‘Confess these sins’: white Evangelical churches reflect on racism

By early June, Taylor Rutland was certain God wanted him to preach about racism. What he didn’t know is how his congregation would react. 

Mr. Rutland pastors First Baptist Church of Dothan, Alabama – a Bible belt town just above the Florida border. Like many white Evangelical churches, he says, First Baptist almost never discusses racism. And like many such churches in the South, he says, First Baptist has racism in its past. In 1961, the church voted to stop funding Southern Baptist Theological Seminary after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. visited campus. 

So on June 7, after delivering his first sermon on racism as sin, Mr. Rutland says he felt comforted to hear congregants tell him they wish he’d addressed it sooner.

“We have a history of this,” he says. “And so we’ve got to go before the Lord and confess these

When the past is silenceConsistency of activism After the spotlight