A Southern Baptist Response to Same-Sex Marriage

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Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, evangelical, Institute on Religion and Democracy, Kristin Rudolph, marriage, Russell Moore, Southern Baptist Convention

(Credit: OneWed.com)

Kristin Rudolph (@Kristin_Rudolph)

Two weeks before the Supreme Court announced its decision on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the Southern Baptist Convention hosted discussions on the topic of marriage at its annual meeting on June 11 – 12 in Houston, TX. Dr. Russell Moore, the new president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) directed conversations considering the implications of redefining marriage, and the broader challenges Evangelical Christians face in a culture that devalues marriage.

Moore said in a panel discussion that evangelicals “Have been slow train sexual revolutionaries. We adapt to whatever the last generation already accommodated to when it comes to marriage and sexuality,” which is why “homosexuality seems as normal to a 15 year old right now in our culture as divorce seems to a 45 year old in this culture.”

David Platt, a pastor and author emphasized the importance of consistency regarding all aspects of marriage, including divorce, within the church. “If we are not willing to do church discipline when necessary … then it’s going to ring very hollow,” he warned. To single out homosexuality and ignore other areas of sin amounts to “selective moral outrage.”

Moore urged pastors to get serious about wedding ceremonies in their churches, and recognize from a Christian perspective they are not intended to be a “celebration of the love of the couple … [instead] the marriage ceremony is about the people of God gathered as witnesses saying we are holding this couple accountable for the vows that are being made.”

Pastor J.D. Greear pointed out “We’re in a unique moment for the Gospel” with the differences between Christians and the culture growing increasingly stark. In response to holding to convictions concerning marriage, Greear said “We know we’re going to be spoken about as evil doers.”

In another session addressing questions from the “next generation” of SBC leaders, Moore criticized evangelical attempts to mold cultural mores to appear more Christian. In this process, he lamented “Evangelicalism was watered down.” He explained how “the last generation of evangelical Christianity wanted to remove the freakishness of Christianity in order to say ‘we’re really just good old Americans just like you are and if you add a little bit of Jesus to this you’re going to have an even better life than you have right now.’”

But this “freakishness” is the very thing that gives Christians a voice. Moore said “the influence that we have is not going to be because we are so big, it is not going to be because we have so much power, it is going to be because we are so strange.”

Further, instead of extreme sexual practices such as polygamy becoming mainstream as a result of redefining marriage, Moore predicted it is more likely that marriage will simply “become relatively meaningless in the way that it is in some more secularized societies right now.” As less people marry into lifelong, life producing unions, and cohabitate, marry multiple times, or are generally sexually permissive, Christians who live chaste lives in singleness or marriage will indeed look “freakish.”

Rather than focus narrowly on raising money for political campaigns and agendas, Moore said evangelicals should “love the people around us enough to have conversations with them. Not just have conversations about them.”

He pointed out that “we’re going to say things that are so strange that they are going to prompt further conversation. They’re going to shut down some conversation, but they’re going to prompt conversation.” Moore continued: “I honestly think the things that are going on right now in American culture, as sad as they are in the short term, in the long term, enable a very good recovery of evangelical Christianity.”

Following the Supreme Court’s rulings, the ERLC released a document outlining the changes resulting from the decision and the faithful Christian response. The brief document urges churches to love their gay and lesbian neighbors, remain calm in the face of shifting cultural morals, and strengthen their own commitment to preaching and practicing Christian marriage with integrity.

Land Passes Baton to Moore in Final Address at Southern Baptist Convention

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abortion, comprehensive immigration reform, Dr. Russell Moore, ERLC, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Evangelical Immigration Table, Immigration, Immigration reform, Institute on Religion and Democracy, Jeff Walton, marriage, National Immigration Forum, Pornography, religious liberty, Richard Land, Russell Moore, Southern Baptist, Southern Baptist Convention, Southern Baptists

Russell Moore (right), the new president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission explains that the ERLC will support principles, rather than specific legislation on immigration. President Emeritus Richard Land (left) led the commission for 25 years. (Photo credit: Illinois Baptist Briefing)

By Jeff Walton (@JeffreyHWalton)

In a spirited farewell, the outgoing head of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) called on Baptists to work towards revival and tackle a host of moral issues. Addressing officials at the annual gathering of the Southern Baptist Convention in Houston on Tuesday, Richard Land offered his final report as leader of the public policy office, fielded questions on immigration and watched as his successor, Russell Moore, set out his vision for the Southern Baptist public policy body.

