The Courage to be Baptist: A Statement on Baptist Ecclesiology and Human Sexuality

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Every Western denomination is struggling with ethical questions about human sexuality. The authors of this statement do not pretend to have the solution to those questions; indeed, we disagree amongst ourselves on them. We do agree that Baptist churches, associations, and unions will respond best by having the courage to be faithful to who we are called to be: faithfully Christian and faithfully Baptist.

Baptist 'Something to Declare' website.

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3 thoughts on “The Courage to be Baptist: A Statement on Baptist Ecclesiology and Human Sexuality”

  1. Andrew

    I am debating this Baptist statement with Jonathan Tallon on thread ‘The pragmatics of the sexuality debate’ on Ian Paul’s website. I am awaiting a reply from one of the authors of the statement. I have made this interim post on Ian Paul’s website

    “Jonathan
    A member of the Baptist group who authored the paper has kindly and graciously responded to my email seeking clarification about the last sentence and their position in general. You are right that ‘they do disagree’. I am now in an email exchange (I’m not sure how long it will continue, partly because I am having email problems) to try to understand what their disagreement is, whether it is the same as what I believe is the disagreement, and what they understand to be the meaning of the last sentence.
    In defining my view of the disagreement I have presumed to speak for all those who oppose any change to the Church’s teaching on this issue. In this I may indeed have been presumptuous – if so I apologise.
    This is my definition:
    ‘The present realities of faithful, loving Christian heterosexual sexual married relationships are acceptable to God (following the Westminster Confession ‘Of Good Works’, item VI. ‘Notwithstanding, the persons of believers being accepted through Christ, their good works also are accepted in Him; not as though they were in this life wholly unblamable and unreproveable in God’s sight; but that He, looking upon them in His Son, is pleased to accept and reward that which is sincere, although accompanied with many weaknesses and imperfections’), whereas faithful, loving Christian homosexual sexual relationships are not acceptable to God.’
    I would be interested to know how many of those who oppose any change to the Church’s teaching would agree with this definition of the underlying doctrinal issue.
    Phil Almond”

  2. The statement includes the following:

    ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…’ (Rom. 3:23): we refuse any account of human sexuality that claims certain sexual desires, orientations, or relationships are unfallen or free from sin. Equally we refuse any account that judges certain sexual desires, orientations, or relationships to be peculiarly broken or sinful’.

    Surely the last sentence is astonishing.

    Phil Almond

    • THanks Phil. I think the last sentence is simply a statement that applies Rom 3.23 and its amplification – all our sexual desires, orientations and relationships are marred by sin and fall short and we as Christians should not therefore rank fallen realities on a scale which puts some (usually those which relate in some way to ourselves) as less fallen than others which are viewed as “peculiarly broken or sinful”. So if a sexual desire, orientation or relationship is broken or sinful in some respect – and in lived reality all of them are (part of the doctrine of total depravity) – that is all that needs to be said, not that “oh but it’s not as broken and sinful as X (or L or B or whatever…..!)” If read like that it is astonishing given we rarely do this but not I think in the sense of “astonishing that this could be a legitimate Christian view” which is how I thought you might be reading it.

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