boundaries.

Throughout the thoroughly researched book Mathews illustrates over and again from newspaper articles, sermons, and other methods of communication how white Protestants insisted on their moral and doctrinal superiority when it came to defining what it truly meant to be a follower of Jesus Christ and part of His church. African American Christian leaders held to similar positions to white Protestant fundamentalist on the social ‘ills’ of their time: dancing and drinking. However, African American writers and preachers “were unified in their belief that religion spoke to the racial conditions in the United States.”

Perhaps the most telling quote is from Benjamin Jefferson Davis, editor of the National Baptist Union-Review (the voice of the National Baptist Convention) as he asked

“how the white man’s religion permits him to hate his brother because he is black” when for a black Christian, “religion teaches him to live his white brother not because he is white, yellow, or black, but because Christ has taught him to love his neighbor as he loves himself.”

As a seminary student I was schooled in the ‘fundamentals,’ the focus of a series of essays defending orthodox Christian belief against what we were told was the highly subversive German theological method of ‘higher criticism.’ While I appreciate my education in these issues, I must have missed the lectures and/or class on how my white forefathers refused to acknowledge the accomplishments of African American pastors and theologians as they combated the same tendency toward theological drift while fighting a losing battle against the embedded racism of their culture.

I am saddened by what I read. Mathew’s book is a first step in coming to terms with my past, with my fundamental convictions. As I read her work I wondered, where are the Native American voices in our denominational culture? Where are the Asian American voices in our culture? The Southern Baptist Convention has publicly repented of our own denominational history of racism. The messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention elected Fred Luter, a noted African American pastor and leader from New Orleans, LA as president in 2012-2014. There is much more to be done in order to clear up our own misunderstandings of our own history. Dr. Mathews has contributed a valuable resource for taking small steps forward in my own understanding of racism.

Steve Schenewerk

“Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot (Haran’s son), and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 years and died in Haran.” (Genesis 11:31–32, HCSB)

Abraham, whose life and family comprise the bulk of the Old Testament book of Genesis, is an intriguing personality on many levels. His unquestioning obedience to God (Genesis 12:1-3); his failures (see Genesis 12:10-following; Genesis 16; Genesis 20:1-following); his aggressive protection of family (Genesis 14); and his unwavering willingness to obey God no matter the cost (Genesis 22) are remarkable.

One of the most interesting aspects ins Abraham’s life, however, is often overlooked – Genesis 11:31, “Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot (Haran’s son), and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there.” (Genesis 11:31, HCSB, emphasis added).

“They settled there.” Abraham’s father had left his family behind, with the exception of Sarai, Abram, and Lot in order to go to the land of Canaan. But he settled in Haran. Why? The Bible never reveals why Terah settled there. We do know from Genesis 12:1 and following that Abram did leave his father and his extended family in order to finish what his father had started.

One of my ancestors, Samuel McAdow, was an instrumental figure in the founding of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.[1] Part of the reason this group of churches broke with the traditional Presbyterian church in the United States had to do with the education of and training of ministers. In the early 1800’s as Americans were moving west at a significant rate, churches were being planted. Those men (and women in the Cumberland Presbyterian movement) acknowledging God’s call on their lives to serve as pastors often travelled back East for ministerial training. Having received their training in the larger cities of the Eastern seaboard, many of these men accepted the call to churches in those cities, leaving churches in the western regions without trained clergy.

Many of the churches being started in the early years of the 19^th century was born of the revival of 1800. Needing ministers immediately one of the issues that the Cumberland Presbytery had to confront was how to accommodate these new churches. If men were required to attend seminary before pastoring many of these newly planted churches would die. So this group of men chose to break with the Presbyterian Church of the US and create their own denomination and innovate ways to provide education for pastors without requiring travel back east.

To make a long story a little shorter I found myself on the board of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky from 1993 – 2003. One of the things I am proudest of in that seminary and our other Southern Baptist seminaries is their willingness to provide educational training for pastors and other ministers while they are serving churches across the United States and even the world via the internet and the modular courses these institutions offer.

While I can’t be certain the Mr. McAdow had dreams of expanding to the west coast, I can look back and say that because of men like him and many others, I have been able to serve as a pastor while studying to receive both my Master of Divinity and my Doctor of Ministry degrees.

Maybe Terah saw something in Abram that only God saw, knowing that Abram was equipped in ways he himself was not. Maybe Samuel McAdow saw a future that included the spread of the gospel into the far reaches of the Northwestern United States and maybe not. I celebrate the fact that he at least began a journey that has enabled the spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

[1] http://www.cumberland.org/hfcpc/minister/McAdowS.htm, accessed on 2/7/17.