By Bob Allen
A flagship Cooperative Baptist Fellowship congregation in Atlanta voted Nov. 23 to approve a slate of deacons including an openly gay man in a committed, same-sex relationship.
The vote followed a three-week sermon series on the Bible and homosexuality by Senior Pastor Julie Pennington-Russell. In Part 1 delivered Nov. 9, she said the messages had “about a 35-year gestation period,” as she interacted with gay Christians at previous churches in California and Texas and since 2007 at First Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga.
In the final installment Nov. 23, Pennington-Russell said over time she has come to believe that welcoming LGBT people into full inclusion and participation in congregational life “is simply a matter of the church being the church. No more. No less.”
Pennington-Russell said in an email interview that she hadn’t planned to address the topic until a nominating team presented a slate of new deacon candidates for 2015 in October. One of the nominees was Theron Stuart, research project coordinator at Emory’s School of Medicine and School of Public Health, who with his same-sex partner joined First Baptist about four years ago.
A former chaplain and Christian school administrator, Stuart has gotten involved at First Baptist through teaching Sunday Bible study, leading in worship, co-facilitating Bible study groups for men and counseling.
Pennington-Russell said she began praying about how to lead the church, which has welcomed gay members “mostly in a don’t-ask-don’t-tell kind of way” for many years, in thinking about the upcoming vote.
Pennington-Russell said there are “perhaps 40 LGBT folk at First Baptist,” including couples with children, and many have joined as members. She said there has been at least one gay deacon in the past, but she doesn’t believe his sexual orientation was widely known.
“Electing an openly gay believer in a covenant relationship with his partner would be a first for our church,” she said. “Since we were asking the congregation to discern how to respond, I decided to offer some ‘handles’ from the pulpit that people could reach for in their own discernment process.”
During her sermon series, Pennington-Russell said she learned via social media that many others outside of the congregation were also following the conversation. Located across the street from national offices of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, no congregation is more closely identified with the 1,800-church moderate Baptist network formed in 1991.
For several years the CBF has used space at First Baptist, Decatur, for leadership meetings. When the CBF co-sponsored with Mercer University A [Baptist] Conference on Sexuality and Covenant in April 2012, FBC Decatur was the host church.
Members of the church include David Gushee, a Mercer professor and Baptist News Global columnist recently making the rounds in media with a new book detailing why he no longer believes the Bible forbids committed, monogamous, lifelong, same-sex relationships.
The CBF doesn’t have an official position on homosexuality, leaving the matter up to each church, but a policy adopted in 2000 prohibits the hiring of openly gay persons or funding organizations or causes “that condone, advocate or affirm homosexual practice.”
The Southern Baptist Convention excludes churches which “act to affirm, approve or endorse homosexual behavior” and recently expelled a church in California for agreeing to disagree about whether homosexuality is a sin. First Baptist, Decatur, won’t suffer the same fate, however, because the Georgia Baptist Convention already dismissed the congregation in 2009 for calling a woman as senior pastor.
While homosexuality remains controversial in CBF life, a number of high-profile churches appear to be evolving on the issue. Recently both Crescent Hill Baptist Church and Highland Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., made news by announcing they were open to performing same-sex weddings.
Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas and Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, both in recent years became welcoming and affirming of gays, clashing with the Baptist General Convention of Texas. The BGCT abides by a statement adopted in 1998 saying: “We commend those churches who seek to minister to those persons who engage in homosexual behavior. We cannot, however, approve of churches endorsing homosexual practice as biblically legitimate.”
In 2013 the Richmond Baptist Association in Virginia voted 176-158 to keep Ginter Park Baptist Church in Richmond as a member after the Baptist General Association of Virginia dismissed the church for ordaining an openly gay man as a minister. A number of churches pulled out of the association in protest.
Pennington-Russell said First Baptist is a “big tent” congregation, but “the tent pegs themselves are practically in different time zones” when it comes to the issue of homosexuality in the church.
At the end of her final message she stepped from the pulpit to the floor to share her own personal convictions about LGBT believers in the church. “I meant for that moment to be confessional rather than dogmatic,” she said. “I know that there are people at First Baptist whose biblical conviction is different than mine. They absolutely have a place here.”