Baptists: Behind the Front

While the Presbyterians held their leadership in church integration, two of the nation's big Baptist churches also grappled with the race issue—one forthrightly, the other with considerable caution. Last week the Southern Baptists (10,395,940 members) and their northern cousins, the American Baptists (1,559,103), held their annual conferences in separate rooms of Atlantic City's Convention Hall, and joined with five other groups for a three-day celebration of the Baptist Jubilee.*

Traditionally opposed to racial segregation in both theory and practice, the American Baptist delegates approved their church's strongest stand yet on civil...