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Social Service Committee Recommendation Concerning Race Relations (adopted)


1. We recommend that this Convention commend the leadership of the Home Mission Board for promoting the plan of inviting Negro churches to participate in the simultaneous revival plans this year. We believe that if this plan is continued and extended next year by the local and associational planning committees and that if the Negro pastors are invited to share in the plans and promotion work of these committees, the vital cause of Christian cooperation in race relations will be greatly advanced.

2. Because the adoption of the special report on Race Relations in 1947 and the reaffirmation of the same report in 1948 put the Southern Baptist Convention on record with an outstanding statement of basic principles for the dissolution of interracial conflict and tension, we therefore recommend that our churches and individual members study seriously this “charter of faith” and these “principles of action” as a means of further solution of the race problem by providing a Christian basis of activity.

3. In view of the fact that in recent months there have been distinct and significant changes in the policies of institutions of higher learning in the secular field and in further view of the principles of action on race relations upon which we as Southern Baptists have taken a stand, we express the hope that the governing bodies of our denominational institutions, both educational and social service, will seriously explore with intelligence, conscience and compassion our Baptist responsibility in those areas of Christian service