“Unfortunately, we live in a target-rich environment when it comes to the moral issues we face as Christians,” Land warned. Listing sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage “as defined by God” and pornography as major concerns, Land saw a nation in peril from “self-inflicted wounds” more damaging than external enemies.

“I believe that the devil has figured out that the greatest weapon in his arsenal to destroy families and destroy lives in 21^st century America is hard core internet pornography,” Land diagnosed. “It is time that we quit playing like ostriches with our heads in the sand, that we understand and that we put on the whole armor of God to protect against the fiery darts of the evil one.”

Assessing America’s ills as “God-sized problems [that] can only be solved by God,” Land called for a “Christ-centered, life changing revival.” America’s future depends “not on what the lost people do, but what the saved people do,” according to Land, determining that “if we get right with God, lost people notice.”

The outgoing Southern Baptist official asserted the primacy of revival, the necessity of “getting right with God.”

“The salt of the law can change behaviors, but only the salt of the Gospel can change beliefs,” Land pronounced.

Calling upon Baptists to recommit themselves, Land declared: “We’re not going to be thermometers that reflect the temperature in society. We’re going to be thermostats that dictate the spiritual temperature in our society.”

Land and Moore fielded two questions from the floor between their addresses, both praising Land’s advocacy on a host of issues including abortion, marriage and religious liberty but also calling into question their advocacy on immigration reform, which went unmentioned in either official’s prepared address.

In the first question, Alabama Baptist State Convention President the Rev. John Killian noted reports on atheist billionaire George Soros’ funding the National Immigration Forum, of which the Evangelical Immigration Table is a project. Asked if the ERLC would participate in any political project “directly or indirectly funded” by Soros, Land did not directly address Soros’ funding and ERLC participation in the Evangelical Immigration Table. Instead, the outgoing Southern Baptist official responded that the ERLC was following instruction from a 2009 resolution “to pursue immigration policies that would find a pathway toward legal status for those who are here in an undocumented status with appropriate fines and penalties.”

“That is the kind of legislation we have been supporting and will continue to support because we believe that is what the majority of Southern Baptists want us to support,” Land explained, adding that such a policy “is not amnesty.”

Land described amnesty as “what Jimmy Carter gave the draft dodgers who went to Canada instead of serving in Vietnam” allowing them to return without penalty.

In the second question, South Carolina State Senator Lee Bright, who also serves on the ERLC, asked Moore if the ERLC was going to actively support “the 1,000 page immigration bill” under debate in the U.S. Senate.

“We are going to support principles, we are not going to support specific pieces of legislation,” Moore responded. “What we support is a just and compassionate approach to dealing with the millions of people in American society right now who are invisible, seeking a better future for their families. We also want to maintain the rule of law and the security of our borders.”

Interjecting, Land added that the present bill, if it is to pass, “will get a lot stronger on border security because it has to get through the House of Representatives.”

“They are being robbed, raped and brutalized,” Land said of the immigrants from whom he heard during his recent visit to New Orleans, where he reported immigrants would not go to the police to report crimes for fear of deportation.

“We need to give them an opportunity to come forward, pay a penalty, undergo a probationary period, learn English and if they want to stay here come under the protection of our laws,” Land summarized.

Moore praised his predecessor early in his own address, declaring that “no one stood more courageously toe to toe with the spirit of the abortion culture – the spirit of death — than Richard Land.”

A future generation may be asked if the Gospel applies to human clones, or if an artificially intelligent human cyborg could be baptized, or asked how we should deal with a Sunday School teacher who rents out her womb to an infertile family, Moore forecast.  Baptists, he predicted, may be asked “what does discipleship in action look like for the post-operative transsexual who comes to Christ and wonders ‘what does repentance look like for me?’”

Moore also predicted that future Christians may have to address questions that their forefathers did, but recent generations have not, such as “how to plant a church or preach the word when the government demands to see a license for a state-approved gospel.”

Moore promised the ERLC would push back against a world full of fallenness and injustice, where “too many children are disposed of as medical waste, languish in orphanages and foster care systems and live in the wreckage of a divorce culture robbing them of mother, father and home.” Moore also warned of lingering racism and identified challenges to religious liberty.

“We will stand with our chaplains – who show right honor to the authorities – but when they are told that they cannot pray in Jesus’ name, have the courage to stand up and say to Caesar ‘sir, I wasn’t talking to you, sir.’”

Charging that a government bureaucracy did not invent marriage and a government bureaucracy cannot reinvent marriage, Moore promised the ERLC would strive to model a healthy marriage culture.

Placing the ERLC mission in context, Moore observed that “our enemies are not persons of flesh and blood; our enemies are invisible principalities and powers in the air around us.”

