The Southern Baptist Convention Can't Get Their Stance on Homosexuality Straight
A few years ago, Christians may have thought that holding to the simple and clear teaching of Scripture on homosexuality was an easy matter of either affirming it is a sin, or dismissing the biblical teaching as irrelevant. Obviously, one’s position on this will make clear whether the Bible is held as God’s Word (or not) and thus authoritative (or not).
It seems that the choice was simple enough to make. We either believe God’s Word, or we don’t. It is a matter of authority. When the Bible speaks, God speaks.
This simple and basic understanding of identifying homosexuality as a sin, however, is now being confounded and obfuscated and by none other than some of the highest and most prestigious leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Undoubtedly, the SBC wants to—and usually does—remain faithful to the Word of God. They, of course, want to keep the denomination free from the threat of liberalism, which is something they barely escaped from less than a century ago. They are often a biblically reliable source of information for the media when sought for the Christian perspective on various topics. Also, being known for their active involvement in the conversation for supporting biblical sexuality, activists have targeted their conferences with protests in the hopes of pressuring them to back down from claims that homosexuality is a sin and that homosexuals are sinners, which they have not caved in to—at least not entirely.
Somewhat recently the SBC has started shifting their stance on the issue of homosexuality, be it ever so slightly and with the most subtle of nuances. My painfully honest assessment is that the Southern Baptist Convention is, yet again, toeing the slippery slope of liberalism.
At the 2014 Together for the Gospel (T4G) Conference, there was a panel discussion on homosexuality that was hosted by Dr. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Dr. Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the public-policy arm of the SBC. In this discussion was the author of the book Is God Anti-Gay? The author, Sam Allberry, is a pastor at an evangelical Anglican church in the U.K. and is, by his own public attestation, a same-sex-attracted man.
Both Dr. Mohler and Dr. Moore highly recommended the book as being “very important”, announcing that everyone at the conference would get a free copy. Dr. Mohler praised the author for writing a book that contained “so much gospel wisdom [and] . . . biblical wisdom.”
When prompted by Mohler for what the church’s main theological and pastoral efforts need to be, Sam states that the church needs to create a culture where people will be comfortable to talk about this issue. While he states that “God’s Word is clear on this issue” and that “it is good” he does not shy away from articulating the view that there are true Christians who are innately same-sex-attracted. In his own words, the church can “help those of us with same-sex attraction to know that [God’s Word] is clear on this issue and good” (emphasis mine). He goes on to share how he is excited to see how the church will be able to show “true gospel inclusivity . . . and to model true community and love”.
Mohler goes on to praise the author’s candidacy and the book’s simplicity in its telling readers that the lifestyle a same-sex-attracted Christian will have to live is a single and celibate one. It’s almost as if Jesus never debunked the idea that as long as you don’t commit a physical act of sexual immorality then you are not guilty of sin—think, Sermon on the Mount and His teaching on lust and adultery in Matthew 5.
In essence, Dr. Mohler and Dr. Moore have affirmed the “gay Christian” insofar as they are celibate ones. They have bought into the idea that people are born this way. While Mohler and Moore have never backed down from the biblical position that homosexuality is a sin—even the desire and not just the act—they contradict not only themselves, but the Word of God itself by adopting terms and definitions that are not meant to be adopted. Whether they realize it or not, they are softening on the issue.
The point at which they have redefined the issue comes down to a matter of terms. They have come to the conclusion that sexual identification is different than sexual orientation and that homosexuality is different than same-sex attraction. In other words, you can choose whether you identify as a homosexual (sexual identification), but you cannot choose your proclivity to it (sexual orientation).
This is nothing other than an irresponsible game of semantics reeking of political posturing. Backing into these new definitions answers a problem that does not exist in the Bible. In other words, this conclusion comes only as a result of finite men being unable to comprehend the far reaches of sin in the recesses of the human heart. In reality, their belief that identification is different than orientation is self-refuted in that declaring oneself as being oriented a certain way is in itself a self-identification of it.
Any sexual endeavor or desire other than that which is between a man and a woman in marriage is deeply immoral and any sexual endeavor or desire outside of the man-woman context in general is especially perverted. By arguing vainly around terms we unwittingly raise the normalcy of homosexuality to something just barely askew from the appropriate and biblical construct.
Mohler stated at a national conference in 2014 that “Early in this controversy, I felt it quite necessary, in order to make clear the gospel, to deny anything like a sexual orientation. I repent of that.”
The Washington Post followed up with an article titled Southern Baptists, LGBT activists happily coexist, but for how long? The writer’s attendance of the overall amiable conference that included the SBC elite as well as so-called Christian LGBT+ activists, observed of Mohler that he “seemed to have a change in tune, if not an outright change of heart.” Even Dr. Moore’s “shift in tone was noticeable” the Post stated. “Moore regularly referred to people who are gay—not merely people who are sexual sinners in need of redemption.”
Added to this, but consistent with the SBC’s waffling, was J.D. Greears’s comment that “We have to love our gay neighbor more than our position on sexual morality”—as if biblical love cannot do both perfectly. This defies the Apostle Paul’s exhortation to Timothy to do just that: “Flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace . . . the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim 2:24–25).
Comments like Greear’s can only be made by people who do not have a deep enough conviction that comes from the Word of God.
Appealing to the fact that many people at a young age simply come to discover these same-sex attractions, Mohler feels compelled to attach some legitimacy to the fact that people are born this way though he is careful in his articulation: “It is not something that is, in itself, freely chosen. That does not mean that the individual is not completely responsible before God for how that orientation is then handled.”
