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

MARK NEWMAN, Getting Right With God: Southern Baptists and Desegregation, 1945-1995. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001. Pp. xii + 292. $39.95.

Does culture influence religion? Or does religion influence culture? In Getting Right With God: Southern Baptists and Desegregation, 1945-1995, Mark Newman indicates that this is a two-way street, although in the end it appears that culture influences religion more so than vice versa. Given the congregational form of Southern Baptist church government, "opinions expressed about civil rights issues by denominational messengers, presidents and pastors usually fell within the parameters of mainstream Baptist opinion" (vi). This is especially true since church members controlled the purse strings of the local church, which in turn funded the state and national conventions, and also hired and fired pastors. Since the states of the Deep South were segregationist, desegregationist church leaders had to carefully tread treacherous waters.

It was the denominational progressives at the national and state convention level, state newspaper editors, and seminary and college professors, who "played a significant, but secondary role in undermining Southern Baptist support for overt discrimination and segregation" (65). From 1945 to 1953, this group advocated the concept of separate but truly equal. However, from 1954 to 1959, they pointed out the discriminatory, unchristian, and biblically indefensible nature of segregation. And beginning in 1960, Southern Baptist progressives moved slowly in calling for the integration of both society and church. This group was motivated by evangelistic and missionary concerns. How could Southern Baptists reach the lost in Africa and Asia, if there was open discrimination of blacks in the United States? Moreover, they urged their fellow Baptists to uphold law and order and to faithfully support public education-the source of American...