God bless Southern Baptists. They may mystify, they may disappoint, but seldom do they surprise.
Take the recent annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas. Delegates, known as “messengers,” voted “overwhelmingly” that the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage should be overturned.
“It puts Southern Baptists on the record,” said Denny Burk, according to The New York Times. “We know that we’re in a minority in the culture right now, but we want to be a prophetic minority.”
Burk is president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which, as you might imagine, relies on the Genesis creation model of domestic pairings. You know: Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, as some rhyme-happy wit memorably described it. (It’s catchy, I have to admit.)
And as noted in various news reports of the Dallas gathering, same-sex marriage opponents take inspiration from the almost 50-year battle that resulted in the Supremes’ reversing the decision that legalized abortion. If that can be done, they figure, well….
My official break with Southern Baptists came in 1992, though the rift between us began much earlier when I began to question the literal truth of some of their teachings. As an adult, I came to believe that focusing on literal truth missed the point. The point was the overall, central teaching, as delivered by the guy who put the “Christ” in Christian:
Love. Love God, love yourself, love your neighbor as yourself. And here’s a really tricky one: Love your enemies, too.
Statutory law isn’t very good at compelling people to love, so it settles for some other guidelines more readily enforceable. Don’t steal from others. Don’t defraud them. Don’t harm them or their property. And for heaven’s sake, don’t kill them. Even those are hard to police, as our prisons attest. Still, it’s worth trying.
And here’s the thing: I wouldn’t mind if Baptist churches declined to perform marriages for same-sex couples. I think it’s their right. Just as it’s their right to decline to accept female pastors, which the recent gathering also voted to do by 60%. It’s foolish to rob the denomination of the spiritual guidance that women could provide, as I’ve said before. But foolishness is quite often perfectly legal.
Can I get an amen?
Where I draw the line is when Baptists or other religions seek to have their views imposed on all. I first wrote about same-sex marriage in 1994, at a time when it was authorized nowhere in the United States. I invited readers then to “attempt an explanation of how it can be constitutional to bar a class of people from entering into a legal contract. For purposes of the state, that’s what a marriage is.”
A number of people took up that challenge, and they sure didn’t like my comparing marriage to a legal contract. “Human contracts are irrelevant; marriages are made by God!” one wrote.
Granted, a happy marriage can sure feel that way. But as anyone who has ever been in an unhappy one – and there are lots of us – knows, they feel more like the Other Guy is playing a leading role.
Can a church step in and dissolve one of those God-forsaken unions? It cannot. You need a court, which pretty much makes my point about the contract thing.
The Baptist resolution opposing same-sex marriage, titled “On Restoring Moral Clarity Through God’s Design for Gender, Marriage, and the Family,” also took aim at other cultural practices and beliefs deemed central to or averse to God’s plan. On the central-to side: Life is sacred “from conception to natural death” and the divine mandate to “be fruitful and multiply.” On the averse-to side, in addition to same-sex marriage: “transgender ideology” and “pursuing willful childlessness.”
I won’t get into them all, but as a willfully childless person who nonetheless feels fully in accordance with God’s plan for me, I take issue with that particular criticism. Trust me, the world is better off without me as a parent. Still, I’m very happy that two Baptists in particular did decide to be fruitful, as it were. So are my brothers.
And who knows. Maybe the Baptists are indeed being “prophetic” by calling for a return to a time when not all God’s people qualified for the same state-approved marital rights. Maybe they’ll manage to get that decision overturned, as well.
I hope not. But if they do, get ready for a push to return to Prohibition.
Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville.