(RNS) — Three years after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis brought crowds into the streets for a summer of protests, Christian groups are quietly launching initiatives that address the still-fraught racial divisions among their members and in the wider society.In New Orleans next week, leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has been roiled by unrest over critical race theory and other racial issues in recent years, will hold a forum on racial reconciliation. Beginning Friday (June 9), meanwhile, representatives of mainline and historic Black Protestant denominations will discuss their plans for “eradicating racism,” in the words of a session planned for a three-day meeting in Philadelphia.
“We need to have honest conversations with people who don’t look like us to find out why we have these differences,” said Fred Luter, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and the first African American to lead the nation’s largest Protestant group. “We need to talk about it, we need to discuss it and we should be able to discuss it in a Christian-like manner and hopefully come up with simple steps of what we can do to bring about unity among the races in the SBC.”
RELATED: Let’s Talk, a new racial unity initiative, takes evangelical leaders on tour of Black history
The Rev. Fred Luter in 2015. Photo by Richard David Ramsey/Creative Commons
On Monday, as delegates to the SBC’s …
Article Attribution | Read More at Article Source
“We need to have honest conversations with people who don’t look like us to find out why we have these differences,” said Fred Luter, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and the first African American to lead the nation’s largest Protestant group. “We need to talk about it, we need to discuss it and we should be able to discuss it in a Christian-like manner and hopefully come up with simple steps of what we can do to bring about unity among the races in the SBC.”
RELATED: Let’s Talk, a new racial unity initiative, takes evangelical leaders on tour of Black history
The Rev. Fred Luter in 2015. Photo by Richard David Ramsey/Creative Commons
On Monday, as delegates to the SBC’s …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]