Texas Baptist Forum

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Not politics; 'God's word'

Jo Hudson, pastor of Dallas' Cathedral of Hope United Church of Christ, a nationally prominent gay-affirming congregation, told a TV audience, "Not all Christians believe what Dr. Jeffress believes." She hit a point we all need to consider. Not everyone, including some Christians, believes as Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, believes, that homosexual activity is sinful.

Gay marriage debate. (RNS photo courtesy Tim Pierce)

Jeffress is a Bible-believing pastor with a passion for the word of God and compassion for the lost. He said it right when speaking about same-sex marriage: "And any deviation from that pattern, whether it be adultery, cohabitation, unbiblical divorce, polygamy or same-sex marriage, is a deviation from God's standard. If you are going to expand marriage to include anything and everything, you have devalued the real thing."

This is not about being politically correct. It's about God's word. When Hudson said she believes God's word and God's revelation are open and changing, Jeffress responded, "Polls change and people change, but God's word never changes, and we cannot condone what God has condemned, which is anything outside of marriage."

A hardy amen goes out to Jeffress.

Robert Prothro

Marshall

Not just theology

The emotional reactivity around the contraception mandate in the health care bill is not about religious freedom. For the Catholic bishops and some of the Southern Baptist hierarchy, the contraception debate is about members and money.


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Texas Baptist ForumSince the time of Constantine, the salvation of the institutional Catholic Church has depended on large families and infant baptism to multiply both members and money. St. Augustine, guilt-ridden and grief-stricken, looked through the lens of his Manichean and Neo-Platonic training to teach that each infant was tainted by original sin—sex—and needed to be baptized to save its soul. Contraception messes with the Catholic Church's influence and bank account.

We Baptists rebelled for religious freedom 400 years ago because the church state and state church pushed infant baptism as a means of control over members and money.

Dean Russel Moore of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary attacks our "contraceptive culture" because it encourages sexual permissiveness. Moore's boss, President Al Mohler, exposed the subterfuge of Moore's attack in 2009 when Mohler publically encouraged Southern Baptists to have a "full quiver" of children to counter declining baptisms, declining membership and declining contributions.

Baptists historically have grown through multiplication rather than through evangelizing outsiders. Birth control messes up multiplication, both in members and money. Mohler has made a mess of the religious freedom of Baptists.

Herman Green

Rockport

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