{"id":121603,"date":"2014-04-25T08:00:40","date_gmt":"2014-04-25T12:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/?p=121603"},"modified":"2014-08-29T14:27:53","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T18:27:53","slug":"al-jazeera-offers-its-own-take-literally-on-sbc-sex-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2014\/04\/al-jazeera-offers-its-own-take-literally-on-sbc-sex-summit\/","title":{"rendered":"Al Jazeera offers its own take (literally) on SBC sex summit"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><\/p>\n<p>A week or so ago I mentioned, in a meeting that included both traditional and progressive evangelicals, that the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention was going to hold a three-day \u201csex summit\u201d in Nashville and lots of people laughed. They obviously had not looked at some of the rather interesting <a href=\"http:\/\/erlc.com\/summit\/schedule\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">sessions on the docket<\/a>, which included newsworthy real-life topics (at least to me) such as pastors who are wrestling with their own porn addictions, advice for those counseling people caught up in a variety of kinds of sexual sins, a major session on sex trafficking and another built on new sociological data on how religious beliefs influence people\u2019s views on sex.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, right, and there was a panel discussion \u2014 as opposed to a keynote address \u2014 on \u201cThe Gospel and Homosexuality.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This conference drew quite a bit of coverage and, at times, lit up the Twitter-verse. There really is no way to do justice to all of the coverage \u2014 some of it quite good. However, I <a href=\"http:\/\/america.aljazeera.com\/articles\/2014\/4\/24\/evangelicals-andhomosexualitysouthernbaptistconventionsummit.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">did find a wrap-up piece<\/a> from Al Jazeera America that kind of summed up the negative side of things, the attitude among some mainstream reporters that they knew what the conference was really about, even if that wasn\u2019t what the conference was really about.<\/p>\n<p>I want to take a rather different approach on this one. We are going to walk through this news feature passage by passage, sometimes paragraph by paragraph, looking for news and information that is actually drawn from this content-rich event. Yes, this news report has a Nashville dateline so the implication is that the Al Jazeera America scribe was actually present at the event.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>NASHVILLE, Tenn. \u2014<\/strong> Prominent evangelical Christian leaders met here this week to discuss a topic that\u2019s typically taboo in Sunday church: sexuality. The Southern Baptist Convention\u2019s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) was hosting its first \u201cleadership summit,\u201d which its new leader said he hoped would provoke a \u201cfrank conversation\u201d on sexual ethics. Speakers tackled topics including pornography, \u201chookup culture,\u201d premarital sex, the decline of marriage, sexual abuse, divorce and, arguably the most contentious, homosexuality.<\/p>\n<p>Younger attendees at the event, a meeting of the country\u2019s largest Protestant denomination, sported beards, stylish plaid and the occasional NPR tote bag. Everyone spent the week tweeting \u2014 the summit attracted much attention from the Christian blogosphere \u2014 and one speaker jokingly asked people to \u201cturn on their Bibles,\u201d a nod to the popularity of e-books and Bible apps.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There are a few nice details in there. However, I thought that these churches were obsessed with sex and talked about sex and sexual sins all the time. I guess I was wrong on that. There do appear to be two short quotes from sessions, although not about newsworthy topics.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The group\u2019s president, Russell Moore, took a gentler, less combative approach than his predecessor, Richard Land, who was known to make incendiary comments. (Just last week, Land suggested on a radio show that homosexuality is caused by childhood sexual abuse.) Most Southern Baptists, like other mainstream evangelicals, have given up talk of \u201creparative therapy\u201d for gays in favor of love, grace and \u201cpeacemaking.\u201d At this week\u2019s summit, Florida pastor Jimmy Scroggins called for an end to \u201credneck theology\u201d and said, \u201cWe have to stop telling \u2018Adam and Steve\u2019 jokes.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>OK, we have another pair of tiny quotes, but it\u2019s hard to tell what they are about. However, it appears that this conference \u2014 from the viewpoint of this writer \u2014 was primarily about homosexuality. Let\u2019s continue:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But the event was also a setting where the word \u201cfornicators\u201d was used without irony, and gay people were referred to as \u201chomosexuals.\u201d The meeting \u2014 with sessions such as \u201cThe Gospel and Homosexuality\u201d \u2014 made clear that these evangelicals are not wavering in their stance on certain issues: Marriage is between a man and a woman, homosexual behavior is a sin, and church leaders must not condone it. And that raises the question: In a time of fast-growing embrace of gay rights, when more of their fellow Christians are insisting there\u2019s room for debate on the issue, can conservatives maintain their vision of orthodoxy?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Still no significant material from any of the content sessions. It appears that the purpose of the event was to illustrate what may or may not be taking place among evangelicals on gay issues. Can you say World Vision? In other words, the news hook for coverage of this event was not the content of the event itself.<\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s about time to get to the meat of this story:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>These days, for the first time, evangelicals are beginning to argue among themselves about homosexuality. Last month World Vision, the large evangelical anti-poverty organization, announced it would begin hiring married gay Christians. Less than 48 hours later, under public pressure from evangelical leaders including Moore, the organization reversed the decision.