Southern Baptists both commended President Barack Obama and expressed opposition to some of his policies in a resolution passed June 24 at the annual meeting in Louisville, Ky.
A resolution commending Obama for his “evident love for his family” and expressing “pride in our continuing progress toward racial reconciliation signaled by the election of Barack Hussein Obama” as president was one of five resolutions approved by messengers. The Resolutions Committee, chaired by Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary President Danny Akin, considered 26 resolutions.
Other resolutions called on Southern Baptists to consider adopting some of the 150 million orphans who “now languish without families” around the world, affirmed biblical positions on marriage and sexual purity, commended Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville on its 150th anniversary and expressed appreciation for Southern Seminary personnel and others who worked on all the details to make the annual meeting run smoothly.
While the Obama resolution commended him for retaining “many foreign policies that continue to keep our nation safe,” it also said Southern Baptists “deplore” his decision to expand federal funding for “destructive human embryo research,” “decry” increased funding for pro-choice groups, “oppose” any stripping of conscience protections for health care workers unwilling to participate in abortions and “protest” any effort to “eradicate the symbols of our nation’s historic Judeo-Christian faith from public or private venues.”
In a later press conference, Akin said the Obama resolution is a good balance of affirming him and making plain disagreements with some of his policies.
Richard Land, president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and who served as a staff resource, said, “Race has been the serpent in the garden of America from the very beginning,” first with Native Americans and then with African Americans. But since the racial reconciliation resolution passed by the SBC in 1995, the number of black members in Southern Baptist churches has increased 117 percent to almost 800,000, he said. Southern Baptists have gone from being virtually an all white denomination “by choice” in 1970 to about 18 percent minority members now, according to Land.
The sexual purity resolution supports “the biblical definition of marriage as the exclusive union of a man and a woman,” rejects any attempt to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and urges the U.S. Senate not to pass any legislation that would criminalize “religious beliefs and speech about homosexuality and other unbiblical sexual practices,” among other things. (Editor’s Network)
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