A Challenge to Change British Baptists and Racism in the 1990s

Abstract

Significant efforts were made in the 1990s to catalyse renewal in the life and witness of the Baptist Union of Great Britain. Several key Baptist thinkers identified racism as a problem impacting British society and Baptist churches but ignored any detailed consideration of the issue. This article seeks to account for this paradoxical phenomenon among contributors to the discourse about Baptist identity, denominational renewal, and engagement with mission within the larger story of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and racism in the 1990s. The writings of Nigel Wright, Rob Warner, and Derek Tidball are considered. All three authors self-identified as evangelical and advocated denominational renewal in the service of mission. The article explores factors that informed and limited discourse about race and racism among British Baptists in the 1990s, and the significance and outcome of these for Baptist life and witness in the ensuing decades of the twenty-first century.