“We follow a Christ who did not come into the world to condemn the word but so that through him the world might be saved,” Moore declared. “Even our harshest critic is a person whom we are seeking to see reconciled to God by the blood of Christ.”

“Satan is not afraid of culture warriors or values voters: Satan is afraid of a crucified Galilean who has a great deal of trouble staying dead for very long,” Moore determined, adding that Christians “have no reason to be fearful, sullen or mean. We are not the losers of history.”

“The worst thing that could possibly happen to us has already happened: we’re dead, we were crucified at the place of the skull under the wrath of God,” Moore declared. “The best thing that could possibly happen has happened: we are alive in Christ and our future is seated at the right hand of God and he’s feeling fine. Since Jesus is marching onward and since the gates of hell cannot hold him back, why would we be panicked or concerned about the Supreme Court?”

“Let’s target the right enemy and let us overcome,” Moore advised. “Not because we are a majority or a righteous remnant, but because we are blood covered sinners who know that if the Gospel can change us, it can change anyone.”

Evangelical Groups: Immigration Reform “Imminent” Following Election

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Barrett Duke, Danny Carroll, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Evangelical Immigration Table, Gabriel Salguero, Immigration, Institute on Religion and Democracy, Jim Wallis, Leith Anderson, National Association of Evangelicals, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, National Latino Evangelical Coalition, Sojourners

Officials from 10 Evangelical organizations formed the Evangelical Immigration Table earlier this year.

Officials from 10 Evangelical organizations have cited “reduced pushback” against a citizenship pathway for illegal immigrants in their appeal for a new immigration policy.

Central to the Evangelical Immigration Table’s new push was a sense that the legislative landscape had changed, even though control of the two houses of Congress and the presidency remained largely the same as before recent elections.

The group is calling upon President Obama, Senate and House leaders to act on immigration reform legislation in the first 92 days of the new administration. The number 92 was arrived at as the amount of times the Hebrew word “ger” – which conference call organizers translated as “stranger or immigrant” appears in the Bible.

Officials from the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC), the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) and Sojourners addressed reporters during a Tuesday conference call.

“It appears immigration reform is imminent,” predicted NAE President Leith Anderson, who said the momentum was “delightful and somewhat unexpected.”

Sojourners President Jim Wallis identified a change “on both sides of the aisle” while Barrett Duke of the ERLC described a “new opening.”

“Following last week’s election, it is clear we need a new way forward,” asserted Gabriel Salguero of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition. Salguero touted an increasing number of Hispanic voters in the electorate and reported a “renewed sense of optimism on this issue” in pushing for the 92-day timetable.

The group outlined six points in their immigration platform, including increased border security. A legal pathway to citizenship for those who have entered or remain in the country illegally was identified as the chief goal, with the other points acknowledged as necessary conditions.

“Our ultimate goal is legal status and citizenship, but some things need to take place before legal status can be achieved,” explained Duke. “We need to address the border security issue.”  

Deigning current immigration laws as “twentieth century,” Anderson declared it was “time to catch up” and that immigration reform was a scriptural matter, not a political one.

“The Bible says a lot about how we treat newcomers to the land,” Anderson noted. “The discussion shouldn’t be ‘what should Congress do?’ but ‘What does the Bible teach?’ I am convinced that study will move the conversation forward.”

Anderson was joined in his appraisal by Wallis, who listed immigration reform as “a matter of obedience to Christ, not just a political issue.”

“Jesus tells us very clearly that how we treat the stranger is how we treat him,” Wallis continued. “We have been converted by the Bible to support immigration reform, and by our relationships with brothers and sisters, many of whom are undocumented and are sitting in the pews.”

Members of the Evangelical Immigration Table touted an “ideologically diverse” constituency, with Danny Carroll of NHCLC reporting how “groups that would be inclined to vote Republican are coming onboard with this” and “changing their view.”  The support of Christian organizations Focus on the Family and Intervarsity were also spotlighted.

Asked if the officials had received pushback from within their constituencies on immigration reform, the response varied.

“I haven’t felt a lot of pushback within the Evangelical community,” Wallis reported, with Southern Baptist Duke acknowledging “some concern, but less.”

“Yes, there has been pushback, but less,” echoed NAE’s Anderson.

While the respective chiefs of their organizations minimized internal opposition, Anderson touted the “tens of millions” the Evangelical Immigration Table claimed to represent. Organizers noted that the Southern Baptist Convention’s 16 million communicants make it the largest Protestant church in the country, while NAE counts over forty denominations as members.

“You are dealing with millions of people interested in moving immigration reform in a direction that is just,” Duke said. “We are delighted that the national conversation has moved. There is definitely an opening that is bipartisan.”

