Newly elected Southern Baptist Convention President Willy Rice, addressing the SBC Executive Committee's fall meeting, proposed amending the Baptist Faith & Message 2000, the convention's official "confessional statement." He told the Executive Committee he is asking it to recommend that the convention add "an article […] to address the specific issue of gender and human sexuality." "It will send a message externally, and it will send a message internally, that Southern Baptists will not bow down to the music of this age.
We are not eroding. We are not evading. We are not equivocating.
We are enduring like a mighty tree planted by a stream of water." He then offered an example of what he had in mind, modeled after a statement adopted by First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida: "I believe that God creates people in His image as either male or female and that this creation is a fixed matter of human biology, not individual choice.
I believe marriage is instituted by God, not government, is between one man and one woman, and is the only context for sexual desire and expression." The SBC Executive Committee will decide at its February meeting whether to bring a proposed amendment to the convention's annual meeting in June. To pass, the amendment would need a two-thirds vote at both the 2027 and 2028 annual conventions.
In making this suggestion, Rice stands well within the Baptist confessional tradition. Ever since Baptists emerged as a recognized group of Christian believers in the 16th century, in the earliest days of the Reformation, they have been a confessional people. When the Southern Baptist Convention adopted the Baptist Faith & Message 2000, having adopted earlier versions in 1925 and 1963, the revision committee, on which I served, opened the proposed revision with an introductory statement: