Yesterday the Governing Board of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship accepted the Illumination Project’s recommendation that the CBF revoke its blanket policy prohibiting the hiring of LGBTQ employees but continue to disallow the employment of LGBTQ persons for key field, supervisory, and leadership positions. Many of us who believe the full and unqualified inclusion of LGBTQ is a justice matter whose time has come see this partial step as deeply inadequate and even dismaying. Though given the significantly divided makeup of CBF, it is not altogether surprising.
This was a moment many of us hoped might be a watershed. Instead, what we were given is gradualism. I am sorry for all my LGBTQ friends and I am sorry for the future generations of the CBF who will see this decision as a compromise which falls short of the good news so many need to hear and which the CBF had the chance to proclaim.
When I heard about the decision I thought of a quote from that great Baptist and civil rights leader, the late Clarence Jordan:
“I know of no one more miserable today than Moderates in the South. They’re trying to hold a position that is absolutely untenable — the middle-of-the-road position. When you straddle the fence you are respected by neither side. As the writer of Hebrews says, ‘The word of God is as sharp as a two-edged sword, cutting down to the dividing of the joints, even to the marrow of the bone.’ Now, that means that the Word of God is razor sharp, and when you straddle it, you get cut.”
The Word of God given to us says that, “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female.” We have been set free from all these things. Christ has set us free. When will we finally be free to say so?
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