The tension that Mohler creates for himself will undoubtedly continue to haunt him until he can say with some conviction that any desire that someone feels—be it “wanted” or not—is not proof of an alternative pre-equipped sexual orientation, but proof of how many different ways the sin nature can manifest itself. Would we try so hard to reason the prevalence of premarital sexual relations, or pornography, or pedophilia? Of course not.
The position that Mohler and many others at the SBC are backing into is one that is supported by a loose handling of Romans 7, where Paul uses coveting as an example of how entrenched the sin nature is in fallen man. Rather than seeing Paul’s illustration for what it is—an example of the sin nature—they assert that Paul had a predisposition to covet that he never asked for but had to deal with. Not only does this miss the point of the general nature of sin, but it also downplays the especially perverted nature of homosexuality.
Mohler’s T4G guest, Sam Allberry, stated in a different interview with Denny Burk, Professor of Biblical Studies and the Director of The Center for Gospel and Culture at the SBC’s Boyce College, that “our genes are fallen” and gave room for the possibility of science eventually discovering a “gay gene” being that these desires are “innate”. Don’t miss the significance of this subtlety.
While both Sam and Denny affirmed that “same-sex lust is not a good thing” they couldn’t emphatically condemn same-sex attraction per se. There was a constant recognition of the innateness of homosexual desires that some people are given. Sam himself continued to identify as a same-sex attracted man throughout the interview. Make no mistake, while the SBC’s leadership would never say that someone is born gay or born homosexual, they will say that people can be sexually oriented differently based on no choice of their own. They have simply reworded the issue.
Sam himself has stated that he has reworded the issue to avoid all of the buzzwords that come with the term “gay” since it usually assumes a chosen and continued lifestyle and identification. To him, “same-sex attraction” is different if you can simultaneously say that you identify with Christ and remain celibate. Though one may refuse to identify with being a homosexual, they are still recognizing the existence of their homosexual "nature". Paul, knowing full well the effects of the Fall, calls homosexuality unnatural and “contrary to nature” (Rom 1:26) and does not ever blur definitions to identify it as anything else.
Ultimately, the argument that our genes are fallen is a weak attempt to make excuses for the existence of the desires. To suggest that fallen genes are the reason for sexual perversity is to completely downplay the reality that “the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil” (Lk 6:45), or that “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander” (Matt 15:19) (emphasis mine).
The “flesh” that biblical writers have in view when referring to our fallenness is still that of spiritual bankruptcy, not skin cells. Again, it seems that the growing crowd at SBC confounds and obfuscates these issues to create a problem that they then attempt to solve artificially.
The popularity of this belief, however, is spreading. In 2015, SBC mega-church pastor Matt Chandler had Sam speak at his church where he opened with “I’ve been experiencing same-sex attraction kind of my whole adult life. As long as I’ve had any kind of sexual feelings, they’ve been towards other men, rather than towards women.”
Sam’s message continues to be one that affirms the “gay Christian” who can be saved to live a celibate life, rather than one that promotes the homosexual being changed, washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. To continue to identify yourself as a “same-sex attracted” man or woman is a position that, in itself, declares that you are not sanctified, thus betraying that the Holy Spirit has not yet regenerated them into a new creation.
Sam has set up a website for those who are struggling with this same-sex attraction—www.livingout.org. Here he offers stories rather than theology in an effort to meet the culture where they are at. “We need to answer narrative with narrative” he told Denny Burk, rather than with proposition, which, to him, is not as persuasive to the typical teenager—another appeal to modern psychology, rather than the powerful Word.
On this website you will find many testimonies of people who continue to embrace their homosexuality but claim that they identify with Jesus and have found all of the community and belonging and fulfillment and intimacy they have been looking for all along.
With all smiles, one young lady stated: “Being a Christian doesn’t mean that I have to be straight. I’ve always been attracted to girls. That hasn’t changed at all and I don’t think it will—I don’t see that happening. That’s what feels natural to me.”
Another young man said confidently: “I am [same-sex attracted] and God is good and God created me to be who I am.”
Another man, now married to his wife Gaby, stated matter-of-factly: “My sort-of orientation—my attraction—is still primarily same-sex attracted, but I am also attracted to Gaby.”
What?
Why is the Southern Baptist Convention taking people from this unbiblical and even blasphemous persuasion and making them the poster-children in their seminaries, colleges, and conferences for how to think about homosexuality?
Friends, we must be careful not to buy the lie that Satan would so desperately want us to believe, which is that God can be honored and obeyed while holding to a sinful form of existence.
There are no efforts to rewrite definitions and contexts and nuances and dispositions in order to accommodate pornography, or bestiality, or pedophilia, so why for homosexuality? The world is pushing this issue like no other and some are beginning to soften and crumble. The battle that is raging is one of a spiritual nature, thus it demands spiritual armor. If we are not armed with the Word of God that discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart, then we will not stand.
Sam Allberry and his friends in the SBC need to stop saying two different things. They don't need to repent of denying a sexual orientation, they need to repent of embracing it. Only when we put off the things that entangle do we win the race. No one should identify as some kind of a third class of human race that merely refrains from living out their "natural" inclinations in order to glorify God. No, a new creature has new instincts and new habits. All men and women have the same spiritual needs and God is powerful to save if called upon.
“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.” –The Apostle Paul | Galatians 5:24–25 (emphasis mine).
“Thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.” –The Apostle Paul | Romans 6:17–18
In Christ Alone,
Ben
