Dr. Mohler portrays the culture and church, including the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), as having a “massive” racism problem, and this is one-way white racism toward blacks.[1] He emphatically states, “I can’t associate with any assertion that we do not have a massive problem in the society and in the church with claims of racial superiority and with historic patterns of claims of white racial superiority and with the facts that remnants and the ongoing manifestation of those claims of white racial superiority continue”[2](italics added).
Notice that Dr. Mohler even goes further than the claim that the church has a “massive problem” with racism. He specifically says the “massive problem” is with “claims of racial superiority.” Dr. Mohler is a Southern Baptist and president of a Southern Baptist Seminary. Thus, it seems safe to say he is speaking most directly to Southern Baptists who not only have a massive racism problem but a massive problem with countless Southern Baptists claiming that being white is superior to being black or brown; to wit, claiming to be white supremacists and promoting it.
On a personal level, having been a Southern Baptist for forty-three years, pastoring in Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma, I can say I have never met a Southern Baptist making the claim of “racial superiority.” This is not a denial of there being some racists in the SBC or anywhere else for that matter. I suspect there will always be racists peppering the globe. However, it is an emphatic denial of it being a “massive problem” in the church, SBC. Such a statement is consistent with critical race theory, but not the facts. For further information, see my book A Corruption of Consequence, chapters 7 & 8.
In contrast to Dr. Mohler’s claim, the facts say otherwise. The significant growth in various ethnicities in the SBC over the last twenty years seems to undermine Dr. Mohler’s portrait of the SBC.[3]
[1] It seems safe to assume he includes the SBC in the word church since that is the ecclesiastical body to which he, SBTS, and the vast majority of the people to whom he is speaking belong.
[2] E.S. Williams, The Stain of Albert Mohler, tagged as
“Stain of Mohler 3, The New Calvinist YouTube video 11/25/19, accessed 2/4/20. While Dr. Mohler claims to strongly reject cultural Marxism, he often speaks and uses terminology that is consistent with critical race theory and simultaneously inconsistent with Scripture. Also, he has hired faculty like Professor Curtis Woods (chairman of the Resolutions Committee that presented Resolution 9), Jarvis Williams, and Matthew Hall who reflect ideas from critical race theory and utilize it as well. My point is that Southern Seminary has faculty who embrace critical race theory at various levels and speak and research consistently with it Dr. Woods is no longer on faculty because he assumed a pastorate. See my book,A Corruption of Consequence: Adding Social Justice to the Gospel.
[3] A Statistical Analysis of Growth in SBC Congregations by Race and Ethnicity from 1990-2018, from Ronnie Floyd,accessed 12/10/20.
