Behind the Front

While the Presbyterians held their leadership in church integration, two of the nation's big Baptist churches also grappled with the race issue--one forthrightly, the other with considerable caution. Last week the Southern Baptists (10,395,940 members) and their northern cousins, the American Baptists (1,559,103), held their annual conferences in separate rooms of Atlantic City's Convention Hall, and joined with five other groups for a three-day celebration of the Baptist Jubilee.*

Traditionally opposed to racial segregation in both theory and practice, the American Baptist delegates approved their church's strongest stand yet on civil rights. Their resolution advocated withholding church loans to segregated Baptist congregations, and putting fair-employment-practice clauses in all contracts between churches and builders. But the Southern Baptists, about 90% of whose congregations are segregated, rejected even mild, nonbinding recommendations that would approve an open-door policy on race in churches. Instead, the delegates adopted a policy statement that left the question of church integration right where it has always been: up to the decision of individual congregations.

*Commemorating the formation of the nation's first Baptist mission society in 1814. Also present: the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference, the North American Baptist General Conference, the Baptist Federation of Canada, and two Negro churches: the National Baptist Convention of America and National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc.

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