Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention are increasingly dropping the “Southern” part of their Baptist name, calling it a potentially painful reminder of the convention’s historic role in support of slavery.

The 50,000 Baptist churches in the convention are autonomous and can still choose to refer to themselves as “Southern Baptist” or “SBC.” But in his first interview on the topic, convention president J.D. Greear said momentum has been building to adopt the name “Great Commission Baptists,” both because of the racial reckoning underway in the United States and because many have long seen the “Southern Baptist” name as too regional for a global group of believers.

“Our Lord Jesus was not a White Southerner but a brown-skinned Middle Eastern refugee,” said Greear, who this summer used the phrase “Black lives matter” in a presidential address and announced that he would retire a historic gavel named for an enslaver. “Every week we gather to worship a savior who died for the whole world, not one part of it. What we call ourselves should make that clear.”

The shift takes place at the end of a summer of racial unrest, when Confederate monuments have been removed, schools have been renamed and the Washington football team has dropped its moniker and is looking for a new one. For Southern Baptists, the change also reflects a long-standing desire to remove confusion when the convention launches churches in the Northern United States and overseas.

The convention formed in 1845, splitting from Northern Baptists over Southern support for missionaries who owned enslaved people; despite a historic drop in membership last year, it is considered the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, with 14.5 million members. The convention will continue to legally operate as the SBC, officials said, citing the hefty cost and complexity of a legal name change. But since August, the its website has declared “We Are Great Commission Baptists,” an alternative moniker that refers to the verses in the New Testament when Jesus commands his disciples to baptize believers in all nations.

Ronnie Floyd, who heads the convention’s executive committee and was on President Trump’s evangelical advisory council during the 2016 campaign, addressed fellow Baptists in a recent letter as “Great Commission Baptists.” Greear says hundreds of church leaders in several Southern states have committed to using the alternate name. And Greear announced Monday that his church will use it as well, and that the theme of next year’s annual gathering for the denomination will be “We are Great Commission Baptists.”