Common Conversations: Black Baptist Burdens | White Baptist Pressures

Our first Common Conversation about Christian Nationalism is the right starting place to understand our history. But there’s a parallel discussion to be had. From the beginnings of America, Black Baptists persisted despite the burden of White Baptist pressures.

• Listen as Rev. Dr. Leslie Callahan, pastor of St. Paul’s Baptist Church, Philadelphia, PA, and former Assistant Professor of Modern Church History and African American Studies at New York Theological Seminary and
  
  
• Rev. Kasey Jones, Associate Coordinator of Outreach of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and former pastor of National Baptist Memorial Church in Washington, DC,
  
  
• talk with Dr. Derek Hicks, Associate Professor of Religion and Culture at Wake Divinity.
  
  
• Moderated by Dr. Oliver M. Thomas (class of ‘10), Adjunct Instructor, North Carolina A&T State University, and Associate Pastor, Providence Baptist Church of Greensboro, NC.

We received questions from Rev. Steven Floyd (class of '21) and pastor of Buncombe Baptist Church in Lexington, NC, Rev. Dr. LaTonya Penny ('13) and pastor of New Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Roxboro, NC and the Executive Director at Family Abuse Services of Alamance County, Rev. Matthew Johnson ('10) and pastor of Fernwood Baptist Church in Spartanburg, SC, Rev. Kevin Gardner-Sinclair ('08) and pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Louisville, KY, and Rev. Ryan M. Eller ('07) and Co-Founder & Executive Director at The New Moral Majority.

Note that the audio version is missing a few components from the video or transcript versions; however, all the conversation is included.

Common Conversations are conversations on common topics between experts in our community and members of the Wake Divinity faculty and staff moderated by Wake Divinity alumnus, students, and supporters. CC is sponsored by the Baptist Commons. 

For our first Common Conversations series in the fall of 2020, we focus on three topics under the theme of “the weight of racism.”

As architects of equity, hope, and healing, we feel there is no more important place to begin than to talk about racism in America. The weight of this injustice is on us all.  As our beloved Deacon  Maya Angelou said, “It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it.”

In our series, we’ll tackle

• The Load of Christian Nationalism and Baptist History for our first episode released in October;
• Black Baptist Burdens | White Baptist Pressures for the second episode released in November; and
• The Gravity of Trauma of These Enmeshed Communities for the third episode released in December.

Don’t worry; you don’t need to be a Baptist to engage.

We hope, however, you’ll do more than watch. We hope you are inspired to start your own conversation after listening to ours. And that you, too, will continue the call for justice, compassion, and reconciliation.