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LOUISVILLE?Southern Baptist Convention messengers passed a short but substantive list of resolutions that included one on the “racial progress signaled by the election of Barack Hussein Obama” that also included strong statements opposing the president’s policies on abortion, destructive human embryo research, and his declaration of June as “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Month.”
The resolution also pled with Obama to appoint “strict constructionist,” “original intent” judges.
Other resolutions covered adoption and orphan care, biblical sexuality and public policy, the 150th anniversary of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, and appreciation to Louisville-area Baptists and the seminary for their hosting the SBC annual meeting.
President Obama
The non-binding resolutions passed with little floor discussion except for the Obama resolution, with messengers refusing a proposed floor amendment to include statements citing concern about Obama’s promotion of homosexuality in public schools and praising SBC Executive Committee President Morris Chapman’s call for more Christian K-12 schools.
The resolution noted years of institutional racism in America, the traditional family as foundational for any nation, the importance of national defense, the sanctity of human life, a righteous judiciary, and a dependence on God.
It commended the president for “his evident love for his family” and “for his decisions to retain many foreign policies” that have helped stem terrorism at home, and urged him to maintain a strong military defense.
In addition to opposing Obama’s policies and agenda on embryo research, abortion funding and abstinence-education defunding, the resolution noted opposition to “the President’s determination to strip pro-life healthcare professionals of their conscience protections.”
The resolution urged Obama to “nominate strict constructionist judges who seek to make decisions based on the original intent of the United States Constitution and, therefore, faithfully interpret rather than make law or impose their political views on the nation.”
Further, the resolution protested any effort to “eradicate the symbols of our nation’s historic Judeo-Christian faith from public or private venues.”
The document resolved “That we earnestly pray” for the president to “use the constitutional authority assigned to his office to promote liberty and justice for all people, including the unborn,” and to “join hands with President Obama and his administration to advance the causes of justice insofar as those efforts are consistent with biblical principles.”
At a news conference following the vote, SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission President Richard Land said that since the 1995 SBC resolution on racial reconciliation, African American Southern Baptists have grown from 347,000 to 797,000, and other non-white Baptists are growing numerically as well.
The Resolutions Committee “really has its hand on the pulse beat of where Southern Baptists are” in terms of social values in stating its disagreements with Obama, Land said, “but at the same time [Southern Baptists] are very gratified” that an African American could be elected president.
“Race has been the serpent in the garden of America for a long time,” Land said.
During the only debate of the Resolutions Committee report, committee chairman Daniel Akin told messengers although the committee was sympathetic to the contents of an amendment to the resolution by T.C. Pinckney of Alexandria, Va., it would be more fitting in the context of a different resolution or document.
Asked to explain how his amendment was germane in a resolution about Obama, Pinckney told messengers:
“The resolution deals at some length with families and with homosexuality and that is really propagated in the schools. President Obama has appointed, recently, a gentleman who has headed the homosexual effort to increase their influence in the public schools as one of his top advisors in education. I think the [amendment] is very, very pertinent.”
Bruce Shortt, a layman and attorney from the Houston suburb of Spring, spoke in favor of Pinckney’s amendment, explaining that Obama appointee Kevin Jennings, founder and president of the Gay and Lesbian Student Education Network, “is responsible for placing of thousands of clubs in public middle schools and high schools that promote the homosexual and bisexual lifestyle.”
