Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention are dropping references to the South as the largest Protestant denomination in the country grapples with its history of supporting slavery.
Instead of using “Southern,” church leadership will now refer to themselves as “Great Commission Baptists,” President J.D. Greear announced Monday. The 50,000 churches in the convention, however, are mostly independent and can still refer to themselves as Southern Baptists if they so choose.
“Utilizing ‘Great Commission Baptists’ is simply one more step to make clear we serve a risen Savior who died for all peoples, whose mission is not limited to one people living in one time at one place,” Greear said in a statement. “Every week we gather to worship a Savior who died for the whole world, not one part of it. What we call ourselves should make that clear.”
The church will continue to use Southern in its name for legal purposes. Prominent leaders, such as theologian Albert Mohler Jr. and Ronnie Floyd, who served on President Trump’s evangelical coalition in 2016, have committed to using the new name. The name has been approved for use since 2012, but until now, most leaders have elected not to do so.
Greear’s announcement comes as the convention increasingly fractures over racial and social issues, a growing trend among several mainline Protestant denominations. Greear, who leads the convention of about 14 million people from North Carolina, in June stirred controversy when he said that “black lives matter” in a video addressed to his congregation.
The convention in June reported its greatest single-year decline in membership. This year is the 13th year of unbroken decline for Southern Baptists, and as fewer young people remain in the church, leaders expect the trend to continue. Other denominations, such as the Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church, are facing similar rates of attrition, including the threat of a Methodist rupture over gay marriage.
The Southern Baptist Convention was founded in 1845 when the convention, about 80% of whose churches are in Southern states, split from the Northern Baptists over support for slavery. The convention in 1995 issued an “apology for racism,” repudiating “historic acts of evil such as slavery.”
