c. 2000 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) A poster promoting a Southern Baptist international missions program is being criticized as racially insensitive.

The picture of a bare-chested African man carries the headline “Dispel the Darkness.” It appears on a poster distributed by the International Mission Board and the Woman’s Missionary Union of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“The poster reflects, at best, an unfortunate racial insensitivity at the beginning of the 21st century,” said Robert Parham, director of the Baptist Center for Ethics, a moderate organization based in Nashville, Tenn.

“In American culture, light and white are associated with goodness, darkness and blackness are associated with evil and badness. Picturing a black man with the theme `dispelling the darkness’ completely ignores this cultural reality.”

Officials of the Southern Baptist agencies responsible for the poster say the word “darkness” refers to sin, not skin color.

“It’s hard to see how an evangelical Christian looking at that picture would come up with that interpretation,” said Mark Kelly, a spokesman for the International Mission Board of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

“The man in the picture is a Christian member of the Samburu tribe of East Africa. … What he’s doing is translating the Christian Scripture into his tribal language.”

But Parham counters, “Then why didn’t they choose a blond Scandinavian?”

Teresa Dickens, spokeswoman for the autonomous Woman’s Missionary Union, said WMU leaders “regret” there was any offense taken.

“It was certainly never our intention to be offensive in what we produced,” she said.

She estimated about 200,000 posters have been distributed to Southern Baptist churches, with the goal of raising $115 million for international missions through an annual Christmas offering.

Dickens said the light on the man’s desk illuminating him holding a Bible was symbolic of their evangelistic mission.

“The way the photograph is, there’s darkness all around him and for us the light represents the gospel of Jesus Christ,” she said.

The Rev. Emmanuel McCall, an Atlanta pastor and vice chair of the board of directors of the Baptist Center for Ethics, said he chose not to put up the poster in his church, whose membership is predominantly African-American but also includes African members.

“I think it shows an insensitivity to the international people, the mission-receiving people that we’re trying to provide services for,” said McCall. “Here again is a black man, bare-chested, beads and all of this, and one would get the impression that all Africans look like this, dress like that, act like that.”

The Rev. Willie Simmons, a former director of black church relations for the former Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, said he had no problem with the poster. The foreign board was a precursor to the International Mission Board.

“It has nothing to do with race at all,” said Simmons, pastor of a predominantly black church in Los Angeles. “It’s unfortunate that when you mention the word `darkness,’ it is associated with race and with blacks in particular, but that’s not the intent of the poster.”

He said the poster’s reference to “darkness” relates to spiritual, not racial matters.

“It’s only talking about the darkness of sin,” Simmons said. “Darkness is in every country of the world. … There is darkness among Africans. There’s darkness among Jews _ I’m talking about spiritual darkness _ darkness among any people.”

Kelly, of the International Mission Board, said the photo is featured on the cover of the board’s 2000 annual report and also has been featured in the board’s magazine, The Commission.

Asked if there has been previous reaction suggesting it was offensive, Kelly said, “Heavens, no.”

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Questions about the poster come five years after delegates to the 1995 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution committing themselves “to eradicate racism in all its forms from Southern Baptist life and ministry.”

Parham said there may be some Southern Baptists who have tried to live out the words of that statement but “this doesn’t happen to be an example of that.”

But Simmons said the mission board now has a more diverse staff and is working to recruit more African-American missionaries.

“There are … more black staff people at the IMB than there have been for a while,” he said.

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