Southern Baptists and the Curse of Ham

[ClydeR]

All H-E Double Hockey Sticks broke loose at the Southern Baptist convention in Phoenix yesterday. The furor arose when the convention refused to consider a motion to denounce white supremacy and the alt-right. It looks like a watered down resolution will pass today.

Leaders from the Southern Baptist Convention were divided over a resolution affirming the denomination’s opposition to white supremacy and the alt-right during their annual meeting in Phoenix this week. On Tuesday, they initially declined to consider the proposal submitted by a prominent black pastor in Texas, Dwight McKissic, and only changed course after a significant backlash. The drama over the resolution revealed deep tension lines within a denomination that was explicitly founded to support slavery.

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It claimed that the origin of white supremacy in Christian communities is a once-popular theory known as the “curse of Ham,” which taught that “God through Noah ordained descendants of Africa to be subservient to Anglos” and was used as justification for slavery and segregation. The resolution called on the denomination to denounce nationalism and “reject the retrograde ideologies, xenophobic biases, and racial bigotries of the so-called ‘alt-right’ that seek to subvert our government, destabilize society, and infect our political system.”

The new resolution includes some significant changes, including a removal of the reference to the “curse of Ham” justification for slavery. “The resolution states clearly our opposition to racism,” Duke said. “To us, that is a repudiation of the teaching of the Ham doctrine … It was redundant.”

[ClydeR]

Since there are a lot of heathens in this forum, I'll quote from Genesis chapter 9, which is the text Southern Baptists historically used to support slavery.

20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:

21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.

22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.

23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness.

24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.

25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

26 And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

28 And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.

29 And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.

Just a note.. They didn't have Obamacare back then, but they lived a long time anyway.

[ClydeR]

It passed..

On Tuesday, they initially declined to consider the proposal submitted by a prominent black pastor in Texas, Dwight McKissic, and only changed course after a significant backlash. On Wednesday afternoon, the body passed a revised statement condemning the alt-right. But the drama over the resolution revealed deep tension lines within a denomination that was explicitly founded to support slavery.

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Condemning the alt-right wasn't the only jab Baptists took at Trump..

They affirmed a number of standard proposals about their beliefs and practices, and even approved a resolution calling for moral character in public officials—a nearly exact replica of a resolution passed during the Clinton years at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The not-so-veiled jab at President Trump went through quietly, despite conflicts in the denomination over the election.

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[ClydeR]

This article says the final resolution did not address the church's historic doctrine of Ham..

A noteworthy omission in the new text is McKissic's condemnation of the "Curse of Ham," a biblical passage that was used in the past to justify slavery by the SBC.

The passage from McKissic's original resolution included this language:

WHEREAS, the roots of White Supremacy within a “Christian context” is based on the so-called “curse of Ham” theory once prominently taught by the SBC in the early years—echoing the belief that God through Noah ordained descendants of Africa to be subservient to Anglos—which provided the theological justification for slavery and segregation. The SBC officially renounces the “curse of Ham” theory in this Resolution;

Frank Page, SBC Executive Committee chief, told the Anderson (S.C.) Independent Mail the original resolution was extreme, but the subsequent resolution forcefully condemns racism, which, he said, the convention has done for decades.

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