Declaring that “the day is over” when the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is “a white Anglo-Saxon denomination,” Paige Patterson said he hopes that within five years the SBC will elect its first ethnic president.
“I believe, deep down in my heart, with all my soul that the future of the Southern Baptist Convention has to be a multi-racial, multi-ethnic future, or quite frankly, in my way of thinking, it has no future,” Patterson said during the North American Mission Board’s (NAMB) second annual Ethnic Presidents Roundtable Conference held Feb. 1-2 on the campus of Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.
Currently 26 ethnic fellowships hold member status in the SBC, the majority being Korean, African-American or Hispanic, said Michael Cooley, special assistant in leadership development with the NAMB.
In Alabama, seven ethnic groups are part of the state convention. They include: 36 African-American, two Chinese, 14 Hispanic, five Korean, four other Asian and three other ethnic groups.
SBC leaders point to the ethnic presidents conference as further evidence of the denomination’s resolve to foster cultural and racial diversity in the new millennium.
In 1995, the SBC overwhelmingly passed a resolution on racial reconciliation seeking forgiveness from African Americans for any involvement in the past injustices of slavery, segregation and racial prejudice. (BP)
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