Why this election of a SBC president was special

It helps to know the history of the Southern Baptist Convention to understand why what happened at its annual meeting Tuesday afternoon in New Orleans was so meaningful.

The convention -- the largest non-Catholic denomination in the United States – began over the issue of slavery. Baptist churches in the South wanted to be able to appoint slave owners as missionaries. Baptist churches in the North disagreed. As result, those who saw no problem in slave owners being missionaries formed the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in 1845.

On the SBC’s 150th anniversary, messengers – the title of delegates from churches to the convention – approved a resolution repenting of the convention’s pro-slavery background and often racist past, as well as its widespread opposition in the South to the civil rights movement.

On Tuesday of this week, the messengers of a denomination birthed as the defender of slave owners elected a man whose ancestors were slaves as president of the convention. Fred Luter, pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, became the SBC’s first black president. From all I understand, he is a powerful proclaimer of the gospel of Jesus and a faithful, sacrificial shepherd to the flock he has pastored since 1986. When Hurricane Katrina scattered much of the congregation to other cities in 2005, he continued to shepherd many of the members by traveling to where they lived in order to minister to them.

It was a special experience to stand with my wife and daughter Tuesday afternoon in the back of a huge convention hall to watch several thousand Southern Baptists stand to support the unopposed election of Fred Luter as president. It was another demonstration of God’s grace. He had shown once again He makes things new. He had shown once again His grace super-abounds over sin. He had shown once again the power of the gospel – the gospel that unites through the finished work of Christ those who were on opposite sides of a wall built with the bricks of pride and hate.

Russell Moore, theology dean at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., put it well, I think, when he told Joe Carter of The Gospel Coalition: “A descendant of slaves elected to lead a denomination forged to protect the evil interests of slaveholders is a sign of the power of a gospel that crucifies injustice and reconciles brothers and sisters. The election of Fred Luter doesn’t mean the question of racial justice is settled for Southern Baptists, but it is one small step toward our confessing that Jesus Christ and Jim Crow cannot exist in the same denomination, or in the same heart. One has got to go.”

(For those who may not know, I am an employee of an agency of the Southern Baptist Convention and work at each year’s meeting as part of my job.)