An African-American pastor has put his fellow Southern Baptists in the awkward position of having to decide whether to congratulate President Obama, a mainline Christian and liberal Democrat with whom they disagree on just about every major social and political issue.

Rev. Dwight McKissic, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, has filed a resolution asking the Southern Baptist Convention to celebrate “the historic nature of the election of President Barack Hussein Obama as a significant contribution to the ongoing cause of racial reconciliation in the United States.”

McKissic’s resolution will be considered at the SBC’s annual meeting June 23-24 in Louisville, Ky. The 16-million member SBC, the nation’s largest body of Protestants, has never been shy about expressing its official position on anything from Disney to Mormons. It recent years, it was one of George W. Bush’s biggest supporters and one of Bill Clinton’s harshest critics.

Would it be hypocritical of the conservative evangelical Southern Baptist Convention to congratulate Obama, or hypocritical not to? It’s hard to say.

The SBC clearly supports the views and policies of the Republican Party. The SBC invited Bush to speak to its annual meeting every year of his presidency (he did most years), and declined to invite Clinton, a fellow Southern Baptist, every year of his presidency. The SBC also adopted resolutions expressly criticizing Clinton’s support for homosexual and abortion rights in 1993, 1998 and 1999. Delegates also rebuked (but failed to unseat) Clinton’s home church in Arkansas.

But McKissic’s resolution acknowledges that Southern Baptists don’t subscribe to Obama’s politics or policies. It asks Southern Baptists to pray the president “will use the constitutional authority assigned to his office to promote liberty and justice for all people, including the unborn.” It also pledges to join hands with Obama to “advance causes of racial justice insofar as those efforts are consistent with biblical principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

McKissic said his resolution is consistent with a 1995 resolution in which the SBC apologized for its racist history and structures. The Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845 to defend the rights of Southern slaveholders. The SBC Mission Board estimates that the number of black members has doubled to about 1 million since the 1995 apology.

In its 1995 resolution, the SBC promised to “eradicate racism in all its forms from Southern Baptist life” and to pursue “racial reconciliation in all our relationships, especially with our brothers and sisters in Christ.”

McKissic might have some reconciling of his own to attend to. In 2006, he told the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit that the Anti-Christ would be gay. While the civil rights movement was grounded in “moral authority, truth and righteousness . . . and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,” McKissic said, the gay rights movement was inspired “from the pit of hell itself,” and has a “satanic anointment.”

Whatever reconciliation occurs at this year’s SBC annual meeting, it will fit the official theme, taken from Matthew 5:16: “In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

The theme: Love Loud: Actions Speak Louder Than Words.