Posted on 06/11/2014 9:36:22 AM PDT by NYer
BALTIMORE (RNS) Pushing back against a cultural tide of growing acceptance of transgender people, Southern Baptists adopted a statement affirming the creation of “two distinct and complementary sexes.”
Thousands of Southern Baptist Convention delegates voted on a new president and several resolutions at their meeting on June 10, 2014. Photo by Van Payne via Baptist Press
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The resolution was passed overwhelmingly Tuesday (June 10) as some 5,000 people attended the annual meeting of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination and elected as president the Rev. Ronnie Floyd, pastor of a northwest Arkansas megachurch.
The delegates, known as “messengers,” affirmed “God’s good design that gender identity is determined by biological sex and not by one’s self-perception.”
They added that they had compassion for people with gender conflicts, called them “image-bearers of Almighty God” and condemned “acts of abuse or bullying committed against them.”
But they went on the record to oppose gender assignment surgery and cross-sex hormone therapies. They expressed their hope that transgender people would “experience renewal” through a faith in Jesus.
Ross Murray, who runs the religion program at the LGBT advocacy organization GLAAD, criticized the statement for being inconsistent.
“They want to both welcome people in and yet do not want to recognize them as a full person and probably even more fully as a child of God,” he said. “The Southern Baptist Convention is so much missing out on the opportunity to connect with another part of God’s creation.”
In another cultural pushback, Baptists affirmed “the sufficiency of Scripture regarding the afterlife” and criticized best-selling movies and books that have focused on heaven and suggested descriptions of it.
“Many of these books and movies have sought to describe heaven from a subjective, experiential source, mainly via personal testimonies that cannot be corroborated,” they said.
In the same session where the resolution was passed, a messenger asked that “Heaven Is for Real” be removed “for theological reasons” from LifeWay Christian Stores, which are affiliated with the SBC.
The Baptists, whose denomination was founded by supporters of slave-owning missionaries, passed another statement marking the 50th anniversary of enactment of the Civil Rights Act.
It said they “lament and repudiate this nation’s long history of racial segregation as well as the complicity of Southern Baptists who resisted or opposed the dismantling of the evil of racial hierarchy in our churches or society.”
Yet another resolution affirmed their opposition to government sponsorship of casinos and lotteries and asked Americans of all religious and political convictions to join in a call to end the practice, which they say has amounted to “corrupt deals” and “broken dreams.”
They also rejected predatory payday lending, calling those who are engaged in it to “consider the great damage they are causing in the lives of vulnerable people and to adopt a just lending model.”
The Baptists suggested churches and employers should provide other ways to solve short-term financial problems in their communities, including financial stewardship classes.
FYI, ping!
Fixed it.
wow, they affirm that God created two complementary sexes???
OMG that is revolutionary stuff nowadays. In a world in which Facebook recognizes 56 different genders, they somehow decide that God in His wisdom created only two????? OMG (sarcasm)
This mutt is clueless. The SBC, in no way, did not recognize anybody as not a "full person". Further, there is not "another part of God's creation" as His creation is perfect and it is man's interference that is causing deviance and abhorence.
I am glad that I am Catholic. I cannot believe they consider “Heaven is for Real” a sin and banned it in their stores. Stunning!
Why it’s not Biblical, look to The Word of God for info about heaven (it’s not talked about a lot), not some person’s “testimony” (no where in scripture does it say that anyone, but a select few-Jesus included) ever went to heaven and came back, and when they did they didn’t talk about it (that we know of from scripture)..
a BTTT for the Baptists!
Hey, hey, ho, ho Baptist church is where to go :)
Yes you did fix it.
Not a sin, theologically unsound.
That six year old saw things that proves that Heaven exists. There is no other way to explain it. He never saw his Grandfather as a child and he KNEW what his Grandfather looked like as a child. Heaven is for real (no pun intended).....I wish you believed in that. I hope you will someday.
The fact that it’s a nice movie doesn’t make it theologically sound though, does it?
The SBC isn’t telling people not to watch it, or condemning the movie. The messenger was only suggesting that it shouldn’t be presented as theologically backed by the SBC.
“Gender reassignment” is such a pretty euphemism for the truth, which is exactly what the far left hopes to find in re-framing each of their sick and perverted proposals. If they called it “surgical mutilation of an otherwise healthy body to match the delusions of a diseased mind” it would be more honest, but it wouldn’t poll as well.
There is good reason to be skeptical. There are a lot of near-death experiences out there and some of them sound plausible and some are quite weird. Whole cults have originated around these “experiences”. We need to be careful. We don’t know for sure that the child’s experience was not coached along by his parents, or that he may have had a dream. I was skeptical of it from the beginning. I think we all should be. These are days that so much perversion fills every part of life, and Satan surely wants to pervert ANYTHING associated with God, so that he can lure people into placing their experience before that of the Word of God. So, be careful to not condemn because of this. We should be skeptical of everything we hear until we confirm it in the Word of God.
No mention of sin, banning books, book burning nor anything else of the kind.
They also do not sell many other books in their financially supported bookstores yet do not ban them, burn them, etc.
Any hysterical comments regarding what the leadership choose to sell or not sell are totally out of line merely because you as a Catholic, which you seem to think is pertinent to your point, do not support the SBC the votes by the membership.
These proceedings dealt with a number of deeply important points. The movie was very likely a side issue.
I’ve just been on several other threads the last few days watching various freepers dissing the denominations held dear by other freepers. Critics may say they are commenting about a specific item in a long article, but it’s clear they are leaping upon yet another opportunity to grind the axe of negative stereotyping and religious bias, much of it Catholic vs Protestant or Protestant vs Catholic, or Protestant and Catholic vs Mormon, etc.
Not that that’s what you’re doing here.
I thought that, too, at first glance. But on re-reading, that sentence seems to explain the reason for the following sentences, which were statements of atonement for any of SB's past support for slavery or Jim Crow. Without the explanation, it might not have been so clear as to why this issue was raised. They were putting it in the historic past, not commenting on some recent embarrassment.
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