Southern Baptist seminary nixes idea of reparations to black Baptist college
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has acknowledged that it benefited from the slave trade. A clergy group encouraged the school to give part of its endowment to a college started by people who had been enslaved.
A Southern Baptist seminary with historical ties to slavery has decided not to make monetary reparations to a nearby Baptist college founded in 1879 by formerly enslaved people, according to the seminary’s president and trustee chairman.
A black-white clergy alliance called Empower West recently called on Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, to “transfer a meaningful portion of its financial wealth” to Simmons College of Kentucky, a black-led institution outside the seminary’s control, as an act of “repentance and repair” to the descendants of slaves.
Seminary president Albert Mohler and board chairman Matthew Schmucker responded in a letter May 31 that “we do not believe that financial reparations are the appropriate response” to a report last year on the impact of slavery and racism on the seminary, which was founded in 1859.
