A gay rights group that has picketed the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) two years in a row is vowing to “escalate” its protest this year in St. Louis, Mo., unless the convention’s president agrees to certain demands.
SBC President James Merritt will ignore an invitation to meet with the group, however.
Soulforce, an interfaith organization based in Laguna Beach, Calif., claims that SBC teachings against homosexuality contribute to violence against gays. Its executive director, Mel White, has written a letter asking Merritt to meet with the group and to repudiate a statement by a well-known Southern Baptist implying that homosexuals should be put to death.
Dan Greer, Merritt’s associate pastor at First Baptist Church of Snellville, Ga., said Merritt has been traveling out of the country and did not get a chance to read the letter from Soulforce founder Mel White until June 3.
Greer said Merritt has responded to other letters from Soulforce in the past, however, explaining his position on the subject.
“He feels like he has made his position clear to them and will not be responding to this particular letter,” Greer said.
A spokesperson at Merritt’s church said May 29 that he was traveling out of the country and had not seen White’s letter. In the past, Merritt has refused to meet with Soulforce activists, who in turn responded with civil disobedience protests at SBC meetings in 2000 and 2001.
“Because you have refused to hear our concerns about the tragic consequences of the SBC’s anti-homosexual words and actions, we must escalate our protest in St. Louis,” White said in his May 23 letter to Merritt.
Should Merritt refuse the group’s most recent demands, White said, the entire Soulforce delegation will kneel to pray on the sidewalk at the entrances of the America’s Center, site of the June 11–12 SBC annual meeting. Meanwhile, a small delegation of Soulforce volunteers, mostly with Southern Baptist roots, will approach the podium in hopes that Merritt will stand aside and let them address messengers directly.
Thirty-four demonstrators were arrested outside last year’s convention in New Orleans upon trying to enter the meeting hall. Twenty-seven were arrested under similar circumstances in 2000 when the convention met in Orlando, Fla.
“You may be hoping that in time, we will simply give up and go away,” White wrote. “It will not happen. Quite to the contrary, the tragic true stories that we are gathering continue to convince us that Southern Baptist teachings about sexual and gender minorities lead to intolerance, suffering, and even death for God’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender children. By refusing to consider the latest psychological, historical, scientific, pastoral and even biblical evidence, you cause great pain to the people you are called to serve, and you break the heart of God who has called you to that service.”
White is asking Merritt and at least five members of the SBC Executive Committee to attend at least an hour of a day-long summit at the Centenary United Methodist Church in St. Louis, where 25 current and former Southern Baptists will describe their stories of how the SBC’s anti-gay teachings caused them to suffer.
He also asked Merritt to join a press conference outside the meeting hall just prior to his president’s address to repudiate a recent “legal opinion” by Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore saying the state must use “confinement and even execution” to prevent gays and lesbians from parenting children.
“Though you disagree with us about homosexuality and homosexuals, in St. Louis we are also giving you an opportunity to take a stand against false and inflammatory anti-homosexual rhetoric by a Southern Baptist,” White said.
White, a longtime evangelical minister, came out publicly as a gay person in 1993. He published his book, “Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America,” in 1994.
In the past, he had ghost written books for evangelicals, including Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker and Jerry Falwell. (ABP)
Share with others: