All According to God's Plan

Southern Baptist Missions and Race, 1945-1970

Alan Scot Willis

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780813123417
• eBook ISBN: 9780813188744
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Southern Baptists had long considered themselves a missionary people, but when, after World War II, they embarked on a dramatic expansion of missionary efforts, they confronted headlong the problem of racism. Believing that racism hindered their evangelical efforts, the Convention's full-time missionaries and mission board leaders attacked racism as unchristian, thus finding themselves at odds with the pervasive racist and segregationist ideologies that dominated the South. This progressive view of race stressed the biblical unity of humanity, encompassing all races and transcending specific ethnic divisions. In All According to God's Plan, Alan Scot Willis explores these beliefs and the chasm they created within the Convention. He shows how, in the post-World War II era, the most respected members of the Southern Baptists Convention publicly challenged the most dearly held ideologies of the white South.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. “Go Ye”: Missions and Race in Progressive Baptist Theology
• 2. All Nations in God’s Plan: Peace, Race, and Missions in the Postwar World
• 3. “Our Preaching Has Caught Up with Us”: African Missions and the Race Question
• 4. An American Amos: Baptist Missionaries and Postwar American Culture
• 5. The Tower of Babel: Language Missions and the Race Question
• 6. “Living Our Christianity”: Southern Baptist Missions and Blacks in America
• Conclusion
• Selected Bibliography
• Index