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Nothing there from the summit.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The reversal was a triumphant moment for conservatives. But the fallout caused an uproar among progressive evangelicals. Polls consistently show that young evangelicals are far more accepting of gay relationships than older evangelicals are. A poll released in February by the Public Religion Research Institute, for example, found that white evangelical millennials are more than twice as likely as their elders to support same-sex marriage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Nothing there from the summit.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A new book by 24-year-old Matthew Vines, who is gay and evangelical, is adding to the debate. \u201cGod and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships,\u201d published on Tuesday by a Christian imprint of Penguin Random House, started to attract attention even before its release. The president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, R. Albert Mohler Jr., released an e-book rebuttal the same day.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview last week, Vines said many evangelicals are open to changing their views on gay marriage, even if they tell pollsters they don\u2019t support it. Young believers have gay classmates, co-workers and family members; the social costs of maintaining traditional views on gays are high, he said. \u201cTheir theological position is so much more open to changing than [Moore] wishes it were,\u201d Vines said. \u201cThat\u2019s not something he or any other evangelical leader is going to be able to change.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It would appear the purpose of this material is to react to the event (the one not being covered) with material collected before the event?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Lydia Bean, a sociologist at Baylor University, said evangelicals are going to face mounting questions over whether there is room in their churches for a wider spectrum of views. \u201cYou\u2019re going to see more and more of that conflict within evangelicalism over the next five to 10 years.\u201d Bean\u2019s forthcoming paper in the journal Sociology of Religion, based on national survey data, locates 24 percent of evangelicals in the \u201cmessy middle\u201d: They remain opposed to homosexuality on moral grounds but still support civil unions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Perhaps this is more pre-event background material or was Bean at the conference? It\u2019s hard to tell.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As the \u201cmessy middle\u201d grows, some argue that religious leaders will have to decide if condemning homosexuality is central to the definition of evangelical Christianity. Otherwise, they will face the possibility that their numbers and influence will shrink. But Moore rejects this premise and many of the poll numbers that support it: Many pollsters, he says, define \u201cevangelical\u201d too broadly. Few Southern Baptist millennials are wavering in their support for the church\u2019s values, he told Al Jazeera \u201cIf we have to choose between church growth and Jesus, we choose Jesus, but I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a choice that has to be made.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>OK, it\u2019s nice to seek a quote from the key figure in the event. Once again, however, where is the actual content of the session Moore led? Wouldn\u2019t it be good to have reactions to the actual information presented in the conference sessions the reporter was sent (maybe I am just being naive) to cover?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But Randall Balmer, an Episcopal priest and chair of the religion department at Dartmouth College, said he thinks Moore is \u201cwhistling in the dark.\u201d \u201cI would not want to be a church leader defending the restriction of gay rights these days,\u201d said Balmer, who has written frequently about the history of American evangelicalism. One option for conservatives, he said, would be to hold their ground and \u201cdecamp to the margins\u201d of the culture. \u201cPart of me, albeit reluctantly, will have to admire that,\u201d he said. Another option would be for churches to maintain the same official beliefs about homosexuality but hold them more quietly, making room for disagreement in the pews.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Again, was Balmer at the conference or was he called to react to the publication\u2019s view of what was supposed to happen in the conference? One thing is very, very clear: This conference was all about homosexuality. Totally. Beginning to end. These Southern Baptist folks are totally obsessed with homosexuality.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>At this week\u2019s summit, compromise was not on the table. On Tuesday, Mark Regnerus, a controversial sociologist and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, presented new unpublished data that found only 11 percent of young evangelicals who attend church weekly support gay marriage. Regnerus\u2019 much-disputed 2012 research on gay parenting was cited frequently at the summit as proof that children need a mother and a father.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We have an actual sentence of factual material presented in one of the sessions! Oh joy! I wonder, however, if his presentation was all about, you know, homosexuality or did it have anything substantive about the announced topic which was, for those who have forgotten, \u201cSex in America: Sociological Trends in American Sexuality\u201d \u2014 especially those linked to religious beliefs and practice.