Southern Baptists Target Porn, Sports Betting, Same-sex Marriage

Southern Baptists conference this week in Dallas will be asked to approve resolutions calling for a legal ban on porn and a reversal of the U.S. Supreme Court's approval of same-sex marriage.


The proposed resolutions require laws on gender, marriage and family based on what they state is the biblically stated order of magnificent development. They likewise require lawmakers to curtail sports wagering and to support policies that promote childbearing.


The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's biggest Protestant denomination, is also expected to debate controversies within its own house throughout its yearly meeting Tuesday and Wednesday - such as a proposed ban on churches with females pastors. There are also contacts us to defund the organization ´ s public policy arm, whose anti-abortion stance hasn ´ t reached supporting criminal charges for ladies having abortions.


In a denomination where assistance for President Donald Trump is strong, there is little on the advance agenda referencing particular actions by Trump considering that taking office in January in locations such as tariffs, immigration or the pending budget plan costs including cuts in taxes, food help and Medicaid.


Southern Baptists will be meeting on the 40th anniversary of another Dallas annual conference. An impressive showdown took location when a record-shattering 45,000 church representatives clashed in what ended up being a decisive blow in the takeover of the convention - and its seminaries and other agencies - by a more conservative faction that was also aligned with the growing Christian conservative movement in governmental politics.


The 1985 showdown was "the hinge convention in regards to the old and the new in the SBC," stated Albert Mohler, who became an essential agent in the denomination's rightward shift as long time president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.


FILE - A guest holds up a ballot throughout the Southern Baptist Convention's annual conference in Anaheim, Calif., Tuesday, June 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)


Attendance this week will likely be a fraction of 1985's, but that meeting's impact will appear. Any debates will be among solidly conservative members.


Much of the proposed resolutions - on betting, porn, sex, gender and marriage - show long-standing positions of the convention, though they are specifically pointed in their demands on the larger political world. They are proposed by the main Committee on Resolutions, whose recommendations normally get strong support.


A suggested resolution says lawmakers have a duty to "pass laws that reflect the reality of production and natural law - about marital relationship, sex, human life, and family" and to oppose laws opposing "what God has actually made plain through nature and Scripture."


To some outdoors observers, such language is theocratic.


"When you speak about God ´ s style for anything, there ´ s not a great deal of space for compromise," said Nancy Ammerman, professor emerita of sociology of religion at Boston University. She was an eyewitness to the Dallas meeting and author of "Baptist Battles," a history of the 1980s debate in between doctrinal conservatives and moderates.


"There ´ s not a lot of room for individuals who put on ´ t have the very same understanding of who God is and how God operates on the planet," she said.


Mohler said the resolutions show a divinely produced order that predates the writing of the Scriptures and is affirmed by them. He stated the Christian church has actually always asserted that the created order "is binding on all persons, in all times, everywhere."


Separate resolutions decry porn and sports betting as destructive, requiring the former to be prohibited and the latter cut.


At least some of these political positions are in the realm of plausibility at a time when their conservative allies control all levers of power in Washington and many have actually accepted aspects 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 called for reviewing the 2015 Supreme Court decision legislating same-sex marital relationship across the country. Other spiritual conservatives - including some in the Catholic postliberal motion, which has affected Vice President JD Vance - have actually promoted the view that a robust government should enact laws morality, such as prohibiting pornography while alleviating church-state separation.


And conservatives of various stripes have actually echoed one of the resolution's require pro-natalist policies and its decrying of "willful childlessness which adds to a decreasing 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 accused of being inefficient. Ten former Southern Baptist presidents endorsed its ongoing funding, though one other required the opposite.


A staunchly conservative group, the Center for Baptist Leadership, has posted online articles crucial of the commission, which is adamantly anti-abortion however has actually opposed state laws criminalizing females seeking abortions.


The commission has interested Southern Baptists for assistance, citing its advocacy for religious liberty and versus abortion and transgender identity.


"Without the ERLC, you will send the message to our country's lawmakers and the general public at big that the SBC has chosen to desert the public square at a time when the Southern Baptist voice is most required," said 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 migration crackdown, stating it has injured church participation and raised worries. "Order are required, however enforcement must be accompanied with compassion that doesn ´ t demonize those leaving injustice, violence, and persecution," the statement said.


The Center for Baptist Leadership, nevertheless, knocked the denominational Baptist Press for working to "weaponize empathy" in its reporting on the declaration and Leatherwood for supporting it.


Texas pastor Dwight McKissic, a Black pastor who shares a lot of the Southern Baptist Convention's conservative positions, criticized what he sees as a backlash versus the commission, "the most racially progressive entity in the SBC."


"The SBC is transitioning from an evangelical company to a fundamentalist company," he published on the social networks website X. "Fewer and fewer Black churches will make the transition with them."


A modification to ban churches with women pastors failed in 2024 after directly stopping working to gain a two-thirds supermajority for 2 consecutive years. It is expected to be reintroduced.


The denomination ´ s belief statement says the office of pastor is limited to guys, but there remain arguments over whether this applies only to the lead pastor or to assistants as well. Over the last few years, the convention started purging churches that either had women as lead pastors or asserted that they could serve that function. But when an SBC committee this year kept a South Carolina megachurch with a woman on its pastoral personnel, some argued this proved the need for a constitutional modification. (The church later stopped the denomination of its own accord.)


The meeting comes as the Southern Baptist Convention continues its long membership slide, down 2% in 2024 from the previous year in its 18th successive annual decrease. The company now reports a subscription of 12.7 million members, still the biggest amongst Protestant denominations, many of whom are shrinking quicker.


More appealing are Southern Baptists' baptism numbers - a key spiritual crucial indication. They stand at 250,643, surpassing pre-pandemic levels and, at least for now, reversing a long slide.


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FILE - Messengers represent worship during a Southern Baptist Convention yearly conference Tuesday, June 11, 2024, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Doug McSchooler, File)