Southern Baptists break color barrier

It’s a new day for Southern Baptists.

They elected the first African American to lead them today. Fred Luter is pastor at a New Orleans church, which pulls in about 5,000 parishioners a week.

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“Luter could be the first of a series of presidents moving the denomination toward a more racially and ethnically sensitive position,” Bill Leonard, a former Southern Baptist who is now chair of Baptist studies at Wake Forest University Divinity School, tells the New Orleans Times Picayune.