By Bob Allen
The week after Southern Baptists complete a national conference on “The Gospel, Homosexuality and the Future of Marriage” in Nashville, Tenn., some other Baptists will gather in a church in Washington to explore an alternative view.
Allyson Robinson, a transgender Baptist minister currently serving as transitions pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, and David Gushee, a Mercer University ethics professor and senior columnist for ABPnews/Herald, are scheduled to deliver keynote addresses at a regional training conference sponsored by the Reformation Project, a non-profit organized last year by Matthew Vines, author of God and the Gay Christian.
Scheduled guest speakers include Amy Butler, a columnist for ABPnew/Herald installed this past weekend as senior pastor of the prestigious Riverside Church in New York City, and Danny Cortez, pastor of the small New Heart Community Church in La Mirada, Calif., recently kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention for violating the denomination’s ban on churches which “act to affirm, approve or endorse homosexual behavior.”
Vines, a Harvard-educated gay Christian, burst onto the evangelical scene with an hour-long YouTube video of a message at a church in March 2012 describing why he believes most of the traditional church teaching on the issue of homosexuality is wrong.
Last year the Reformation Project kicked off its educational program with an intensive theological study of LGBT issues, limited to 50 scholars. The upcoming event scheduled Nov. 6-8 at National City Christian Church in Washington is the first of several training conferences designed to introduce as many people as possible about how to use the Bible to make a case for affirming and integrating LGBT people into all aspects of church life.
Vines described the content Oct. 4 on “State of Belief,” a weekly radio program hosted by Interfaith Alliance head Welton Gaddy:
“This conference is primarily a Bible-based training event for Christians who are LGBT affirming or at least sympathetic but who want and need the biblical tools in order to be able to go back to their pastors, their parents, their peers, their colleagues and say, ‘I don’t just feel this way in my heart, but I can actually defend my beliefs from a Bible-based standpoint, and I’m not giving up on the authority of Scripture.’”
“I am maintaining my belief in the Bible’s centrality and authority while also arguing that the Bible does not speak to the issue of LGBT Christians in a way that should require us to exclude them and their committed relationships from the life of the church,” he said.
“It’s very content focused,” Vines explained. “It’s all about Scripture and how you talk about Scripture and LGBT issues with Christians who aren’t there yet, where the bar for persuasion is high or where the conversation is possible.”
In addition to Robinson and Gushee, other general session speakers include Vines, New Testament professor James Brownson from Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Mich., and Nikilas Mawanda, founding director of Trans Support Initiative-Uganda, a group that advocates for transgender and intersex people in the East African country notorious for its punitive anti-gay law struck down this summer by the nation’s Supreme Court.
The list of guest speakers includes Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church; Justin Lee, founder and executive director of The Gay Christian Network; and Frank Schaefer, a United Methodist pastor defrocked and reinstated after conducting a same-sex marriage ceremony for his son
Another is Vineyard Church pastor Ken Wilson, whose recent book prompted a majority of members of La Mirada Community to adopt a “Third Way” approach neither condemning nor affirming of homosexuality. Governing boards of both the California Southern Baptist Convention and Southern Baptist Convention responded by initiating action declaring the congregation not in “friendly cooperation” with the nation’s second largest faith group.
The SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission is sponsoring a national conference Oct. 27-29 at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tenn., to equip church leaders to address issues such as same-sex marriage and ministry to LGBT individuals with “convictional kindness” without compromising belief that the Bible teaches that all sexual activity outside of marriage between a man and woman is sinful.
The speaker lineup includes presidents of three SBC seminaries, heads of the International and North American mission boards, ERLC President Russell Moore and other senior-level staff at the convention entity entrusted with moral, ethical and religious-liberty concerns. Several wrote chapters in a 90-page e-book titled God and the Gay Christian? A Response to Matthew Vines. Registration closes Oct. 15 and costs $199.
Early-bird registration for the Reformation Project training event costs $149 but ends Oct. 7. After that the cost increases to $199. Future training events are in planning stages for Kansas City in March 2015 and Atlanta the following June.
Other guest speakers at the D.C. training conference include Brad Braxton, Butler’s predecessor at Riverside Church and an ordained Baptist minister and former professor now working as program officer for religion in the public sphere at the Ford Foundation; and Derrick Harkins, senior minister of Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in Washington and former national director of faith outreach for the Democratic National Committee.
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Baptist church ordains transgender woman
Baptist out to ‘reform’ homophobia
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