Southern Baptists Target Porn, Sports Betting, Same-sex Marriage
Southern Baptists conference today in Dallas will be asked to approve resolutions requiring a legal ban on pornography and a reversal of the U.S. Supreme Court's approval of same-sex marriage.
The proposed resolutions require laws on gender, marriage and household based upon what they say is the biblically mentioned order of magnificent creation. They likewise require lawmakers to cut sports betting and to support policies that promote childbearing.
The Southern Baptist Convention, the country's largest Protestant denomination, is likewise expected to discuss controversies within its own home during its annual meeting Tuesday and Wednesday - such as a proposed restriction on churches with ladies pastors. There are also contacts us to defund the organization ´ s public law arm, whose anti-abortion stance hasn ´ t encompassed supporting criminal charges for females having abortions.
In a denomination where support for President Donald Trump is strong, there is little on the advance program referencing specific actions by Trump since taking workplace in January in areas such as tariffs, migration or the pending budget expense containing cuts in taxes, food aid and Medicaid.
Southern Baptists will be satisfying on the 40th anniversary of another Dallas yearly meeting. An epic showdown happened when a record-shattering 45,000 church agents clashed in what became a decisive blow in the takeover of the convention - and its seminaries and other firms - by a more conservative faction that was likewise aligned with the growing Christian conservative motion in governmental politics.
The 1985 showdown was "the hinge convention in terms of the old and the brand-new in the SBC," said Albert Mohler, who became a crucial representative in the denomination's rightward shift as longtime president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
FILE - An attendee holds up a ballot throughout the Southern Baptist Convention's yearly meeting in Anaheim, Calif., Tuesday, June 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
Attendance this week will likely be a portion of 1985's, however that meeting's impact will be apparent. Any debates will be among solidly conservative members.
A number of the proposed resolutions - on betting, pornography, sex, gender and marital relationship - reflect long-standing positions of the convention, though they are specifically pointed in their needs on the broader political world. They are proposed by the official Committee on Resolutions, whose recommendations generally get strong support.
A proposed resolution says legislators have a duty to "pass laws that reflect the reality of creation and natural law - about marital relationship, sex, human life, and household" and to oppose laws contradicting "what God has actually made plain through nature and Scripture."
To some outside observers, such language is theocratic.
"When you talk about God ´ s style for anything, there ´ s not a lot of room for compromise," said Nancy Ammerman, teacher emerita of sociology of faith at Boston University. She was an eyewitness to the Dallas meeting and author of "Baptist Battles," a history of the 1980s controversy between theological conservatives and moderates.
"There ´ s not a great deal of room for people who put on ´ t have the same understanding of who God is and how God runs in the world," she stated.
Mohler said the resolutions reflect a divinely produced order that precedes the writing of the Scriptures and is affirmed by them. He stated the Christian church has actually constantly asserted that the produced order "is binding on all individuals, in all times, all over."
Separate resolutions decry porn and sports wagering as damaging, calling for the former to be prohibited and the latter reduced.
A minimum of a few of these political positions remain in the realm of plausibility at a time when their conservative allies manage all levers of power in Washington and many have embraced elements of a Christian nationalist agenda.
A Southern Baptist, Mike Johnson, is speaker of your home of Representatives and third in line to the presidency.
A minimum of one Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, has required revisiting the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marital relationship nationwide. Other religious conservatives - including some in the Catholic postliberal motion, which has influenced Vice President JD Vance - have actually promoted the view that a robust government must legislate morality, such as banning pornography while alleviating church-state separation.
And conservatives of different stripes have echoed one of the resolution's call for pro-natalist policies and its decrying of "willful childlessness which adds to a declining fertility rate."
Some preconvention talk has focused on defunding the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the Southern Baptist Convention's public policy arm, which has been implicated of being ineffective. Ten former Southern Baptist presidents backed its ongoing funding, though one other called for the opposite.
A staunchly conservative group, the Center for Baptist Leadership, has actually posted online of the commission, which is adamantly anti-abortion however has actually opposed state laws criminalizing females looking for abortions.
The commission has appealed to Southern Baptists for support, mentioning its advocacy for religious liberty and versus abortion and transgender identity.
"Without the ERLC, you will send out the message to our country's legislators and the public at big that the SBC has selected to abandon the general public square at a time when the Southern Baptist voice is most required," stated a video statement from the commission president, Brent Leatherwood.
A group of Southern Baptist ethnic groups and leaders signed a declaration in April mentioning issue over Trump's immigration crackdown, stating it has harmed church presence and raised fears. "Law and order are essential, but enforcement needs to be accompanied with compassion that doesn ´ t demonize those fleeing injustice, violence, and persecution," the statement said.
The Center for Baptist Leadership, however, knocked the denominational Baptist Press for working to "weaponize empathy" in its reporting on the statement and Leatherwood for supporting it.
Texas pastor Dwight McKissic, a Black pastor who shares a number of the Southern Baptist Convention's conservative positions, criticized what he views as a backlash against the commission, "the most racially progressive entity in the SBC."
"The SBC is transitioning from an evangelical company to a fundamentalist organization," he posted on the social media site X. "Fewer and fewer Black churches will make the shift with them."
An amendment to prohibit churches with females pastors stopped working in 2024 after directly failing to get a two-thirds supermajority for two successive years. It is expected to be reestablished.
The denomination ´ s belief declaration states the office of pastor is limited to men, but there remain disagreements over whether this applies just to the lead pastor or to assistants also. Over the last few years, the convention started purging churches that either had females as lead pastors or asserted that they could serve that role. But when an SBC committee this year retained a South Carolina megachurch with a woman on its pastoral staff, some argued this showed the requirement for a constitutional modification. (The church later stopped the denomination of its own accord.)
The conference comes as the Southern Baptist Convention continues its long membership slide, down 2% in 2024 from the previous year in its 18th consecutive yearly decrease. The organization now reports a membership of 12.7 million members, still the biggest among Protestant denominations, much of whom are shrinking faster.
More promising are Southern Baptists' baptism numbers - a crucial spiritual vital indication. They stand at 250,643, exceeding pre-pandemic levels and, at least for now, reversing a long slide.
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FILE - Messengers stand for worship during a Southern Baptist Convention yearly meeting Tuesday, June 11, 2024, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Doug McSchooler, File)