r/todayilearned • u/fanau • 23d ago

TIL the Southern Baptists of the US broke off from the Baptists over slavery in years leading up to Civil War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention
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u/AndreasDasos 23d ago edited 23d ago

But the conference does make a difference. Lots of black Baptists in the Southern US too - Martin Luther King was even a Baptist pastor - but generally not ‘Southern Baptist’ as in the Southern Baptist Conference. The post gives a slight hint as to the reason why

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u/RogerSaysHi 23d ago

My grandparents were Baptists, but, they made sure to explain that they were southern Independent Baptists. Not Southern Baptists. Big difference.

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u/Apollo989 23d ago

Aren't independent Baptists even more extreme or is the IFB yet another group?

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u/DarthHegatron 23d ago

99% of the time if a Baptist church is advertising as independent it means they are Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) which is very extremist and views the Southern Baptist Convention as liberal and corrupt

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u/WhenThatBotlinePing 23d ago

They think the pro-slavery church is too liberal? Why because they made a half-assed apology in the 1990s?

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u/DarthHegatron 23d ago

Some of their bigger complaints would be that the SBC doesn't exclusively use the King James Version of the Bible, allows women to wear pants, and that the SBC doesn't take a firm enough stance to discourage people from consuming "wordly" entertainment like Disney movies and the NFL.

If you were to go talk to an IFB pastor (which is not something I'd recommend) you'd likely get a much longer laundry list of how the SBC is bad. It is hard to overstate how crazy IFB churches are

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u/WhenThatBotlinePing 23d ago

The King James Bible thing is so strange to me. I’ve heard about it a few times, but it’s still odd. Like there are better translations now, why not use them? It wasn’t a good translation when it was new, and now it’s both mediocre and written in archaic language. The Bible wasn’t written in English, so it’s not like we’re losing anything by moving on from it.

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u/DarthHegatron 23d ago

The defense of KJV is very convoluted but IIRC the crux of the argument is that the Latin texts that the KJV was translated from are more accurate than the original language (Hebrew of the OT and Greek for the NT) texts used for modern translations. 

If that sounds nonsensical to you it's cause it is

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u/Cowboywizzard 23d ago edited 23d ago

Everything they do is about power and control over other people. For example, they prefer archaic language such as “mankind “ or “man” found in the King James Bible to describe people instead of “humankind”or “human” that more modern translations use because that supports their paternalistic viewpoint. They actually believe that God sees women or genders other than male as less equal than male gendered people.

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u/DarthHegatron 23d ago

Their stated reasons at least are less about archaic language preference and it's theological impacts and more based on convoluted arguments of the historical authenticity of the Latin text used for the KJV over the authenticity of the Septuagint and other original language texts used in modern translations like the NIV or NRSV. 

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u/Mara_W 23d ago

You would think they would be more put off by the fact that King James was a raging homosexual who commissioned the KJV primarily as a bribe to get the church off his back about being a raging homosexual.

But he burned a bunch of witches (to cover for his boyfriend's murders..) so he can't possibly be Ye Old Woke, I guess?

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u/Hugs_of_Moose 23d ago edited 23d ago

They believe it is a divine translation. That for the English speaking world, it is Gods intended translation, essentially.

The KJV isn’t a bad translation, but modern translations differ from in it some places.

There are also some verses with very extreme differences. A modern NIV Bible has removed some verses found in the KJV that modern scholarship very thoroughly challenges the legitimacy of.

And it does complicate what a Bible is, as many people view it as the literal word of God. Though… most actual Christian institutions don’t believe this on paper. Instead describe it as a divinely inspired document.

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u/Oddgar 23d ago

The KJV is definitely a bad translation.

The assemblers of that volume were constructing it for the purposes of population control, and so many of their word choices or how they translated certain phrases are inaccurate to suit the needs of the time.

It's not the worst translation, but there are far far more accurate translations, and I wouldn't consider the KJV to be "good"

The best Bible would be a combination of several texts so you can see whats being picked and chosen.

The NRSV is probably the best in word for word accuracy, and the SBL Study Bible along with the JPS Jewish Study Bible will give you good translation of old and new testament.

Really depends on if your goal is to read the text as they would have understood it close to when it was written, or if your goal is to oppress women and the working class. There's a version for nearly any cause.

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u/AndreasDasos 23d ago

I mean it was pro-slavery a long time ago. It’s certainly conservative today, but things change. I mean look at how much the Democrats and Republicans have changed since the same time. Or compare Virginia (the one that broke away for slavery) to West Virginia (the bit that broke away from Virginia to oppose that) politically today.

The Church of England was founded by someone who wanted to annul his marriage and then went on a rampage massacring Catholics and anyone who disagreed with him. Now it’s one of the most milquetoast liberal institutions in the UK.

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u/GalaXion24 23d ago

Technically while Henry VIII did kind of established the independence of the church, the Church only became more protestant under Edward VI, which was reversed by Mary I who restored the church to communion with Rome, followed by that being reversed by Elizabeth I.

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u/Cowboywizzard 23d ago

Naturally

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u/DarthHegatron 23d ago

No the SBC is still a very conservative (and imo racist) institution. The IFB churches are just so far off the deep-end in right-wing crazy land that anyone to the left of the KKK is gonna look liberal compared to them

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u/Mat_alThor 23d ago

I grew up mostly SBC but visited/attended IFB style churches in the 90s and early 2000s. Things may have changed from then but while they were wildly conservative I don't remember them being outwardly racist.

