Southern Baptist President Ed Litton hosted on Monday a worship and prayer service for ‘Shrink the Divide’ an event sponsored by ‘The Pledge Group’- a collective of churches whose mission it is to “shrink the racial divide in our own community and throughout the Body of Christ by establishing and fostering relationships across ethnic and denominational lines.”
The group, who makes recommendations that churches who particulate in it (such as Ed Litton’s Redemption Church) do things like “Take steps in the community to reflect equality and create a ‘level playing field’ and ‘Hold a joint regular worship service at one of the churches; then alternate locales” is led by a steering team of churches and lay leaders across denominational and even religious lines, and is populated by Roman Catholics, United Methodists, Charismatics, pro-choice and pro-LGBT AME churches, women pastrixes, Liberation theology, you- you name it. We’re talking as ecumenical as they come.
In this event, Litton’s church hosted the fracas, which had hundreds of people show up, hold hands, and have a service together, with the President of the Pledge Group Roy Hill gushing:
Today is an opportunity for a diverse group of believers to come together and communicate the fact that we believe the Gospel is the way to bring racial reconciliation in every situation. In fact, we believe that’s the only way to do it effectively.”
Given that there is a focus on having service at each other’s churches, we wonder how often Litton attends service at the thoroughly apostate ‘Little Flower Roman Catholic Parish” or “Christ United Methodist Church”- the latter which is hosting the next worship ad prayer service on October 14.
Yet during the message, Litton had some friendly words for these Steering members, noting:
But what a joy it is to be with you tonight, what an honour It is to be asked. I’m gonna ask everyone who’s a part of The Pledge Steering Team just to stand right now. These are my brothers and sisters, we have walked together, worked together. We love together, we see God move together. They are the heart and the inspiration for why we do what we do in this city.
Litton went on to claimthat he’s not the president of a denomination (hunh?) , but a collection of 50,000 churches who just recently committed to dealing with racial reconciliation and sexual abuse in the church, saying “That’s something we’ve avoided for years.” In a 25 minute message he unpacks the story of the good Samaritan and how the priest left the injured and wounded man in the ditch but the Samaritan didn’t.
This is a model for how white folk needs to care more about black folk and racial reconciliation, not leaving them in the proverbial ditch, and vice versa, noting:
I’ll tell you what’s killing us today. Nobody in the Southern Baptist Convention that I’m a part of, and nobody in my church, probably nobody in your church would ever want to be called a bigot. But indifference is killing us.
The event concluded with everyone joining hands across the aisle in prayer and all the leaders of the various churches getting up on stage and reciting the pledge together.
