c. 1998 Religion News Service

SALT LAKE CITY _ Southern Baptists ended their annual meeting Thursday (June 11) by narrowly defeating a proposal calling on President Clinton’s Little Rock, Ark., church to discipline him if he refuses to rescind an executive order barring discrimination against gay federal employees.

The proposal _ which won 48 percent of the votes cast _ called on Clinton’s home church, Immanuel Baptist Church, to consider disciplinary action against him in light of a denominational rule that says churches are not”in cooperation”with the Southern Baptist Convention if they affirm homosexual behavior.

The resolution as finally adopted called on Congress to nullify Clinton’s order _ a presidential directive that does not need the approval of Congress _ barring discrimination in the federal workplace on the basis of sexual orientation unless the president rescinds it first.”I believe that we need to take a strong stand because one of our Southern Baptist churches has the president of the United States going around the country saying he’s a Southern Baptist,”said Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, Calif., who offered the defeated proposal as an amendment to a resolution criticizing homosexuality.

Drake was a catalyst for the boycott of Walt Disney Co. that the 15.9-million-member denomination began at its annual meeting last year in Dallas.

The adopted resolution called homosexuality”immoral”and”contrary to the Bible”and condemned the addition of”sexual orientation civil rights”to the list of legally protected civil rights.”Homosexual politics is masquerading today as `civil rights’ in order to exploit the moral high ground of the civil rights movement even though homosexual conduct and other learned sexual deviance have nothing in common with the moral movement to stop discrimination against race and gender,”the adopted resolution says.

Focus on the Family President James C. Dobson, the keynote speaker on the annual meeting’s final day, congratulated Baptists on passing the resolution.”We simply must take a stand, and on that issue we will be vilified and we will be marginalized and we will be insulted,”said Dobson.”But we answer to a higher authority. We have a responsibility.” Dobson, whose one-hour speech covered an array of moral issues, garnered the most applause _ and standing ovations _ when he addressed a controversial late-term abortion procedure.”They call it partial-birth abortion,”said Dobson.”That’s not what it is. It’s murder during delivery.” He condemned churches for what he said was their apathetic response to”the evils of the culture,”including abortion.”When Bill Clinton vetoed the bill that would have banned murder during delivery, there should have been a million calls to Washington and 100,000 people walking the streets of that city,”said Dobson.”The church has been AWOL on that and other issues.” Dobson, a member of the Church of the Nazarene, thanked the Baptists for positions they took last year _ approving the Disney boycott and”rejecting the gender-neutral Bible.” But Dobson’s appearance was criticized by a leading Baptist moderate.

The Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Baptist Alliance and executive director of the The Interfaith Alliance, a Washington-based anti-religious right organization, said Dobson’s address was”an attempt to rally the convention like a precinct captain with an eye on the November election.” Dobson, a political conservative, has been active in Republican Party politics and in recent months has threatened the GOP leadership in Congress with large-scale defections by religious conservatives unless the party acts more forcefully on issues of concern to the religious right, such as abortion and prayer in the schools.”James Dobson’s message, on the heels of the new SBC Faith and Message Statement (on the family) creates a social litmus test for Southern Baptists, placing adherence to a social agenda above affirmation of basic doctrinal beliefs in determining what it means to be a Baptist, and this is unacceptable,”Gaddy said.

The last day of the meeting at the Salt Palace Convention Center, which was attended by 8,577 messengers, or delegates, also saw passage of several other resolutions, generally with little debate or opposition.

Messengers approved a resolution opposing women in combat because”it rejects gender-based distinctions established by God in the order of creation”and”subordinates the combat readiness of American troops, and the national security of the United States, to the unbiblical social agenda of ideological feminism.” Michael Whitehead, the chairman of the resolutions committee, said the resolution is not designed to disparage those serving in the military but rather to address national security.”It puts women at risk but it also puts the men at risk and weakens the national defense,”said Whitehead, vice president of business affairs at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo.

The convention also adopted a resolution calling on Congress to stop”public funding of religious bigotry,”citing public funding of the play”Corpus Christi,”in which Jesus is depicted as having sex with his disciples, and the recent Public Broadcasting System documentary program on contemporary biblical scholarship,”From Jesus to Christ,”which was described as”an attack on biblical Christianity.”

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