Tanya Prada opened issue #1: Southern Baptists Target Porn, Sports Betting, S...

Tanya Prada
2026-04-10T20:38:26Z

Southern Baptists conference this week in Dallas will be asked to authorize resolutions requiring a legal ban on porn and a turnaround of the U.S. Supreme Court's approval of same-sex marriage.

The proposed resolutions call for laws on gender, marital relationship and household based upon what they say is the biblically mentioned order of divine production. They likewise require legislators to cut sports wagering and to support policies that promote childbearing.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the country's biggest Protestant denomination, is likewise anticipated to dispute controversies within its own home throughout its yearly conference Tuesday and Wednesday - such as a proposed restriction on churches with ladies pastors. There are also calls to defund the company ´ s public policy arm, whose anti-abortion position hasn ´ t encompassed supporting criminal charges for ladies having abortions.

In a denomination where support for President Donald Trump is strong, there is little on the advance agenda referencing particular actions by Trump considering that taking office in January in areas such as tariffs, immigration or the pending budget plan expense including cuts in taxes, food aid and Medicaid.

Southern Baptists will be fulfilling on the 40th anniversary of another Dallas annual conference. A legendary showdown happened when a record-shattering 45,000 church agents clashed in what became a definitive blow in the takeover of the convention - and its academies and other agencies - by a more conservative faction that was also lined up with the growing Christian conservative motion in presidential politics.

The 1985 face-off was "the hinge convention in terms of the old and the new in the SBC," stated Albert Mohler, who became a crucial agent in the denomination's rightward shift as longtime president of the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

FILE - A guest holds up a ballot during the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif., Tuesday, June 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

Attendance today will likely be a portion of 1985's, but that meeting's impact will be obvious. Any arguments will be amongst solidly conservative members.

A number of the proposed resolutions - on betting, porn, sex, gender and marriage - reflect enduring positions of the convention, though they are particularly pointed in their needs on the broader political world. They are proposed by the official Committee on Resolutions, whose suggestions generally get strong support.

A suggested resolution states legislators have a duty to "pass laws that reflect the fact of production and natural law - about marital relationship, sex, human life, and family" and to oppose laws opposing "what God has actually made plain through nature and Scripture."

To some outside observers, such language is theocratic.

"When you discuss God ´ s style for anything, there ´ s not a lot of space for compromise," stated Nancy Ammerman, teacher emerita of sociology of religious beliefs at Boston University. She was an eyewitness to the Dallas conference and author of "Baptist Battles," a history of the 1980s controversy in between theological conservatives and moderates.

"There ´ s not a great deal of room for people who put on ´ t have the same understanding of who God is and how God operates in the world," she stated.

Mohler said the resolutions show a divinely produced order that predates the writing of the Scriptures and is affirmed by them. He said the Christian church has actually always asserted that the produced order "is binding on all persons, in all times, all over."

Separate resolutions decry pornography and sports betting as destructive, requiring the former to be prohibited and the latter curtailed.

At least some of these political stances remain in the realm of plausibility at a time when their conservative allies manage all levers of power in Washington and numerous have actually accepted aspects of a Christian nationalist program.

A Southern Baptist, Mike Johnson, is speaker of your home of Representatives and 3rd in line to the presidency.

At least one Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, has required revisiting the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage across the country. Other spiritual conservatives - consisting of some in the Catholic postliberal movement, which has actually affected Vice President JD Vance - have promoted the view that a robust federal government should enact laws morality, such as banning porn while alleviating church-state separation.

And conservatives of various stripes have actually echoed one of the resolution's require pro-natalist policies and its decrying of "willful childlessness which contributes to a declining fertility rate."

Some preconvention talk has focused on defunding the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the Southern Baptist Convention's public policy arm, which has been implicated of being inadequate. Ten former Southern Baptist presidents backed its ongoing financing, though another required the opposite.

A staunchly conservative group, the Center for Baptist Leadership, has posted online posts crucial of the commission, which is adamantly anti-abortion however has actually opposed state laws criminalizing women looking for abortions.

The commission has actually interested Southern Baptists for support, mentioning its advocacy for spiritual liberty and versus abortion and transgender identity.

"Without the ERLC, you will send the message to our nation's lawmakers and the public at big that the SBC has chosen to desert the public square at a time when the Southern Baptist voice is most needed," stated a video declaration from the commission president, Brent Leatherwood.

A group of Southern Baptist ethnic groups and leaders signed a declaration in April citing concern over Trump's immigration crackdown, saying it has actually hurt church participation and raised worries. "Law and order are necessary, however enforcement should be accompanied with empathy that doesn ´ t demonize those fleeing oppression, violence, and persecution," the declaration said.

The Center for Baptist Leadership, however, denounced the denominational Baptist Press for working to "weaponize empathy" in its reporting on the declaration and Leatherwood for supporting it.

Texas pastor Dwight McKissic, a Black pastor who shares much of the Southern Baptist Convention's conservative stances, criticized what he views as a backlash against the commission, "the most racially progressive entity in the SBC."

"The SBC is transitioning from an evangelical organization to a fundamentalist company," he published on the social networks site X. "Fewer and fewer Black churches will make the transition with them."

An amendment to ban churches with ladies pastors stopped working in 2024 after narrowly stopping working to gain a two-thirds supermajority for two successive years. It is anticipated to be reestablished.

The denomination ´ s belief statement says the workplace of pastor is limited to men, however there remain disagreements over whether this applies just to the lead pastor or to assistants as well. In current years, the convention began purging churches that either had ladies as lead pastors or asserted that they could serve that function. But when an SBC committee this year retained a South Carolina megachurch with a woman on its pastoral staff, some argued this showed the need for a constitutional change. (The church later quit the denomination of its own accord.)

The conference comes as the Southern Baptist Convention continues its long subscription slide, down 2% in 2024 from the previous year in its 18th consecutive annual decrease. The company now reports a membership of 12.7 million members, still the largest among Protestant denominations, a number of whom are shrinking much faster.

More appealing are Southern Baptists' baptism numbers - a crucial spiritual crucial indication. They stand at 250,643, going beyond pre-pandemic levels and, at least in the meantime, reversing a long slide.

Associated Press religious beliefs coverage receives support through the AP ´ s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is entirely responsible for this material.

FILE - Messengers represent praise throughout a Southern Baptist Convention yearly conference Tuesday, June 11, 2024, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Doug McSchooler, File)