So. Baptists' Choice: Sexual Freedom or Church-y Ignorance

NASHVILLE—The Southern Baptist Convention (that's what they call themselves) is a trip, isn't it? They got done with their Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) convention on Wednesday, and they've just announced the "good news": "As sexualized as American culture is, it does not appear to be at the saturation point," said ERLC President Russell D. Moore. But before adult content producers take that as a sign that the Baptists are willing to absorb a bit more internet and DVD porn, rest assured, that's not the conclusion the ERLC wants you to take away. "The problem is not that our desire for sex is so strong but that our love for God is so weak," charged J.D. Greear, lead pastor of the Summit Church in Raleigh/Durham, N.C. (just down the road from Belle Knox) in a speech on "pastoral care for sexual sin."  "[O]ur message cannot simply be, 'Stop having sex.' Our message has to be, 'Behold your God.'" And then stop having sex? Because the general message of the convention seems to be, if people paid a little more attention to God, they'd stop fucking around so much and stop looking on the internet at other people fucking. "I think the greatest threat to the church today is the Christian pastor, the Christian school teacher, the Christian college and seminary student who exalts sound theology, who points to the Bible and then retreats to the basement computer" for an hour of porn, said Heath Lambert, executive director of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, noting that, "porn is something evangelicals can do in a dark room behind a shut door after they have railed against homosexual marriage." Therefore, one might think, the SBC's best course would be to bring porn out of the "dark room" and acknowledge that even evangelical Christians like to watch other people fuck—but no; their answer to just to make people feel guilty about watching porn. "You and I are living in a world full of sexual brokenness in which the devil is saying to people all around us, 'I know who you are. I know what you've done,'" Moore said, adding that many people inside and outside the church are "hiding from the voice of God because of the devil's accusation." One might read that quote to mean that God really isn't concerned with Its congregants' sexual lives, but it's the Devil who makes people think It does—but of course, one would be wrong; that isn't at all how it's meant. "[W]e need to dedicate ourselves to a decades-long fight to end this," Lambert said, referring to porn watching. After all, according to Lexington, Kentucky pastor David Prince, porn is "devastating the spiritual vitality of our churches," while yet another pastor, Tony Merida, also of Raleigh, is convinced that "Christians can battle sex trafficking by halting their consumption of pornography." And believe us, the SBC really thinks porn, and possibly even sex, is a problem, since statistics show that "25 percent of evangelical men report using pornography in the past week," "14 percent of evangelical men report porn usage in the past day"—and a whopping "48 percent of evangelicals report having [had] premarital sex with their spouse," according to Mark Regnerus, the guy who wrote the book on why gays make bad parents—a book that has been summarily rejected by the scientific community. In other words, when they aren't listening to their clergy babbling on about "sexual sin," a lot of SBCers are just like the rest of us—and one can only suspect that that 25 percent figure is way low, since a lot of people won't admit to watching porn no matter what. But when David Prince told the assemblage of just over 200 convention attendees that, "Our approach can't be, 'Just say no.' That is not Christian sexuality. We want them to have a comprehensively, Christ-centered view of sexuality," what he really means is, the only way to Do It is to be married (none of that "gay" marriage stuff), in a bedroom, in the dark, with the man on top, and probably praying before and after the event (see "invitation hymn" below). Still, if there's one thing the convention pointed out, it's that the SBC is incredibly conflicted when it comes to advising its congregants about sex. "I'm tired of preachers bragging about their 'hot wife'," said Kevin Smith, assistant professor of preaching (yes, that's a real job) at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. "No. 1, 'hot' is an objectifying term. There is nothing good, profitable or godly about calling your wife 'hot' in public. All it does is set up an examination [of your wife]." Smith's advice? Pastors and other Christians should address sexuality with the "tone of Scripture" and "in ways that reflect God's glory." "[W]e must realize the over-sexualization of our society can't lead to the a-sexualization of the church," he said. "[W]e can't get to a place where the church" doesn't talk about sex... "We're trying to heighten the conversation. We're not trying to make sex less dramatic. We're trying to make sex more dramatic." Actually, that statement is hardly surprising, when it's clear that so many religious leaders are trying to create the fiction that humans aren't, at base, sexual creatures who like to have sex, often aren't too picky about who they have it with (other people's spouses, people they just met in a bar, people of the same gender, etc.) and will buy front-row seats if they can watch other attractive people Do It in front of web- or other cams. That reality would be "mak[ing] sex less dramatic." The idea that people need to follow their clergyperson's teachings on how Jesus wants them to have sex—that's making it "more dramatic," in the sense that a drama is a fiction, not reality. And let's not even discuss what the Church thinks of gay sexuality... But according to some at the convention, that is the choice. With hetero monogamy, God "is showcasing, He [sic] is picturing, He [sic] is demonstrating the union of Christ and His [sic] church," Moore stated on Tuesday, adding, "That is not just a relationship. It's a gospel tract. It's an invitation hymn." (Guess that's why so many women—and probably a few men—yell "Oh God, oh God, oh God" when they cum...) "[I]f we tell the culture around us what we think they want to hear or if we practice the sort of selective universalism that tells them what they want to hear only as it relates to sexuality, we will not breed evangelism," Moore said. "We will breed cynicism from a group of people who will say, 'If we cannot trust you to tell us the truth about your Gospel, then how can we trust you to tell us how to be resurrected from the dead?'" That's almost a good point. Actually, people should be asking, "If we cannot trust you to tell us the truth about real humans' natural sexual desires and practices, then how can we trust you to tell us how to be resurrected from the dead?" It's exactly that sort of question that has driven many formerly-religious people to secularism. But it gets worse. According to Moore, America's "sexualized culture" is the primary cause of pornography, divorce, abortion, child abuse and the objectification of young women—a view that ignores, for example, the Catholic hierarchy's decades-long protection of, and even active assistance to pedophile priests, not to mention the subjugation of women of all ages, who are supposed to be little more than "helpmeets to their husbands"—and certainly not priestesses of the cloth. It ignores the fact that the SBC is firmly against any sex education (beyond an exhortation to abstinence) being taught in the schools—a stance that leads to more unwanted pregnancies, which in turn lead to more abortions, or to "shotgun" marriages to unfit spouses that almost inevitably end in divorce. And then there's that massive collection of porn in the catacombs under Vatican City... "The Gospel of Jesus Christ does not pretend that the path to sexual purity is easy," Moore advised. "The Gospel of Jesus Christ says that the entire life of the Christian is one of bearing a cross, which is why we need the entire body of Christ ... so that the stronger will bear up the weaker." Yeah, that's one way of looking at life: one "cross to bear" after another, and somehow, normal humans' sexuality is one (if not several) of those crosses—and we all know what happens when you're done bearing that cross: You get strung up on it. And that's exactly what the SBC is planning to do to its followers, probably figuratively—for now. We'd say, "Good luck with that"—but we wouldn't mean it.