Southern Baptists Back Religious Display

DALLAS — Southern Baptists affirmed support for the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings and urged Bible publishers to hold to “historic principles of biblical translation” in resolutions this week at their annual national gathering.

The measures were approved Thursday, the day after delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention overwhelmingly passed by a show of hands a resolution encouraging a boycott of the Walt Disney Co. and its holdings because of concerns over “gay-friendly” policies.

The Ten Commandments resolution is connected with current litigation involving Judge Roy Moore, who has been ordered to remove a plaque of the Ten Commandments from his Alabama courtroom.

An Alabama court found that the judge’s display of the commandments violates the U.S. Constitution by promoting one religion in a government setting.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptists Conventions’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said his agency’s continuing work on a proposed “religious freedom amendment”--also supported in the Ten Commandments resolution--could help keep the biblical mandates in public places.

“Judge Moore is recognizing his religious beliefs by putting the Ten Commandments up in his courtroom according to the dictates of his conscience as an individual American citizen,” Land said at a news conference after the adoption of the resolutions.

“This [religious freedom] amendment, if it became part of the Constitution, would . . . give him the right to do that without question.”

The Bible-translation issue came to a head in late May after the International Bible Society, under heavy criticism from evangelicals, decided to scrap its plans to publish a “gender-inclusive” version of the popular New International Version of the Bible, substituting gender-neutral words, such as people, for gender-specific words, such as mankind.

“Bible publishers and translators are consistently faced with the tension of accuracy and readability along with the pressure from those who do not hold a high view of Scripture to take license with the use of particular terms, including, but not limited to, the use of so-called gender-inclusive language,” the resolution stated.

Baptists urged Bible translators and publishers to “refrain from any deviation to seek to accommodate contemporary cultural pressures.”

Another resolution passed Thursday urged the United States and other nations to ban human cloning. However, the measure also stressed the “importance of genetic research” aimed at curing genetic diseases.

Baptists also passed resolutions supporting home-schooling and efforts to combat drug abuse, gambling and extending benefits to the “domestic partners” of employees.

Evangelist Luis Palau closed the convention, speaking on the meeting’s theme, “To the Cross,” encouraging Baptists to move beyond their protest of Disney to evangelism.

“You were thoroughly concerned about Disney and you made a strong statement yesterday,” Palau said. “But that won’t change people. What will change people is the preaching of the cross in the power of the spirit when people repent and are converted.”

The Disney boycott is indicative of a growing discomfort among many evangelicals with the entertainment giant they contend has moved away from its “family-friendly” image by adopting gay-friendly policies providing benefits to partners of gay employees and airing programs featuring homosexuals, such as ABC TV’s “Ellen.” The Assemblies of God and the American Family Association also have urged boycotts of Disney and its subsidiaries.

Some of the more than 12,000 Southern Baptists attending the meeting expressed concern over possible negative fallout for the denomination over the boycott. Others questioned whether church members will be able to stop supporting all of Disney’s vast holdings--ranging from TV networks to theme parks to publications.