Slavery and the Founding of the Southern Baptist Convention: What the 1845 Proceedings Said
Below is a summary of the proceedings surrounding the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), established in 1845 amid a sectional conflict in which slavery was a central and decisive issue. The immediate dispute concerned whether slaveholders could be appointed and supported as Baptist missionaries, but the controversy reflected the broader commitment of many white Southern Baptists to defending a social and economic order built upon human slavery and racial hierarchy. Today, the Southern Baptist Convention is one of the largest Protestant denominations in the United States, encompassing approximately 46,800 to 47,000 cooperating churches and congregations and roughly 12.3 million members. Despite its enormous influence on American religious and cultural life, many present-day Southern Baptists may be unfamiliar with the extent to which their denomination’s origins were intertwined with the defense of slavery and the ideology of white supremacy. Examining the SBC’s founding documents is therefore important not merely as an exercise in denominational history, but as an opportunity to understand how religious institutions can be shaped by the political, economic, and racial assumptions of their time. The original 1845 SBC Annual is also provide below.
SBC Annual 1845 Summary
SBC Annual 1845 Summary. This 1845 document is the founding proceedings of the Southern Baptist Convention, meeting in Augusta, Georgia. Although the formal constitution describes the new denomination mainly in terms of missions, church cooperation, and organization, the later proceedings and especially the public “Address of the Convention” make slavery a central reason for the separation. The critical issue was whether a slaveholder could be appointed as a Baptist missionary while continuing to own enslaved people. The Boston mission board had declared that if a missionary candidate was “having slaves” and insisted on retaining them “as his property,” the board would not appoint him. The Southern delegates explicitly objected to that decision and described it as an improper new qualification for missionary service. The Southern leaders argued that the earlier national Baptist organization had historically made “no difference between slaveholders and non-slaveholders.” They pointed out that slaveholders had contributed money, held denominational offices, and had previously been accepted as missionaries. They even emphasized that a pastor of a large slaveholding church had been entrusted with missionary responsibilities. The document says directly that conflict had developed as “slavery and anti-slavery” Baptists began moving apart. An earlier compromise had stated that the missionary convention itself would neither endorse slavery nor anti-slavery, while individuals remained free to advocate their own positions outside the organization. The Southern delegates believed the Boston board violated that compromise when it refused to appoint slaveholding missionaries. The Boston board said it could not participate in an arrangement that implied “approbation of slavery.” The Southern response was that this effectively condemned slavery and discriminated against slaveholders even though the national convention had previously declined to take such a position. Most significantly, the Southern convention challenged the belief that slavery was inherently sinful. Their address complains that the Northern board had acted on the proposition that slavery was “in all circumstances, sinful,” while the Southern delegates argued that the earlier Baptist resolution had left individuals free even to “promote slavery” in what they regarded as a Christian manner.
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