Baptist confess-all report on Legacy of Slavery

[LoudmouthMormon]

Interesting read for December from Al Mohler and the SBC: Report on Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Highlights:

Quote

1. The seminary’s founding faculty all held slaves. 
2. The seminary’s early faculty and trustees defended the righteousness of slaveholding. 
3. Upon Abraham Lincoln’s election, the seminary faculty sought to preserve slavery. 
4. The seminary supported the Confederacy’s cause to preserve slavery. 
5. After emancipation, the seminary faculty opposed racial equality.
6. In the Reconstruction era, the faculty supported the restoration of white rule in the South. 
7. Joseph E. Brown, the seminary’s most important donor and chairman of its Board of Trustees, earned much of his fortune by the exploitation of mostly black convict-lease laborers.
8. The seminary faculty urged just and humane treatment for blacks. 
9. Before the 1940s, the seminary faculty generally approved the Lost Cause mythology. 
10. Until the 1940s, the seminary faculty supported black education and the segregation of schools and society. 
11. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the seminary faculty appealed to science to support their belief in white superiority. 
12. The seminary admitted blacks to its degree programs in 1940 and integrated its classrooms in 1951. 
13. The seminary faculty supported civil rights for blacks but had mixed appraisals of the Civil Rights Movement.

 

It's cool to see an organization take an honest look at it's own past and admit to harsh things.  The CoJCoLDS's work on the Mountain Meadows Massacre jumps immediately to mind. 

Obvious question:  Who figures our church ought to do something similar regarding slavery/racism?  
Obvious follow-up question: What do you think should be our main highlights, and why do you think so?

 

[Avatar4321]

Lost cause mythology?

what exactly do you want the church to do that it already hasn’t done?

[gopher]

It's more impressive when we can confess as individuals our weaknesses when it comes to race.  A few months ago our stake president spoke in ward conference and confessed he had racist feelings when he was younger.  He even admitted he wouldn't have had anything to do with certain members of our congregation had he known them at that time in his life.  Of course, then he got into the boring part about how the restored gospel of Jesus Christ changed his heart so he now can look at everyone as brothers and sisters regardless of their race.  But it was a very frank and refreshing openness that we don't often see.  Especially from a man who wouldn't have been able to serve as a stake president until 1978.