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June 16th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
Stone had campaigned aggressively, including speaking at churches across the country and even appearing on Fox & Friends on Tuesday before the vote. And the Conservative Baptist Network had encouraged supporters to come to the meeting as voting delegates.
But in the end, the message that seemed to resonate with voters was that Stone — who supported a motion to repudiate critical race theory, an academic construct for framing systemic racism that has been a target of religious and political conservatives — was a divisive choice.
“We’re a family, and at times it seems like an incredibly dysfunctional family.” Litton said after the results were announced. “But we love each other.”
The two-day meeting concludes Wednesday when delegates will consider proposals for a sweeping review of the SBC’s response to abuse in its churches, an issue that recently erupted with secret recordings and leaked letters involving top leadership.
Also Tuesday, the delegates rejected a proposal that would have explicitly denounced critical race theory. Instead they approved a consensus measure that does not mention it by name but rejects any view that sees racism as rooted in “anything other than sin.”
The measure also affirmed a 1995 resolution apologizing for the history of racism in a denomination that was founded in 1845 in support of slavery, and which apologized for “condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime.”
One white delegate urged the convention to denounce critical race theory by name, saying it held him “guilty because of the melanin content of my skin.” But another argued that the convention shouldn’t be swayed by a political movement that has already seen some state legislatures ban the teaching of CRT.
“If some people in this room were as passionate about the gospel as they are about critical race theory, we would win this world to Christ,” said James Merritt, chairman of the resolutions committee and a former convention president.
Several Black pastors have voiced frustration over critical race theory debates playing out in the SBC instead of the denomination confronting systemic racism itself.
On the sex abuse issue, Tennessee pastor Grant Gaines, speaking with a survivor at his side, proposed a task force that would oversee a review of the denomination’s actions — a broader investigation than the one announced last week by the SBC’s Executive Committee.
“I stand with SBC church abuse survivors,” Gaines said.
The convention overwhelmingly approved a resolution declaring that “any person who has committed sexual abuse is permanently disqualified from holding the office of pastor.”
Opponents had argued that it precludes the possibility of an abuser repenting and transforming, but proponents from the resolution committee emphasized a scriptural injunction that pastors be “above reproach.”
Churches are self-governing, and critics have said the denomination hasn’t done enough to exclude congregations that mishandle abuse cases.
Voters gave final approvals to constitutional amendments excluding churches that affirm ethnic discrimination or act against the convention’s “beliefs regarding sexual abuse.” Still to be debated was how those standards on abuse apply in practice.
In an enthusiastically applauded address, outgoing president J.D. Greear, himself a target of criticism, lamented “the slander, the distortion, the character assassination and baseless accusations” some SBC leaders have endured. While denouncing liberalism, he also criticized what he saw as power-seeking and divisiveness over secondary issues.
The SBC cannot be a “cultural affinity group” or “voting bloc,” Greear said, but must focus on its spiritual mission.
On critical race theory, he said it arises from “a worldview at odds with the gospel,” but he heeded “leaders of color who tell us that our denunciations of justice movements fall on deaf ears when we remain silent on the suffering of our neighbors.”
Pastor Bryan Kent of Compass Church in Mason, Mich., commended Greear’s remarks, saying that if critical race theory “has an echo of truth among our brothers and sisters of color … we should not be in such a rush to condemn.”
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