Southern Baptists Diversifying to Survive

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Leading Hillcrest Baptist Church

Rev. Eric Redmond is the first African-American pastor of Hillcrest Baptist Church, which is part of the predominantly white Southern Baptist Convention.

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"I wish it was all just spiritual, but some of it is pragmatic as well," said the Rev. Frank S. Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention. "Our highest growth is coming in ethnic congregations, so it's very important for the growth of our convention . . . If we're going to reach our nation, we're going to need to reach ethnic groups."

The SBC encourages new pastors to network with other black Southern Baptist leaders, offering them names and contact information. A recent publication details African Americans' involvement in the SBC since its founding, although it omits any mention of past racism and the 1995 apology.

Redmond, 40, was a member of the predominantly black Progressive National Baptist Convention and a professor of Bible and theology at Washington Bible College in Lanham when he was asked to fill in as minister at Hillcrest Baptist Church in 2001.

The Progressive and the Southern Baptists are just two of several U.S. Baptist denominations. There are at least four historically black Baptist organizations, five in the evangelical tradition, plus at least one more in the mainline tradition, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Redmond was attracted by the Southern Baptists' theologically and socially conservative stances on abortion and same-sex marriage and the conviction that the Bible is the word of God and entirely without error. Black Baptist preachers generally place a greater emphasis on social justice and activism than their Southern Baptist counterparts.

"For an outsider, we think of the old convention with all its cultural conservatism, separatism and fundamentalism," Redmond said. "But what I found were people that were seeking to be very welcoming to African Americans in particular and to ethnic minorities in general."

After a short stint as temporary minister, Redmond became Hillcrest's first black pastor. He was elected second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention last year.

From an average of 250 worshipers before Redmond came, Hillcrest now draws an average of 375 worshipers on Sundays. The nursery school, which saw only a handful of children a few years ago, is up to 30 children.

But white flight took its toll.

Like other predominantly black Southern Baptist churches, 55-year-old Hillcrest had been mostly white. But as more black residents moved into Prince George's County in the 1980s and 1990s, the church attracted black members and lost most of its white worshipers even before Redmond arrived.

Newer members say they were attracted by Redmond's conservative beliefs and his dynamic preaching. But some said that getting past the Southern Baptist affiliation wasn't easy.

"It was hard," said Nicole Lawrence, 30, a homemaker who joined Hillcrest with her husband, Christopher, and two children two years ago. Lawrence, who grew up a Presbyterian, said her parents and friends were opposed to the move because of the SBC's racist past. "I tried to emphasize that the people aren't like that now," she said.