Word: baptiste
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Jack E. White's cynicism notwithstanding, the action of the Southern Baptist Convention in asking forgiveness from blacks for its role in defending segregation was very significant [DIVIDING LINE, July 3]. You know Baptists are serious when they use the word sin to describe racism. True, Baptists should have repented long ago. True, they could have been key players in the civil rights movement. But they didn't, and they weren't. The past is deplorable, but it is also irreparable. Are we to go on hating one another forever? The real tragedy would be if blacks took as long...
...Haden says. An orchestra full of sly virtuosity that finds in its past not only inspiration but also renewal. Jones is 76, playing at the top of his form and calling on a whole lifetime of talent. Born in Detroit, where he would go to meeting at the Michigan Baptist Church, Jones ultimately chose to follow the jazz life, a through route from home to perdition. "My father," he recalls, "thought jazz was the music of the devil." The devil took him straight to the Apple; took his younger brothers too. Elvin Jones became a wizard drummer; Thad, a superb...
...Lake County district, crucial school-board decisions about construction projects were held up while a Christian-right majority formulated, then adopted, an "America First" policy instructing teachers to promote American values as "superior to other foreign or historic cultures." The policy struck many people in the predominantly white, Baptist county as offensive. School-board meetings that had once attracted just dozens now drew hundreds of adults, itching to trade insults. As the rancor deepened, voters seeking to defuse the ideological tension formed a committee that screened candidates and raised money. "It was a joint effort by parents, teachers...
...fact, the Southern Baptists had plenty of chances to reverse their backward stand on racial issues but passed them by, even though many courageous members of the church and some maverick pastors protested in vain against the policies. In his famous "Letter from Birmingham City Jail" in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. responded to a group of "liberal" Southern church leaders who had criticized his nonviolent demonstrations as "unwise and untimely" acts of outside agitation. Wrote King: "In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sidelines and merely mouth pious...
Even so, the Southern Baptists can probably count on most blacks to take the apology in good faith. African Americans are by nature a forgiving people, says Lincoln. So much so that many of them, including several prominent Baptist ministers in Harlem, threw a lavish ceremony last week to welcome ex-heavyweight champion Mike Tyson home from prison, despite howls of outrage from black feminists who charged that the much hyped ceremony was tantamount to enshrining brutality toward women. If blacks harbor such forbearance for a convicted rapist who has yet to repent his crime, it stands to reason that...