“I believe Christ is smiling upon this,” Wallis concluded. “The stranger will be welcomed”

Like It or Not: Richard Land has Class

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Aurora, Barton Gingerich, Colorado, Daniel Bober, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Fox News, grieving, Institute on Religion and Democracy, IRD Blog, Richard Land, shooting, Southern Baptist, tragedy

(Photo Credit: Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary)

On July 20th, Southern Baptist leader Richard Land was called upon by Fox News in the wake of the Aurora theater shootings. Although he lost his radio program for comments made during the Trayvon Martin case, the head of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) should make Baptists everywhere proud for his public appearance, which you can watch here.

First thing you’ll notice: there’s not a lot of hard-hitting theological insights or chucking around Bible verses. So what’s so impressive about this situation? Land (along with fellow guest Dr. Daniel Bober of the Psyciatric Consultants of Florida) avoided the petty rhetorical traps while granting room for national mourning.

“Unfortunately, in our society, we have people who go off the rails and sometimes don’t give very many signals ahead of time that they’re going off the rails, and they perpetrate these terrible atrocities, and we’re all left to grieve as a nation for our fellow Americans…It’s just a terrible terrible tragedy,” Dr. Land explained in a grandfatherly manner. While being cut off by the Fox News anchor, he added, “We need to pray for these people.”

The conversation quickly turned to suspect James Holmes. “I think when something like this happens, we sort of have a knee-jerk reflex. We want to try to understand it and try to make sense of it, but I think the thing to do is not to be reactionary and not to change policy based on one event,” Dr. Bober posited, “There are just some individuals who are deranged and who have sick delusional fantasies, and they live in their own world. There’s nothing we can do as a society on a policy level standpoint to keep that from happening.”

The interviewer then turned to Land again. She obviously wanted to give him a helpful doorway to a narrative about moral decline. She cited the drop in people who consider themselves religious. According to one study, 1 in 5 people do not hold to religious beliefs (which the fine print revealed was a 6% increase from 1990). She inquired, “Does this tell you something about today’s society that might produce the kind of event we saw today?”

What the media wanted: a pastoral figure to complain about how less religion somehow abstractly led to this atrocity, as if moral horrors don’t occur within more Christianized societies. This decline narrative is convenient, brings a sort of tragic-Stoic pleasure to the pious, and is an easy stump speech for when orthodox religion enters the public square. It is, in a word, type-casting for the news cycle.

Land was having none of it, and this is where even progressives should admire him. “Well, perhaps so, although I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on that,” he answered. He then discounted the supposition of massive agnosticism and atheism; he instead described the rise of the “none’s”–those young people who have no affiliation in particular. The anchor then attacked him for being complacent; Land responded that, as a minister of the Gospel, this situation is not good, but other statistics show that America is still one of the most religious countries in the world. Dr. Bober also failed to see a direct link between the statistics and the shootings, but he did observe that America as a culture is in a time of troublesome transitions. He mentioned especially the breakdown of the traditional family and the rise of social media. He noticed that religion gave a “moral and structural framework for people on how to live their lives, and I think we’ve strayed away from that and I think we have some different ideas about that now.” In other words, the two commentators did not disqualify this concern about declining religion and morality, but they were hesitant to tie it inevitably to the shooting itself.

Both Land and Bober decried how social media have replaced social relationships. As such, young people like Holmes are “cocooned” in their houses and entertainment. In many ways, they are caught in the screen of their own egoistic web presence. People may have been surprised with Holmes’ behavior since perhaps no one really knew him. Land recommended turning back to a culture “where we look out for each other.” Bober agreed–cutting off neighbors from one another has been quite harmful.

The American public square has tended to deal with the Aurora shootings in a ham-handed manner. As a Southerner, I found it downright rude of the policy buzzards to swoop in to argue the Second Amendment while the bodies of the victims were still warm. It is improper and obnoxious to crowd out proper grieving with partisan politics. I suppose in the news service, decorum must be stripped away in favor of entertainment via policy debate. In many ways, a revivalistic spiel about decaying morals in this context could be as abstract and exploitative as attacks against and defenses for gun laws.

In his refusal to stoop down to that level–despite the temptation–I commend Richard Land. Many liberals may despise his policy stances; revisionist Christians may shudder at his personification of Southern Baptist public witness (the SBC being a denominational bogeyman for progressives in its own right). In this media appearance, though, they’d be dishonest to ignore that Land handled this situation with remarkable–and unfortunately rare–grace in the face of national tragedy. In a 24-hour news cycle of talking heads, he proved himself a human.