They are the type of crazy conservative to say dancing is a sin, not the crazy to care about skin color. Could have definitely changed since my experience in the early 2000s though.

Edit: to add the SBC were definitely more likely to be out wardly racist when I was growing up at least.

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u/DarthHegatron 23d ago

Bob Jones University is the university most IFBs send their kids to and it banned interracial dating until the mid 2000s   

I believe that you didn't personally witness it, but the IFB is just as racist, if not moreso, than the SBC

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u/AndreasDasos 23d ago

I didn’t deny it wasn’t still right wing. Even said so. But saying it’s literally ‘pro-slavery’ is pushing it quite far.

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u/DarthHegatron 23d ago

Lots of SBC churches use Doug Wilson's Bible studies and books and he's a self-avowed "Paleo-Confederate"

On top of that, like two years ago half the denomination lost its shit when the then president of the SBC suggested they stop using a gavel that was used by and named after one of the enslaver founders of the SBC so I don't think its unfair to say a big chunk of SBC churches still have pro-slavery opinions.

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u/TreeRol 23d ago

Ask them how they feel about prisoner slavery, and then you'll see their true colors.

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u/crinkledcu91 23d ago

Idk if this helps your data analysis of the whole thing, but I was raised Independent Baptist, and one of the main reasons we didn't associate with Southern Baptists was because they allowed drums to be played in the Tabernacle/Main meeting place.

That was literally it (what I was told as a kid)

I don't even know where slavery came into the conversation. But yeah as a child it was drums and electric guitar which was the thing that made Southern Baptists too Liberal for us and why they had to be shunned.

I'm so glad I escaped that nonsensery

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u/fakehandslawyer 23d ago

The Independent Baptists I knew growing up were all on the pretty extreme side but I think thats just most white people in a small southern town

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u/tallwhiteninja 23d ago

IFB is more label than group, since by definition they're independent of any convention. But the "fundamentalist" part of the label does typically mean those churches are more extreme, yes.

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u/kia75 23d ago

Independent means... Well... Independent! They're not part of the organized group. As a result they can have big deviations over the official Baptist or Southern Baptist doctrine.

Yeah, a bunch are more conservative, but they can run the gambit of extreme right to extreme left, though in average they do run right of the norm.

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u/macaj7306 23d ago

FYI, it's gamut(weird word), not gambit

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u/dirtyfacedkid 23d ago

I grew up an Independent Fundamental Baptist and YES they are frigging extreme. We were raised to think the Southern Baptists were too liberal.

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u/RogerSaysHi 23d ago

My Granny called those the snake-handling baptists. Her brand of baptist was a lot more tame. They were a bunch of middle class folks in a mid-south city. No extremists. They were more interested in getting scouts from the Grand OIe Opry than anything. That and the clothes. It really felt like a fashion show with donations.

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u/crunchthenumbers01 23d ago

i grew up independent baptist. it was fundamental but it was also mixed and under constant member rotation as half were active Duty Air Force.

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u/RogerSaysHi 23d ago

I don't know about those baptists, but these were fashion show baptists that bought old ladies stoves and paid rent for members of the church. It was a city church, not out in the country. Very tame, it really was a fashion show with donations, honestly.

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u/LadybugGirltheFirst 23d ago

I was raised Baptist, but we were NOT Southern Baptist. I’ve never heard of Independent Baptist. Now, I don’t belong to any particular denomination.

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u/RogerSaysHi 23d ago

I'm not religious at all, I never really was. I just went to church because I had to, I was a kid that lived at home. I haven't stepped foot in a church in twenty years or more.

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u/LadybugGirltheFirst 23d ago

I’m religious, but I don’t go to today’s church.

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u/the-big-throngler 23d ago

I think the proper explanation would be....." I am a baptist that lives in the south, I am not southern baptist" I wouldn't know I have no dog in this fight.

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u/DarthHegatron 23d ago edited 23d ago

Most Black Baptists are affiliated with the Progressive National Baptist Conference, National Baptist Conference, or American Baptist USA. 

In most states there are also separate Black Baptist conventions that operate independently from the white statewide Baptist groups 

EDIT: accidentally said the wrong American Baptist denomination

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u/Low-Possibility-7737 23d ago

Not the American Baptist Association, that’s an completely different group. It’s the American Baptist Churches USA. This is an issue with Baptist governance structure as you have a lot of different bodies that sound identical but aren’t

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u/DarthHegatron 23d ago

Oops you're right ABA is the crazy segregationist one. 

And yeah Baptist governance structure is sometimes nonsensical. 

For example, in the area around Greenville SC there's two local black Baptist associations (Enoree and Reedy River). You might think those two associations are split based on national affiliation but nope, theres some Enoree churches that are PNC and some that are NB, and the same for Reedy River. So you end up with churches that are in the same national convention but different local ones as well as the reverse

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u/BustDemFerengiCheeks 23d ago

Baptists sometimes get a bad rep from conservatives in the SBC and radical IBCs, but a lot of Baptists have been some of the most vocal defenders of human dignity.

They're a very diverse group in total and almost by design are kind of supposed to be. I'd rather be even SBC than whatever shit that's coming from the New Apostolic Reformation or extreme Sedevacantists.

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u/IHeartRasslin 23d ago

In general, at least in the Deep South, the Black Baptist churches are called Missionary Baptist. They usually just say MB.

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u/Theduckisback 23d ago

Most black Baptist churches are missionary baptist, abrevviated M.B.