Pride month is here, but the Southern Baptists didn’t get the memo and continue to wage a culture war on LGBTQIA+ equality. Just over 10,000 members voted for the denomination to oppose marriage equality at the annual Southern Baptist Convention hosted in Texas, but the move has been overshadowed by the immense No Kings Protests the following week.
The SBC is the world’s largest Protestant organization, but Protestantism works differently from Catholicism. Unlike the Vatican Church, there is no singular doctrine or set of beliefs among Protestant groups – and the SBC isn’t legally binding. Instead, it acts as a loose agreement by its 47,000 member churches to work towards their shared mission, but individual churches remain autonomous and are allowed to govern their own decisions. In essence, this means the SBC vote is both important and insignificant: by endorsing a ban on same-sex marriage, the SBC is advising all Americans who attend one of its many affiliated churches to fight against equality, BUT the SBC cannot force individual churches to do anything and marriage equality has strong support by the general public.
The resolution manages to not use the word ‘ban’ explicitly, stating instead for its members to call for the “overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God’s design for marriage and family” and “for laws that affirm marriage between one man and one woman.” Of course, I feel it is worth mentioning that ‘Biblical marriage’ is nothing like what the conservative right and tradwives propose it as – actual Biblical marriage was a business transaction between families, arranged by parents with sufficient dowries, and allowed polygamy, even though those factors would be morally reprehensible to religious conservatives.
An overturn of Obergefell v. Hodges also wouldn’t do much. When decided in 2015, 36 states had already legalized same-sex marriage and many other states had legal provisions to accept queer marriages performed out-of-state or arrangement for legally binding civil unions. There was a spurt where states were updating outdated bans on marriage equality – but churches have a lot of money, and they have purposely paid for legislators to slowly create more bans on queer marriage to enforce if Obergefell is reversed. However, the SBC’s resolution calls for ALL laws and court decisions affirming marriage equality to be overturned – but that notion shows how out-of-touch most of the religious right is. Christians have lamented how church attendance rates have plummeted over the last couple of decades, since about three in ten self-identified Christians attend services weekly, according to Gallup. That doesn’t include the number of Americans who do not self-identify as Christian, since the Pew Research Center has charted the steady decline of Americans identifying as Christian and instead as spiritually unaffiliated, ‘spiritual but not religious,’ or even atheist/agnostic.
| Percent of Church-Goers | Change from 2000 | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US Adults | 30% | -12% |
| Mormon/Latter Day saints | 67% | -1% |
| Protestant | 44% | -1% |
| Islam | 38% | +4% |
| Catholic | 33% | -12% |
| Judaism | 22% | +7% |
| Orthodox | 26% | +9% |
| Buddhism | 14% | -2% |
| Hinduism | 13% | -8% |
| None/Atheist/Agnostic | 3% | -3% |
| Other | 21% | -24% |
At the same time, roughly 70% of Americans support marriage equality and believe same-sex couples should be recognized by law as equally valid as traditional marriages. The religious right has only been effective at weaponizing transgender lives as a moral issue, but even that has caveats since the American public generally supports rights for transgender adults and also believes trans issues have no place in current politics. This framework also extends to other political issues Christian groups are involved with, such as the widespread support for abortion. The SBC and religious right believe the destruction of LGBTQIA+ rights will supercharge their attendance, but the opposite is incredibly more likely – especially when considering current civil unrest. “This is a very visible example of how attacks on the LGBTQ+ community as a whole have intensified, even as politicians aim at transgender people as a tactic to divide us,” said Laurel Powell of the Human Rights Campaign to the BBC. “We will never stop fighting to love who we love and be who we are.”
The resolution also touched on other issues, like gender identity and fertility laws. Overall, the SBC is asking legislators to “pass laws that reflect the truth of creation and natural law – about marriage, sex, human life, and family,” oppose “any law or policy that compels people to speak falsehoods about sex and gender,” and see children “as blessings rather than burdens.” It’s a large resolution that covers many topics, from Americans’ lack of commitment to having more children to banning all forms of sports betting and pornography. The SBC seeks to return to an era of history where religion-mandated laws and “renewed moral clarity in public discourse regarding the crisis of declining fertility and for policies that support the bearing and raising of children with intact, married families.”
The Associated Press wrote, “it also frames that issue as one of public policy… It laments that modern culture is ‘pursuing willful childlessness which contributes to a declining fertility rate,’ and Andrew Walker, chair of the Committee on Resolutions, said at a news conference that the marriage resolution shows that Southern Baptists aren’t going along with the widespread social acceptance of same-sex marriage.” It also noted that 10,541 total church representatives (referred to as ‘messengers’) attended the event, which is less than a quarter of what the SBC once was 40 years ago. In a statement to the New York Times, Denny Burk said, “We know that we’re in a minority in the culture right now, but we want to be a prophetic minority.”
As church rates plummet, is this the hill the Christian right wants to die on? Time will tell, as well as the results of the upcoming midterm elections.