Southern Baptist Convention

The Southern Baptist Convention was born of slavery. In 1845, Baptists in the South split from their northern brethren after the national mission board refused to appoint slaveholders as missionaries, forming a new convention expressly to protect the right of enslavers to full standing in the church. It grew into the largest Protestant denomination in the country. On its 150th anniversary in 1995, the SBC formally repudiated its "pro-slavery past" and asked forgiveness of Black Americans. It is included here not as a financial beneficiary but as an institution whose very founding sanctified the system this ledger traces, giving slavery the cover of the pulpit.