Why Im Leaving the Southern Baptist Convention

[SecularMotion]

OKLAHOMA CITY — The first time I was called a nigger to my face was by a fellow camper at a Southern Baptist Convention retreat near Oklahoma City. I was 13, and it was 1995. Devastated, I complained to a counselor who suggested I pray for the ability to turn the other cheek. Since then, I have done just that and more: I’ve been an ordained minister in the convention for almost a decade.

But I’ve had enough. Today I am officially renouncing my ordination in the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s largest Protestant body, with about 15 million members, and the world’s largest Baptist denomination.

My reasoning is simple: As a black scholar of race and a minister who is committed to social justice, I can no longer be part of an organization that is complicit in the disturbing rise of the so-called alt-right, whose members support the abhorrent policies of Donald Trump and whose troubling racial history and current actions reveal a deep commitment to white supremacy.

This decision was not easy. I have fond memories of attending church picnics with my mother. I met my childhood best friend in church. My family has always belonged to churches, and it still does.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/17/opinion/why-im-leaving-the-southern-baptist-convention.html

[raccoon]

1. Baptists and United Methodist in my neck of the wood (SC), might as well be called Republican

Baptist Church, or Republican United Methodist Church. It's like the Republican ideology is part of the church's doctrine.

That's why I gave up on them. I was raised Methodist.

[SCantiGOP]

3. I gave up religion when I was 17

but was interested in your comments about the United Methodist Church. My wife goes (mainly because of the interaction she has with other women there) to a UMC church in Columbia, SC, and it is quite liberal. I don't know if it is just that one church or the whole system in this part of the country.
The ministers are more liberal than the congregation, which is just about all white and averages at least 60 years old.

The only liberal place here is the Unitarian Church which is in an affluent, mostly white neighborhood that is noted for being strongly Democratic in a very red state.

[msongs]

2. spends a lifetime believing myth and superstition and just now wakes up to what kind of people

he associates with willingly. well better late than never I suppose