I think I should pause to commend the Southern Baptist Convention for using their influence to force out an Alabama pastor who decided to attend and provide the invocation at a birthday party for KKK-founder Nathan Bedford Forrest. It’s nice to see a schism open up between the leadership and old-line racists.
However, the pastor in question is state Rep. Will Dismukes (R). He seems modestly remorseful about his decision, but more for how it affected his family than anything else.
“I guess, with the anti-Southern sentiment and all, and the things that we have going on in the world today, there’s a lot of people that are seeming to be more and more offended,” he told the news station. “We live in a time where we literally are going through cancel culture from all different areas and people are even more sensitive on different issues and different subjects. This was just one of those times that it didn’t quite go the way I expected, and I never intended to bring hurt to anyone, especially my own family with everything that’s been said.”
He has no intention of resigning from the Alabama legislature, although there are calls even from within his party for him to do just that.
I’m not remotely surprised that we still see elected officials in Alabama celebrating the Ku Klux Klan, but it’s encouraging that it now comes with some substantial blowback. This is how things get de-normalized.
Credit where credit is due: the Southern Baptist Convention has arguably taken more and larger anti-racist steps over the past 30 years than any other major Christian denomination in the US.
You might argue that the SBC had further to go than just about any other major denomination and you might be right. Nonetheless, the fact remains they’ve been moving in the right direction and this is only the most recent example.
(It’s not unlike how Sen. Robert Byrd is one of the better examples available of a white politician (and a lifelong Democrat) moving slowly but consistently over the decades to reject his racist past.)