Alt-Right Movement Condemned by Southern Baptists

Alt-Right (from Urban Dictionary): Alt-Right, short for Alternative Right, is a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that “white identity” is under attack by multicultural forces using “political correctness” and “social justice” to undermine white people. Characterized by heavy use of social media and online memes, Alt-Righters eschew “establishment” conservatism, skew young, and embrace white ethno-nationalism as a fundamental value. The Alternative Right is a term coined in 2008 by Richard Bertrand Spencer, who heads the white nationalist think tank known as the National Policy Institute, to describe a loose set of far-right ideals centered on “white identity” and the preservation of “Western civilization.”

“The alt-right is old racism for the tech-savvy generation.” -Giles Fraser

Led by an African American pastor from Texas, younger members of the denomination, and Dr. Russell Moore who was under fire after refusing to support Donald Trump for president, the Southern Baptist Convention voted overwhelmingly to condemn the alt-right white supremacy movement.

During their convention that took place in Phoenix earlier this month, the nation’s largest protestant organization squashed the hate group, a move that was hailed by the SBC’s fellowship of African American pastors as a welcomed statement strongly condemning racism.

It’s a good step for the old time religion.

The vote for approval was followed by a standing ovation from more than 5,000 convention attendees, but the Washington Post reported that it had been a drawn-out process:

Dwight McKissic, a black pastor from Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Tex., had introduced the resolution calling on the denomination to make it clear it had no sympathy for the alt-right.

“I saw people identifying themselves as Southern Baptist and members of the alt-right, so this is horrifying to me,” McKissic said. “I wanted the Southern Baptist Convention to make it very clear we have no relationship to them.”

… when the resolution on the alt-right failed to move forward [on Tuesday] because of objections to some of the wording, many younger members and evangelicals of color became upset. “I thought it would be a slam dunk, but I misread Southern Baptists apparently,” McKissic said.

The Post continued:

The debate over the resolution highlights the divisions within the denomination. A majority of white evangelicals supported the election of President Trump. But many evangelicals of color have questioned that support and criticized Trump’s policies as harmful to minorities, if not racist.

While several Southern Baptist leaders have served on Trump’s evangelical advisory board, many younger Southern Baptists — including the denomination’s Ethics and Religious Liberty president Russell Moore, 45 — vocally opposed his candidacy.

Indeed, Moore — the ethics leader of the denomination — balked at supporting Trump for all the reasons that others had and, unlike some who resisted Trump early on but fell into line after he became the Republican nominee, Moore never capitulated.

Because of that, mainstay Baptist leaders went after Moore and tried to remove him from his ethics position. Just as with the Republican Party, it was obvious Southern Baptists were at a juncture of old versus new with the younger members leading the charge for change.

The era of Trump has seen a battle for the heart and soul of the Southern Baptist Convention. Passage of the alt-right resolution will give courage to those who continue to hold the ethical line as politics creeps more and more into religious places of worship.