Tuesday January 26, 2021
Old First Church was established by a group of free-thinking Baptists who did not always agree with each other and respected the right to disagree on many issues of faith. In the nineteenth century Baptists split over the issue of slavery and the Southern Baptists emerged defending slavery while northern churches became American Baptists and fought to preserve the Union.
This month the Southern Baptist Convention stated it “lamented the painful legacy” of racism, but declared critical race theory incompatible with their doctrinal statement and declared that no professor could teach it. Doctrinal statement? What happened to soul liberty or freedom of conscience? It reminded me why I left that church.
Critical race theory is a framework that examines a society as it relates to how race and power exist in the United States. As one of our Founders said at the Constitutional Convention that resulted in the Declaration of Independence, “I never knew any idea was so dangerous that we couldn’t discuss it.” As Christians in this democracy, how can be we so afraid of an idea that we cannot discuss it?
Prayer for the Day
Searching for you, O God, in a time of uncertainty and turmoil,
Remove from us our fear of new ways of thinking;
Knowing the old answers do not exist in a new complex world,
Help us to seek new understandings to old questions.
Grant us, we pray, the willingness to ask questions
And to reason together in the cause of justice.
In the name of him who questioned,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you recognize that your liberation and mine are bound up together, we can walk together.
- Lila Watson, indigenous Australian artist
It is never too late to give up your prejudices.
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
Paul, Letter to the church in Galatia 3: 28