Posted on 06/18/2011 12:15:44 AM PDT by balch3
PHOENIX (ABP) – The president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary said June 15 that Southern Baptists need to repent of a “form of homophobia” that keeps gays and lesbians out of their churches.
Albert Mohler responded during his report to the Southern Baptist Convention to a question from Peter Lumpkins, a Southern Baptist blogger, about whether comments attributed to him in a March 24 Christian Science Monitor article were accurate.
Writer Jonathan Merritt, a Southern Baptist minister and well-known social critic, quoted Mohler as saying “We’ve lied about the nature of homosexuality and have practiced what can only be described as a form of homophobia,” and “We’ve used the choice language when it is clear that sexual orientation is a deep inner struggle and not merely a matter of choice.”
Mohler said at the convention “there is no way anyone in fair mindedness can be confused about what I believe about homosexuality,” because he has written more than 200 articles about it, but that “the reality is that we as Christian churches have not done well on this issue.”
“Evangelicals, thankfully, have failed to take the liberal trajectory of lying about homosexuality and its sinfulness,” Mohler said. “We know that the Bible clearly declares – not only in isolated verses but in the totality of its comprehensive presentation – the fact that homosexuality not only is not God’s best for us, as some try to say, but it is sin.”
“But we as evangelicals have a very sad history in dealing with this issue,” he continued. “We have told not the truth, but we have told about half the truth. We’ve told the biblical truth, and that’s important, but we haven’t applied it in the biblical way.”
“We have said to people that homosexuality is just a choice,” Mohler said. “It’s clear that it’s more than a choice. That doesn’t mean it’s any less sinful, but it does mean it’s not something people can just turn on and turn off. We are not a gospel people unless we understand that only the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ gives a homosexual person any hope of release from homosexuality.”
Mohler said churches have not done their job until “there are those who have been trapped in that sin sitting among us.”
Lumpkin said in is blog June 16 that Mohler’s answer was not what he expected to hear and something “I’ll be digesting a long time.”
Mohler has appeared on television programs and been quoted in mainstream media many times over the years in opposition to gay marriage, ordination of gay clergy and other aspects of what he has called attempts to “normalize” homosexual behavior.
As recently as May Mohler described a decision by the Presbyterian Church (USA) Presbytery of the Twin Cities in Minnesota to ordain persons without regard to sexual orientation as “yet another tragedy in the sad history of mainline Protestantism’s race toward total theological disaster.”
In June Mohler objected to use of the term “clobber scriptures” to describe Bible verses that label
In a more enlightened age, he would be burned at the stake. I think this is the same gang of misfits who just supported amnesty for illegals.
Looks like Harold Camping may be right about only one thing - the era of organized Christian Churches is over.
he thinks that churches should be open to gays and lesbians, period....he doesn't condone it, he calls it a sin....but its a difficult sin and how would God fearing people help those in sin except to open up the church to them.....afterall, God is the answer to our questions, isn't HE?
The Baptists, in general, don't mess around on the issues of Abortion or Homosexuality.
The Southern Baptists are high on my list of which church to be Baptised in, I hope they are a good one.
Oh, Lordy ping!
Homosexuality is a cancer.
Romans Chapter 1
I strongly doubt the SBC would go this way.
There’s a vide of his speech somewhere, but I don’t have a URL.
imho, let’s wait to read his actual words before condemning the man.
have you checked out orthodoxy?
Churches should be open to those who repent, and start living their lives according to the scriptures.
Using the term “homophobia” is exactly the wrong word.
That is true, thanks for the post, SoConPubbie
Kick him out just for using the word “homophobia”. That in and of itself is a blatant surrender.
GOOD post!
Thank you!
Albert Mohler would probably be better served picking up a copy of the Bible and yelling his message at it.
The SBC might not, but I highly expect Mohler will continue down this path; every once and again he'll come out with a statement that's increasingly questionable, misguided, and just plain erroneous. It seems he want to go down the path of appeasing the world, not realizing that wholesale rejection of Christ is the only appeasement the world will accept.
No, Catholic, but not orthodoxy, I read about them am and are sometimes moved, but the intimacy of a more raw connection with God is appealing.
The SBC supports illegal immigration so it’s not surprising to me that they support gay rights.
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