Front Page of New Orleans Picayune On Election of First African American Southern Baptist Convention President

A huge historic step for the Southern Baptist Church and just history period yesterday. Fred Luter became the first black President of the Southern Baptist Convention.  After doing some research it's interesting to note this is just the 4th Southern Baptist Convention President from Louisiana since the Convnetion was born in 1845.

It is a huge day , and I think people of my generation in the South  no matter their faith tradition see this as important big day to be proud of. For many of us ,I expect this is much more than just a Southern Baptist moment.

That being said some interesting things for Catholics to take note of and be concerned about. The election of Luter in many shows the increasing diverse nature of the Southern Baptist Church , and it 's new aim of going into very non Southern Baptist areas as to missions.

 20 percent of Southern Baptist Churches are now non anglo. That means in the marketplace of ideas in many Catholic areas the Church will have to engage in this fight for ideas with the SBC more and more and more.  We see this with Latinos , and I suspect we shall see this with many Catholic Asians and African immigrants.

Luter's election is in some ways a sign of that diversity.