<\/p>\n<p>Well, there is this fine <a href=\"http:\/\/www.religionnews.com\/2014\/04\/22\/new-study-mark-regnerus-suggests-religion-can-predict-sexual-behavior\/?utm_source=ABPnews+Today&amp;utm_campaign=da9a3d034c-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_dd0edff639-da9a3d034c-53697525\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Religion News Service piece<\/a> about the content of this particular session. Oh, wait. It\u2019s by you know who \u2014 former GetReligionista Sarah Pulliam Bailey. Clearly she thought the goal of going to this conference was to actually listen to and cover the contents of some of the sessions.<\/p>\n<p>Hang on, we are almost done.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cI believe these truths are ascertainable by virtue of human reason, and they seem to be borne out in social science data,\u201d Andrew Walker, the ERLC\u2019s 29-year-old director of policy studies, said after hosting a session on threats to biblical marriage. He said he wouldn\u2019t change his views on gay marriage and parenting even if social science conclusively proved that gay parents are no worse than straight ones. \u201cI would still say, based on biblical precedent, that the child in that situation, while maybe on social outcomes is successful and flourishing, still has not been given access to either a mother or a father.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So was the presentation by Regnerus about his old study or his new one? What did he say in his Nashville presentation that, you know, centered on his totally new material that was being aired for the first time? You know, the new news?<\/p>\n<p>And now, the end.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Southern Baptist leaders gathered in Nashville are holding firm. It\u2019s not only their approach to homosexuality that many see as old-fashioned: They want Christians to wait until they marry to have sex, and to abstain completely from pornography.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re moving into a time where a Christian understanding of sexuality is going to seem strange, it will seem freakish, and will in many cases seem subversive to the people around us,\u201d Moore said in his keynote speech on Tuesday night. \u201cWhat I think we ought to do as people of God is not to run away from the strangeness of Christianity.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And there it is, folks! Yes, this story ends with one real, live quote from a major session at this event. Now was there anything else offered during the Nashville summit that was linked to that rather countercultural statement?<\/p>\n<p>Just asking.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A week or so ago I mentioned, in a meeting that included both traditional and progressive evangelicals, that the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention was going to hold a three-day \u201csex summit\u201d in Nashville and lots of people laughed. They obviously had not looked at some of the rather interesting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,27,966,58,18,12,71,29,49],"tags":[990,1989,1691,1988,578],"class_list":["post-121603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-evangelicals","category-gays","category-marriage-family","category-people","category-religion","category-same-sex-marriage","category-science","category-sex","tag-al-jazeera","tag-ethics-and-religious-liberty-commission","tag-nashville","tag-russell-moore","tag-southern-baptist-convention"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Al Jazeera offers its own take (literally) on SBC sex summit<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A week or so ago I mentioned, in a meeting that included both traditional and progressive evangelicals, that the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2014\/04\/al-jazeera-offers-its-own-take-literally-on-sbc-sex-summit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Al Jazeera offers its own take (literally) on SBC sex summit\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A week or so ago I mentioned, in a meeting that included both traditional and progressive evangelicals, that the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2014\/04\/al-jazeera-offers-its-own-take-literally-on-sbc-sex-summit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"GetReligion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-04-25T12:00:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-08-29T18:27:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/files\/2014\/04\/Feet.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"tmatt\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"tmatt\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"10 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2014\/04\/al-jazeera-offers-its-own-take-literally-on-sbc-sex-summit\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2014\/04\/al-jazeera-offers-its-own-take-literally-on-sbc-sex-summit\/\",\"name\":\"Al Jazeera offers its own take (literally) on SBC sex summit\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2014-04-25T12:00:40+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-08-29T18:27:53+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1\"},\"description\":\"A week or so ago I mentioned, in a meeting that included both traditional and progressive evangelicals, that the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2014\/04\/al-jazeera-offers-its-own-take-literally-on-sbc-sex-summit\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2014\/04\/al-jazeera-offers-its-own-take-literally-on-sbc-sex-summit\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2014\/04\/al-jazeera-offers-its-own-take-literally-on-sbc-sex-summit\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Al Jazeera offers its own take (literally) on SBC sex summit\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/\",\"name\":\"GetReligion\",\"description\":\"&quot;The press . . . just doesn&#039;t get religion.&quot; - William Schneider\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1\",\"name\":\"tmatt\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/1a42e72927fb665669c4e8531d08ce40?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/1a42e72927fb665669c4e8531d08ce40?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"tmatt\"},\"description\":\"Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. 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