Black Fundamentalists
Conservative Christianity and Racial Identity in the Segregation Era
Daniel R. Bare
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York
© 2021 by New York University
All rights reserved
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bare, Daniel R., author.
Title: Black fundamentalists : conservative Christianity and racial identity in the segregation era / Daniel R. Bare.
Description: New York : New York University Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020034737 (print) | LCCN 2020034738 (ebook) | ISBN 9781479803262 (cloth) | ISBN 9781479803279 (paperback) | ISBN 9781479803255 (ebook other) | ISBN 9781479803293 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: African Americans—Religion—History—20th century. | Fundamentalism—United States—History—20th century.
Classification: LCC BR563.N4 B36 2021 (print) | LCC BR563.N4 (ebook) | DDC 280/.408996073—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034737
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034738
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Also available as an ebook
For Dad,
who made me write;
and for Mom,
who saw this coming long before I did.
Contents
Introduction
1. “Filled to Overflowing”: Black Weeklies and the Fundamentalist Presence
2. Formulating the Faith: The Five Fundamentals across Racial Lines
3. Polemics from the Pulpit: Antimodernist Preaching and Racial Applications
4. Religious Education and Interracial Cooperation: The American Baptist Theological Seminary
5. Contested Identities: Fundamentalism, Race, and Americanism
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Introduction
On Tuesday, June 13, 2017, a wave of chaos and indignation broke over the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC’s) annual meeting. The fumes of the nation’s acrimonious 2016 presidential contest still lingered in the air. The recently concluded election season had, among other things, generated a spike in the visibility and influence of the “alt-right” movement, a small but vocal white identitarian group championed by the likes of noted white nationalist Richard Spencer. Hence, as the 2017 SBC meeting approached, a black Southern Baptist pastor determined to take this opportunity to express his concern about the recent increase in the alt-right’s visibility. To this end, he introduced what he expected to be an uncontroversial resolution for the convention to firmly denounce the racism and white nationalism of the alt-right. The pastor, Dwight McKissic of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, was taken aback when the resolutions committee declined to forward his proposal to the convention floor. The committee explained this initial decision by noting that they were “very aware that . . . feelings rightly run high regarding alt-right ideology,” but “we just weren’t certain we could craft a resolution that would enable us to measure our strong convictions with the grace of love, which we’re also commanded by Jesus to incorporate.” This stance released a tidal wave of protest both on social media and from messengers at the convention. For his part, McKissic called it “a mystery how you can so easily affirm standard beliefs about other things, but we get to white supremacy . . . and all of a sudden, we’ve got a problem.”1
In the face of this backlash, the committee scrambled to correct its misstep, and so on June 14, the last day of the annual meeting, the convention adopted a resolution that denounced “every form of racism, including alt-right white supremacy, as antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”2 Yet from a public relations perspective, the SBC was still left with the lingering optics of having ignored an antiracism resolution offered by one of its black members. Many people, including McKissic, maintained reservations in the face of the hastily passed resolution, arguing that the entire episode “showed a fault line. It showed that maybe, just maybe, you aren’t where you’re supposed to be on this.”3 Other Southern Baptists bristled at the resolution itself, holding that it was unnecessary and smacked of political virtue signaling: “If there are those in the SBC who have embraced [white supremacy] . . . issuing a resolution isn’t going to produce repentance. Scripture already condemns it. If Scripture won’t convince them, what chance does a resolution have?”4 Ultimately both the original hesitation to broach the resolution and the divided reaction to its eventual adoption left some black Americans wondering, along with McKissic, how the black and white members of one of the most visible conservative evangelical denominations in the United States could find agreement on many other issues, including doctrinal confessions, and yet still argue about how to address the topic of racism.
This particular issue is by no means a new development, and its recent manifestation in such obvious fashion in the midst of the relatively theologically conservative ranks of the Southern Baptist Convention serves simply to point to its persistence in American religious life—particularly in conservative Protestant circles.5 Indeed, a full century prior to the SBC’s alt-right resolution, this trend was apparent in the emergence of one of the most famous conservative religious movements in modern American history—Protestant fundamentalism. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the fundamentalist movement arose as a reaction against the “modernist” or “liberal” theology gaining popularity in many churches and intellectual centers. Modernist theology sought to adapt Christianity to fit with the growing rationalistic and naturalistic sensibilities of the modern age—thus jettisoning or redefining doctrines such as the virgin birth of Christ or the divine inspiration of the Bible, which were seen as incompatible with a modern, scientific understanding of the world. In response, fundamentalists rose up to affirm the centrality of these “fundamental” theological positions to historic Christianity and to denounce modernists as insidious threats to the Christian religion itself.6 Eventually, major white fundamentalist leaders built up institutional networks of schools, conferences, newspapers, and the like—networks that, in accord with the prevailing mores of a society structured by Jim Crow, were forged and populated almost exclusively by a white membership. But while these particular institutional networks may typically have been circumscribed by the color line, the theological ideas, ecclesiastical concerns, intellectual arguments, and rhetorical labels were not.
In the years between the world wars,