History is a complex subject and often not for the faint of heart.
With that in mind, allow me to ask a history question to evangelicals who want to know more about their own past. I would also like to ask this question to religion-beat professionals under the age of 60, or thereabouts.
In 1971, a major American religious group passed a resolution on a topic that was becoming more controversial — abortion. Of course, the Roe v. Wade decision issued on January 22 in 1973 would create a political, cultural and moral earthquake that continues to this day.
So here is my question: What religious body passed the 1971 resolution that urged its members to “work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”
What was the name this giant religious group? This resolution was passed during the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. The same body reaffirmed that resolution in 1974 and in 1976 — after Roe.
Were these actions shocking, at the time? As historian Randall Balmer noted in a paper entitled “The Historian’s Pickaxe” (.pdf here):
Although a few evangelical voices, including Christianity Today magazine, mildly criticized the ruling, the overwhelming response was silence, even approval. Baptists, in particular, applauded the decision as an appropriate articulation of the division between church and state, between personal morality and state regulation of individual behavior. “Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision,” wrote W. Barry Garrett of Baptist Press.
This was the era in which I came of age as a Southern Baptist preacher’s son in Texas — finishing high school and then heading to Baylor to study journalism and the history of religion in America. I bring this subject up because this slice of SBC history plays a crucial role in this weekend’s think piece, which is written by David French of The Dispatch, a cultural conservative who is an experienced legal mind on religious liberty issues. The title of his essay: “Fact and Fiction About Racism and the Rise of the Religious Right.”
The big issue for French is whether the X factor in the birth of the Religious Right was abortion or, as some now claim, racism. French has some sobering things to say about conservatives and race, including the mixed signals sent by the Christian schools movement (which included white-flight schools, but also many schools that were integrated from Day 1). French argues, in the end, that abortion was the key issue that pushed most evangelicals into political life.
Why? Because, at key moments in history, race and the defense of life united evangelicals — of all races.
In my own life, I was an advocate of abortion rights — in part based on the then centrist views of Jimmy Carter, who had a big impact on many young Baptists like me. Then, in 1980, I read a Sojourners essay — “The Willpower to Uphold Life” — by a very different Baptist, the Rev. Jesse Jackson. I will always remember reading these words about abortion-rights advocates:
(1) It is strange that they choose to start talking about population control at the same time that black people in America and people of color around the world are demanding their rightful place as human citizens and their rightful share of the material wealth of the world; and (2) People of color are for the most part powerless with regard to decisions made about population control. Given the history of people of color in the modern world, we have no reason to assume that whites are going to look out for our best interests.
You will need to read all of French’s extraordinarily timely essay to follow his arguments on these interlocking issues. But here is a must-read passage.
This is long, but essential:
Ultimately, the great sin of white southern Evangelicalism is that for generations its faith did not transcend and displace its culture. Instead, all too often that faith was placed in service of the very culture it should have transformed. For more than 100 years, if you were going to draw a Venn diagram of white Southern supporters of Jim Crow and white southern fundamentalists and Evangelicals, you would see an extraordinarily high degree of overlap.
I emphasize the South not because racism is limited to the South but because no other region of the country so saw such concentration of racism and Protestant religiosity. It’s here (I live in Tennessee) where racism and religion were so thoroughly mixed, and it’s here where you’ll still find the seat of American Evangelical electoral power.
But the Evangelical South — which followed the pro-life lead of the Catholic Midwest and Northeast — is not pro-life because it was racist. Racism is no longer a factor in its support for religious liberty. Battles over segregation academies are largely looked upon with regret and shame. Rather it became more overtly pro-life as it (slowly and imperfectly) started to shed its racist past.
That racist past still matters, however. It provides one answer to the long-standing question, “Why don’t culturally conservative white and black churches unite on social issues?” Especially in the South, there’s quite simply too long of a history of bigotry and prejudice — or indifference to bigotry and prejudice — to quickly reform a united church. Bygones can’t be bygones, at least not yet.
The consequences of centuries of subjugation are too profound. Millions of black Americans live with them every day. It’s difficult to form political coalitions across lines so starkly drawn, and it’s hard to erase those lines when for centuries they were etched in steel and blood.
Yes, read it all.