Getting Right with God: Southern Baptists and Desegregation, 1945-1995.

By Mark Newman. Religion and American Culture. (Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, c. 2001. Pp. xii, 292. $39.95, ISBN 0-8173-1060-6.)

Mark Newman examines the processes by which Southern Baptists adapted to desegregation, particularly during the key decades of the 1950s and 1960s. Following emancipation, freedpeople had formed their own churches, and the Southern Baptist Convention became increasingly white between 1880 and 1950. In a denomination that had been created to defend slavery, most Southern Baptists--like other white southerners before the mid-twentieth century--supported racial separation. Moreover, as white southerners legislated segregation through Jim Crow laws, many also believed they had the Bible on their side.

In the first half of the twentieth century, lay sentiment in the South determined church policy regarding segregation. The laity found powerful support for their argument in Genesis 9:11 and Acts 17:26. They argued that the curse on Ham in the former was actually a curse on blacks rather than on Canaanites. The Acts passage speaks of God making "of one blood all nations" and setting "the bounds of their habitation." Segregationists misread "nations" as races and focused on boundaries. They further noted that Jesus nowhere condemned segregation.

Yet massive change did occur in American society, with significant consequences for Baptists. What happened and why? Within a generation a majority of southerners shifted away from active support of segregation. Newman argues that the Brown decision of 1954 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which together sought to dismantle Jim Crow, were critical, but his study provides many perspectives on the internal mechanisms by which change was effected. One of his many useful points is to alert readers to the fact that Southern Baptists held multiple positions, which he classifies into three groups: hard-line militant segregationists, accommodationist moderates, and progressives. Progressives, especially Christian Life Commission leaders and seminary professors, challenged segregation and effectively influenced opinion by also relying on scripture, but they shifted the focus to Genesis 1:27 (all men are made in the image of God) and also reinterpreted Acts 17:26.

But progressives could not have carried the day alone. The major catalyst for change was school desegregation. Although southern leaders proposed various strategies to circumvent this process, white southerners were generally politically conservative and thus were persuaded by editors and ministers that their duty was to obey the law of the land. Southern Baptist conventions passed resolutions to be law-abiding; no convention endorsed resistance to the law. Another important instrument of change was the desegregation of Southern Baptist colleges. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 denied loans and student grants to segregated schools, and financial need proved to be a powerful incentive. By the 1970s all of the schools had signed the compliance pledge. Finally, since opposition to desegregation led to protests and riots that the press reported worldwide, another effective argument centered around foreign missions. American racism did serious damage to overseas missions, and Baptist missionaries implored the denomination to accept change.

This is a splendid book. Newman has put his finger on the pulse of this denomination as it wrestled with a key moral issue. He makes good use of the usual sources, with particular emphasis on Baptist papers, convention resolutions, and denominational agency publications. Every conceivable argument to oppose delay or endorse desegregation is faithfully rehearsed. This book is both a detailed account of events and a painful reminder to anyone who spent hundreds of hours in a Southern Baptist church about the lack of clarity regarding the church's role and the lack of courage to speak and act for justice. As Newman charitably concludes, the church sometimes reinforces the status quo, and sometimes it becomes a catalyst for change. In this case, however, legislation appears to have been the greater force for good.

BILL PITTS

Baylor University