Civil unrest sparked by the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, opened Mark Snowden’s eyes to a dilemma. What is the responsibility of Southern Baptist pastors in seeking the social justice that Jesus would demand?
Snowden, now director of missional leadership for the Cincinnati Area Baptist Association (CABA) in Ohio, assembled a diverse team of four Cincinnati pastors to study the question of justice from a biblical standpoint. The result is a new report focused on societal and biblical truths from the study group and a list of seven recommendations from Snowden available to pastors within the association and online.
The paper, presented during the CABA annual meeting Oct. 9 at Mount Carmel Baptist Church, Cincinnati, is a call for Southern Baptist pastors to study practical ways to respond to such societal ills as poverty, hunger, geographically based unemployment, racism, criminal injustice, opioid addiction and other problems, Snowden said.
‘Standing on the sidelines’
“If you say the name ‘Ferguson, Missouri,’ people are very aware of the racial tension and the rioting,” said Snowden, who serves as Missouri Baptist Convention’s evangelism and discipleship strategist. “And I saw a lot of our churches standing on the sidelines.”
The need for a biblically framed model of social justice continued to haunt Snowden when he moved to Cincinnati in 2016. There, public unrest erupted when murder charges were dismissed against a white university police officer when an unarmed black man was shot and killed. Law enforcement officials decided not to retry the case after two juries were unable to reach a verdict.
“What does it take for us to be able to engage properly as we should, as followers of Jesus?” Snowden asks. “This study is at least trying to help us say, ‘What does the Bible say to address that?’”
Study group member Jerome Byrd, an African-American and founding pastor of the 30-year-old Good News Baptist Church, Cincinnati, said America is in great need of social justice.
“Our society is in deep trouble, deep trouble, and all we have to do is look at the news, look at the internet and we can easily see that we are so far away from the standards of God,” Byrd said. “The only way we can come back to those standards is for godly men to stand up in their pulpits in their churches and proclaim what thus sayeth the Lord, and to do it boldly, to do it strongly and then encourage their people to embrace the Scriptures and to live out the examples that Jesus showed us when it comes to social justice.”
Study group chairman Lance Cunningham, Mount Carmel Baptist pastor and annual meeting host, described the goal of conducting the study as “a wrestling with your own soul.”
In compiling the Bible-based study, which Cunningham calls a theologically based pastoral call, the study group had to consider whether they themselves were righteous and not self-righteous, whether they had a right relationship not just with God but with others and whether they viewed others with mercy and humility.
Christians are separated today by age, generational differences, nationality, socioeconomic differences and other characteristics that make it difficult to effectively discuss societal ills and consider solutions, Cunningham said.
“I want people to approach one another in grace,” Cunningham said “there’s a huge divide” among Christians regarding the application of grace. “Grace to some people means you’re going to approve of me and applaud me no matter what I say, what I do and you’re going to condone it. … It’s not within our authority to condone that which is evil, nor to condemn that which is approved.”
Be proactive
The study group landed on biblical justice as the answer to social justice, said Cunningham, who would like pastors to consider the findings and be proactive in going forward.
“We have to have compassion on everybody involved. That’s what Jesus does,” Cunningham said. “He’s compassionate … even when He stands firmly against Pharisees and Sadducees, He’s doing it out of compassion, hoping they’ll see the error of their ways.”
The association took no formal action on the study and does not expect to adopt any official statement or recommendations, Snowden said.
“We consider it in the churches’ hands and raised it as a tool,” he said.
The report and recommendations on how to engage the issue are available on the front page of CABA’s website, CincinnatiBaptist.com. (BP)
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