Southern Baptists laud marriage, only not for gays
Southern Baptists have railed against the idea of same-sex marriage since it entered mainstream American culture, believing it goes against God’s will and serves as a sign of the nation’s collapsing morality.
Speaker after speaker at an April summit — the first in modern Southern Baptist history solely devoted to the topic of sex — repeated the theme of homosexuality’s innate wrongness.
This week, straight people are getting just as much attention and maybe more.
About 1,300 pastors, Christian educators and other interested Baptists are packing “The Gospel, Homosexuality, and the Future of Marriage,” a conference presented by the denomination’s policy arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. It continues through Wednesday at Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville.
This time, the schedule includes unwillingly single women decrying men with “daddy issues” and pastors talking bluntly about marital sex, including Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary President Danny Akin’s anecdote about a Christian counselor advising one peeved wife to become a “huntress.”
Russell Moore, the commission’s president, said last week the idea of the conference was to do a better job articulating traditional marriage.
In a “Millennials and Marriage” panel led Monday by Andrew Walker, a denominational policy expert on marriage, panelists said there’s a problem with young people seeing only the Hollywood version of wedlock. One, John Stonestreet, speaker and fellow of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview, laid problems with marriage at the feet of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner, contraceptive pill Plan B and the television show “Glee.”
Panelist Eric Teetsel, director of the Christian advocacy group Manhattan Declaration, cited a pastor who simply pointed out there were a lot of single men and women in his congregation, advised them to marry each other and quickly scheduled 10 weddings to perform. “Just get married,” Teetsel advised the conference.
On the other end of that spectrum, author Jennifer Marshall, domestic policy studies director at the Heritage Foundation, said she’s 42 and has never been married but considers that a form of stewardship, because she can still carry the message of what marriage should be.
Gay marriage still a topic
But same-sex marriage still received plenty of attention. Sherif Girgis, a student pursuing his Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton and his law degree at Yale, said there are no valid legal arguments in support of same-sex marriage. He cited the slippery slope of polygamy and biological incompatibility as reasons against it and called marriage equality supporters “noble pagans.”
Speakers also frequently dismissed the idea that they’re on the wrong side of history. Better on the wrong side of history and the right side of God, they agreed.
Outside the conference, about 25 protesters held a candlelight vigil. Among them was Robbie Maris, board chairman for Out Central in Nashville. He said he’s a nondenominational Christian.
“Their theology is what I used to subscribe to with Exodus International. It’s a harmful and damaging theology,” he said.
Perhaps more noticeable were the marriage equality advocates online who, at times, dominated the convention’s #ERLC2014 hashtag.
Contact Heidi Hall on Twitter @HeidiHallTN.
Learn more
Visit the conference website at http://erlc.com/conference or follow live tweets at #ERLC2014.