Baptist historians denied slavery caused the 1845 split until the late 1900s

Evidence

As prominent Baptist historian Walter “Buddy” Shurden has pointed out, it wasn’t until the last two decades of the twentieth century that white Baptist historians directly faced up to the proslavery, white supremacist origins of their denomination. Robert Baker, a professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary through the first half of the twentieth century, acknowledged that “the involvement of the South in the ‘peculiar institution’ ” was a factor in the divide, but he quickly argued that there were other “strong considerations” for a separate body beyond this issue. But his student Leon McBeth—who assumed Baker’s mantle as one of the leading Baptist historians of his day and in whose classroom this reality came into focus for me—gave it straight in his 1987 textbook, The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness: “Slavery was the main issue that led to the 1845 schism; that is a cold historical fact.” — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 27

Categorization

• DEFINE: Dates the 1845 Southern Baptist schism and names the whitewash and its correction.
• XREF: connects to: Slavery, not theology, caused the 1845 Baptist schism. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 18; The Black church was born in slavery and shaped by its contradictions — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 1021; White Baptist women felt a righteous indemnity was owed blacks for slavery — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 526

Broader Connections

• Slavery, not theology, caused the 1845 Baptist schism. #corroborates (0.95) — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 18
• The Black church was born in slavery and shaped by its contradictions #complicates (0.75) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1021
• White Baptist women felt a righteous indemnity was owed blacks for slavery #contradicts (0.70) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 526