NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The man expected to be in the running to become the first African-American in the No. 2 position of the nation's largest Protestant denomination didn't choose to become a Southern Baptist. By Fred Luter Jr.'s account, it just sort of happened.
In 1986, Luter was hired at the head pastor at
Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, a Southern Baptist Convention
affiliate. Ever since, he has been breaking racial barriers in the
predominantly white denomination.
In 1992, he was the first African-American elected
to the executive board of the Louisiana Baptist Convention. In 2001, he was the
first African-American to preach the convention sermon at the SBC annual
meeting.
When the Southern Baptist Convention elects new
officers at its annual conference in Phoenix beginning Tuesday, the 54-year-old
Luter will be in the running for first vice-president. And some prominent
Southern Baptist leaders already have said they hope that position will lead to
his election as president next year when the 2012 convention is held in Luter's
hometown.
Luter said he doesn't want to speculate on that.
"I'm a street kid from the Lower Ninth Ward of
New Orleans," Luter said in an interview on Friday. "It's very
humbling. It's really an honor just to be nominated."
Technically, Luter hasn't been nominated yet. But
Danny Akin, President of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake
Forest, N.C., has already announced that he will nominate Luter.
"To my knowledge, no one has announced to run
against him," Akin said, "and I would be very surprised if anyone
does."
Akin called Luter a "much-loved,
much-respected pastor" who "can be elected on his own merits regardless
of skin color."
The move to elect Luter comes at the same time the
SBC is making a push for greater participation among what it sometimes calls
its "non-Anglo" members in the life of the convention, particularly
in leadership roles.
Luter's church is one of an estimated 3,400 black
churches in the nation's largest Protestant denomination, a small minority of
more than 45,700 total SBC-affiliated churches with about 16 million members
total.
Akin said his nomination of Luter was not related
to a resolution on diversity scheduled to be presented at this year's annual
meeting but "just coalesced beautifully."
"I'm a white boy from the South, but I'd love
to see the convention of churches become more diverse in terms of ethnicity and
race," he said. "I long to see the church on earth look like the
church in heaven, around the throne."
In the past, Southern Baptists have not been on the
forefront of fighting racial injustice. The denomination originally formed in
1845 in a split with the American Baptist Convention over the question of
whether slave owners could be missionaries. The SBC was silent or actively
opposed civil rights through the 1970s, and many congregations excluded blacks.
It was not until 1989 that convention declared racism a sin.
In 1994, the convention elected its first
African-American to an executive position when the Rev. Gary Frost was named
second vice president. In 1995, the denomination issued an apology to blacks
for slavery. That same year, Luter was elected to succeed Frost as second vice
president.
The push for increasing minority participation
comes at a time of decline for the SBC. According to figures released on
Thursday by the denomination's Lifeway Christian Resources, baptisms were down
almost 5 percent in 2010 over 2009. Total membership declined slightly, by 0.15
percent to 16,136,044, the fourth straight year of decline.
Statistics on the number of ethnic churches have
not yet been released, but Roger S. Oldham, SBC vice president for convention
communications and relations, said they have been growing.
Ethnic congregations made up about 13 percent of
SBC churches in 1998. That had increased to 18 percent by 2008, with
African-American and Hispanic congregations each making up about 6 percent of
SBC churches, Asian churches at about 3 percent and other ethnic churches
making up another 3 percent.
The SBC's executive committee released
recommendations in February for increasing minority participation in the
denomination. The group will present those recommendations this week. They
include encouraging the president to give special attention to appointing
ethnically diverse representatives to SBC committees and encouraging the
officials who organize annual meetings to make sure those speaking during the
program represent the diversity of the denomination.
Resolutions covering some of the same ground have
been adopted at previous meetings without ever being very successfully
implemented, but the combination of Luter's nomination and the resolution has
some people hoping this time will be different.
The Rev. Dwight Mckissic, pastor of the black,
SBC-affiliated Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, said he was
excited about Luter's likely election, but called it a "baby step,"
noting that the first vice president serves for one year and has little real
power.
McKissic said he visited the SBC headquarters in
Nashville in 2007 and found the highest ranking African-American there was a
custodian. The real positions of power, he said, are the high-level staff
positions.
"When we get a Hispanic, African-American or
Asian as head of one of the entities, like the North American Mission Board or
one of the seminaries, then I'll know we really have come into the 21st
Century," he said.
Copyright
2011 The Associated Press.
