By Bob Allen
President Obama’s appointment of the first openly gay ambassador to the Americas isn’t playing well with Christians in the Dominican Republic, says a Southern Baptist leader recently there for a preaching conference.
“They understand this appointment for exactly what it is, an effort on the part of the United States of America to try to point this island nation toward the acceptance of same-sex relationships and eventually same-sex marriage,” Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said in a Sept. 29 podcast from Santo Domingo.
President Obama announced the appointment of Ambassador James “Wally” Brewster, a Chicago businessman with experience in international business and advocacy for democracy and human rights, in June 2013. In a video introducing himself, Brewster addressed opportunities for trade and economic opportunity, his love of baseball and his belief in God.
The bulk of attention, however, is over Brewster’s spouse. He and Bob Satawake, his partner for 25 years, were legally married shortly after Vice President Joe Biden swore Brewster in as U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic on Nov. 22, 2013.
High-profile Catholic and Evangelical church leaders decried the appointment as a lack of respect for the country’s moral values. In June 2013 church leaders organized a nationwide protest called “Black Monday,” asking people to wear black armbands as a sign of public discontent with the appointment.
Mohler, in the Dominican Republic for an annual conference called Por Su Causa (For His Cause), founded by Pastor Miguel Núñez at International Baptist Church in Santo Domingo, said that early on President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “made very clear that they intended to make the promotion of gay rights a major agenda of American foreign policy and of the Obama administration.”
“The appointment of Ambassador Brewster, announced by the State Department as the first openly gay ambassador to the Americas, is a symbol of that kind of effort, and it has not been well received by the Christians here in the Dominican Republic,” Mohler said.
“Sending a married gay ambassador of the United States to this island nation was intended to send a signal, and it sent a signal indeed,” Mohler said. “We often repeat the fact that elections have consequences, but did Americans realize in 2008 and in 2012 that those consequences extend even to a nation like the Dominican Republic? That question has certainly come to my mind time and again as I’ve been visiting this beautiful nation.”
Mohler spoke four times during a Sept. 25-27 conference themed “Moral Revolution: My Response” attended by Christian leaders throughout Latin America and beyond. The event is part of the teaching ministry of Núñez called Wisdom & Integrity Ministries.
It was a return engagement for Mohler, who also spoke at the conference in 2013. He returned the favor by inviting Núñez to preach in Southern Seminary chapel in the fall of 2013 and in March 2014 at 9Marks at Southern, the seminary’s first-ever conference entirely in Spanish. 9Marks is a ministry of Capitol Hill Baptist Church based in Washington that trains pastors by emphasizing “nine marks” of a healthy church.
Núñez serves alongside both Mohler and Capitol Hill Baptist Church Pastor Mark Dever on the council of The Gospel Coalition, a network of Calvinist churches founded in 2005.
Núñez is the author of two books and co-host of the television program “Answers: Absolute Truths for a Relative World,” which is broadcast in Latin America. Núñez says evangelism is needed in Latin America to stem the tide of the “prosperity gospel,” which teaches that financial blessing is God’s will for Christians and is growing rapidly in the region.