Presbyterians Will Repent ‘Racial Sins’

[struggle4progress]

by Adelle M. Banks

The nation’s second-largest Presbyterian denomination has passed legislation repenting for “past failures to love brothers and sisters from minority cultures” and committing its members to work toward racial reconciliation ...

The vote by the PCA came in the same month that Southern Baptists attending their annual meeting adopted a resolution repudiating the use of the Confederate flag ...

The PCA also acknowledged teaching that the Bible permits racial segregation and discourages interracial marriage, and the denomination confessed to .. participation in white supremacist organizations ...

http://www.lifezette.com/faithzette/presbyterians-will-repent-racial-sins/

[skepticscott]

1. As usual, religious organizations only

start treating other human beings like human beings after decades of shaming.

[struggle4progress]

2. Race and the Roots of the Presbyterian Church in America

... From the time the Southern Presbyterian Journal was founded in 1942, it had stood steadily for several key commitments shared widely by southern Presbyterian conservatives. Best articulated by long-time contributor J. E. Flow, these commitments included ... "the purity and integrity of the White man of North America upon whose shoulders are laid the burdens of the world." Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the magazine had run scores of articles and editorials that had defended racial solidarity and segregation as part of a larger conservative religious and political worldview, which linked together anti-integration, anti-communism, and anti-centralization. Racial conservatism was a factor in the defeat of reunion with the northern Presbyterian church in 1954 ... http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2015/02/race-and-the-roots-of-the-pres.php

... Even while defending racial integrity, southern Presbyterian conservatives valued social order even more. Violence, whether defending segregation or promoting integration, was unacceptable. In 1961, East Alabama Presbytery declared itself against the mob violence that engulfed the Freedom Riders in Birmingham and Montgomery ... On the other side, the pursuit of racial justice did not legitimate law-breaking either. When the 1965 PCUS General Assembly endorsed a range of Civil Rights activities, including peaceful demonstrations and sit-ins, over sixty commissioners filed a dissent. Nelson Bell presented it to the assembly, arguing that "some of the methods sanctioned in the document are 'contrary to or go beyond the jurisdiction of the Church.'" Even if the church desired to support "worthy goals" like racial justice, Aiken Taylor noted, that did not mean that it could do so through "radical measures" ... http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2015/02/race-and-the-roots-of-the-pres-1.php

... Second Presbyterian Church, Memphis, Tennessee, drew national attention for its refusal to admit mixed-race groups to corporate worship services. One of several Memphis churches targeted in early 1964 by the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for its "kneel-ins," Second Church reacted the most negatively. The groups were refused admittance and church officers patrolled the narthex and the front of the church looking for those who would seek to "integrate" the services ... It was from this sense of being under siege by northern liberals that led Conservative Presbyterians to protest the National Council of Churches' "Delta Project" that started in 1964 and continued through 1967. The Delta Ministry dealt with poverty and racial injustice in the Mississippi Delta; it also focused on voter registration in south Mississippi towns like Hattiesburg and McComb. As conservatives, they disliked the "outside agitators" coming into their areas to stir up the racial situation; as Presbyterians, they did not care for the fact that their own tithes and offerings were being used to support outsiders ... http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2015/02/race-and-the-roots-of-the-pres-2.php

... as the 1960s came toward a close, Nelson Bell continued to advocate what he took to be racial moderation. “Forced segregation was wrong, forced integration is equally wrong,” he reiterated. However, behind his continued commitment to the idea that “Christian race relations proceed from love, not force,” he actually had travelled a long way from the late 1940s and early 1950s. He recognized that the Supreme Court had no choice to void Virginia’s statute against interracial marriage; he observed that churches had no business enforcing “closed door” policies, banning blacks from corporate worship, a practice that was “un-Christian.” He also admitted that society needed to provide “the right of equal opportunity” to all of its citizens, a commitment that could only be the result of Christian morality shaping social policies. All of these positions were far beyond what he could have imagined twenty years prior. And yet, he continued to believe to the end of his days that the civil disobedience practiced by Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King worsted the cause of race relations ... When Graham declared in Jackson, Mississippi, that “there is no segregation at the altar” and that there should be none in the church either, he began to shift the ground upon which Bell, as well as other younger southern Presbyterians, would stand ... http://theaquilareport.com/race-and-the-roots-of-the-presbyterian-church-in-america-part-4/

... I believe that it should be obvious in reading my account of "race and the roots of the Presbyterian Church in America" that our fathers and forefathers sinned. But they didn't sin alone--we have sinned, we have done wickedly. We handled God's Word deceitfully to justify the racial status quo and to perpetuate injustice. We are involved by means of the covenant in these things. And we repent ... http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2015/02/race-and-the-roots-of-the-pres-4.php