[Granville-Hough] 26 Jan 2010 - Remembering Rev Clayton Sullivan

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 07:24:57 -0800
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: Remembering Rev Clayton Sullivan - 26 Jan 2010


Cousin Clayton Sullivan Sets the Tone for Southern Baptists.

A very few years ago, Danny McKenzie of the Daily Clarion Ledger wrote 
an article ôSouthern Baptist Racism Apology is Important Step,ö on the 
efforts by Southern Baptists to reconcile with their racist past. The 
article begins: ôWithout genuine repentance on the part of the offending 
party there can be no real reconciliation,ö from The Stem of Jesse, by 
Will D. Campbell. It was a remarkable Tuesday, when the members of the 
Southern Baptist Church not only slammed the racist past of their 
denomination, but also apologized and asked forgiveness for its heritage 
of ôcondoning and/or perpetuating individual and systematic racism.ö 
àThe words of Amite CountyÆs Will D. Campbell û author, philosopher, 
human rights activist, Southern Baptist minister û never rang more 
loudly nor more clearly than they did this past week. Certainly the 
Southern Baptist Church has a history of racism. But on this issue, itÆs 
doubtful that very many Christian closets are completely clean.
The apology, issued at the Southern Baptist Convention in Atlanta, is, 
according to Clayton Sullivan, ôan appropriate and kindly action.ö 
Sullivan, a professor of religion and philosophy at the University of 
Southern Mississippi and a Southern Baptist minister who, during the 
early 1960s, was driven from the pulpit of a south Mississippi Baptist 
church because of his views on racism, noted that the split in his 
denomination took place in 1845, nearly 20 years before the Civil War.
ôFollowing the Civil War, the Presbyterians and Methodists and many 
other denominations decided to let bygones be bygones,ö Sullivan pointed 
out, ôThe only group that did not was the Southern Baptists. So, 
certainly this is an appropriate action û not only because it is right, 
but for purely sociological reasons, the Southern Baptist Church is the 
only remnant of the old Confederacy.ö
This generation of Southern Baptists could have taken the easy way out 
and blamed the whole issue of slavery and ôthe civil rights eraö on its 
ancestors. But it did not. In effect, what they said was that we cannot 
pick and choose parts of our past and refer to those parts as ôour 
heritage.ö Our heritage is our people and their deeds, and that includes 
the ugly as well as the beautiful. To deny even one part of our heritage 
is to denigrate our entire heritage.
It should also be noted that the governance of the Southern Baptist 
Church works, as a Baptist friend pointed out, ôfrom the bottom up, not 
from the top down,ö ûmeaning that this apology was generated from the 
membership and not, necessarily, from the leadership, which gives it 
greater significance.
As has already been pointed out time and again, this apology is but the 
first step. Not only do the Southern Baptists have to ôtalk the talk, 
but theyÆve got to walk the walk.ö Certainly. Still the importance of 
this so-called ôfirst stepö cannot be downplayed. As Sullivan said, 
ôThere is nothing to be gained by lampooning this move by the Southern 
Baptists.ö
In a recent editorial, the Akron Beacon Journal applauded the apology by 
the Southern Baptists and, in words that all of us who are trying to be 
Christian should heed, stated: ôSo, finding the strength, as a group, to 
ask forgiveness for historic and longstanding wrongs takes courage. Its 
pledge to work to end the evil of racism goes far toward healing one of 
the depest wounds in the American soul. Southern Baptists cannot change 
their heritage. But they proved the need not to be shackled by it, either.ö

(GWH:: Rev. Clayton Sullivan is of course from the preaching and 
teaching family of Henderson and Toodie Sullivan and cousins to the 
Hough family through ToodieÆs father, Jeptha Cole. There was another 
Sullivan, Rev. James Lennox Sullivan, grandson of John Ben, the coffin 
maker, who was a leader in making changes at the top level of the 
Southern Baptist Convention. Many other Sullivans led their 
congregations as deacons and ministers. All Sullivans and non-Sullivans 
of SullivanÆs Hollow can be proud of these leaders who have set the 
example for our churches.)