The seminary president simultaneously condemns and sanctifies the founders who defended slavery.

Evidence

But while in each case Mohler’s logic would seem to have painted the seminary into a corner of accountability, he consistently finds a way out, interspersing indictments with a quick two-step of qualifications and evasions. In the 2015 online article, Mohler declared, “I gladly stand with the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,” and lauds them as “titans of the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” But how can these men be both saints and heretics? — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 174

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘two-step of qualifications and evasions’ naming institutional whitewashing is a reusable analytical frame for how religious institutions handle complicit founders — angles on apology rhetoric worth developing.