c. 1999 Religion News Service
ATLANTA _ Continuing to criticize their famous brother in the faith, Southern Baptists overwhelmingly adopted a resolution Wednesday (June 16) rebuking President Clinton for his recent proclamation of June as”Gay and Lesbian Pride Month.””Our love for our president compels us to rebuke him and publicly to deplore his most public endorsement of that which is contrary to the Word of God,”the resolution reads.
It added that the proclamation”places millions of citizens in the untenable position of either denying a presidential proclamation or rejecting their own deeply held religious convictions.” It was adopted overwhelmingly by a show of hands.
Messengers, as delegates are known, also amended the resolution to criticize Clinton for appointing gay businessman and philanthropist James Hormel, a former dean of the University of Chicago law school, as U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg. It asked Clinton to rescind the appointment.
The vote on adding the Hormel recall was 2,316 to 1,313. About 11,000 messengers were registered for the meeting.
The two-day annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination with 15.7-million members, ended Wednesday.
Earlier in the convention, motions related to the stance of Immanuel Baptist Church of Little Rock, Ark., Clinton’s home church, were ruled out of order. One messenger suggested the church should discipline Clinton or lose its fellowship when the denomination holds its meeting next year. Another suggested that Immanuel should be asked to state whether it agrees or disagrees with the stance of Clinton on homosexuality.
SBC President Paige Patterson voiced empathy for the members of Clinton’s church as they grapple with how to deal with the president’s action.”This is of course, a thorny situation,”he said.”President Clinton’s church there in Little Rock is actually a very conservative, Bible-believing church, full of people that love the Lord Jesus and I know that there must be a great deal of confusion and lack of knowing exactly what to do on their part.” Patterson said he expects they want to love every member of their church, but are troubled by Clinton’s stance.”I’m not inclined to think that there is any virtue at this point in time in acting to refuse seating of messengers of Immanuel Baptist Church,”he added.
Retired National Football League star and ordained minister Reggie White continue the gay theme at the Wednesday evening session.”I’ve never criticized the gay lifestyle,”he said.”I’ve only proclaimed what God himself said.”Quoting Leviticus 18:32, White said,”`do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman.’ God said it; not Reggie White.” Baptists at the Georgia Dome rose to their feet with applause.
White added that more attention should be given to those who have”changed”from homosexuality to heterosexuality.”I have no problem with anyone living the way they want to, but when you bring it out and you try to push it, not only on myself but on my children,I cannot stand back and be quiet.” Patterson welcomed”new Southern Baptist”Jerry Falwell to the podium for the benediction to close the Wednesday morning session.
Falwell’s independent church in Lynchburg, Va., contributes to the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia, a new convention created in 1996. Falwell gave a brief prayer of thanks that the denomination’s conservative resurgence had moved it from”defense to offense”with a renewed focus on evangelism.
During the session, Baptists also approved a number of other resolutions including a commendation of those who affirmed their Christian faith in the midst of school violence.”Many Christian students and teachers have stood faithfully, courageously, and publicly for their faith in the midst of such violence _ some even to the point of death _ whose witness has resulted in many trusting Christ for salvation,”the resolution reads.
On the evening before the resolution was passed, Brad and Misty Bernall, the parents of Cassie Bernall who declared her faith in God just before she was shot in the Columbine High School shootings in April, spoke of the challenges of parenthood.
Brad Bernall, whose daughter was active in a Littleton, Colo., church affiliated with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, said parents need to be vigilant about their children’s behavior.”We need to know what our kids are doing,”he said.”We need to know who they’re doing it with. Sometimes we have to go in their rooms and look around.” In other resolutions, Baptists voiced their opposition to ethnic cleansing and research that destroys human embryos.
They declared”abhorrence of those governments and militant groups which support and commit such malicious violence”as genocide and ethnic cleansing and urged Congress and multinational bodies to end such regimes.
The resolution on human embryonic and stem-cell research states:”Efforts to rescind the ban on public funding of human embryo research rely on a crass utilitarian ethic which would sacrifice the lives of the few for the benefits of the many.” The delegates also added their voice to other conservative Christian groups criticizing the American Psychological Association, which published in a journal a study finding some sex between adults and”willing”children might not be as harmful as once thought.”We call on the American Psychological Association to exercise appropriate editorial discretion in the future by refusing to publish studies or reports which attempt to normalize or legitimize immoral behavior, including `adult-child sex,'”the resolution says.
Baptists also passed resolutions encouraging evangelism, affirming the”changelessness”of God, and decrying promotion of sexual promiscuity and violence in the entertainment industry.
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