(RNS) — Southern Baptists called for the overturning of the Supreme Court decision that ruled same-sex marriage constitutional, and also declared their support of laws that “recognize the biological reality of male and female.”
Meeting in Dallas on the first day of their Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting Tuesday (June 10), they adopted a resolution titled “On Restoring Moral Clarity through God’s Design for Gender, Marriage, and the Family.” It states “we call for the overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God’s design for marriage and family.”
More than 10,000 messengers, or local church delegates, attended the gathering at Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center.
The resolution reflects a growing interest among conservative Christians in overturning the 2015 Obergefell decision, modeling their effort on the fall of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, in the court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.
The statement also urged the “complete and permanent defunding of Planned Parenthood” and declared that the “normalization of transgender ideology — especially the participation of biological males and females in opposite gender sports and the medical transition of minors — represents a rebellion against God’s design for male and female, inflicts unjust harm on children, men, and women, employs coercive language control, and undermines fairness, safety, and truth.”
SBC President Clint Pressley, without speaking directly about the resolution, declared in his Tuesday presidential address his pride in the Southern Baptists’ stance, written in their faith statement, in favor of marriage being restricted to one man and one woman.
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Southern Baptist Convention President Clint Pressley speaks at the SBC annual meeting at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, June 10, 2025. (RNS Photo/Tim Heitman)
“For Southern Baptists, the waters of sexuality are not muddy,” he said, noting how their 100-year-old Baptist Faith and Message describes marital unions, citing a passage in the New Testament. “We take young people now to Ephesians 5, and we tell them to memorize Ephesians 5, what a husband is supposed to do and what a wife is supposed to do, and how that marriage is under the Lordship of Christ, a picture of the gospel.”
Pressley, in his address, also pointed to the confession of faith’s statement that God “created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation” and voiced his opposition to “the irrationality of the transgender movement.”
“I don’t have to be a Christian: I have eyes that tell me a grown man participating in a female sport is wrong,” he said. “Creation tells me that.”
At a separate Baptist Women in Ministry event held at a United Methodist church near the convention center, two speakers critiqued that resolution’s references to a biblical mandate to “be fruitful and multiply” and acceptance of “pursuing willful childlessness which contributes to a declining fertility rate.”
Baylor University historian Beth Allison Barr, author of “Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry,” said the language is rooted in white supremacy.
“It’s a replacement theory that we need to have more white babies,” she told BWIM Executive Director Meredith Stone, “and especially white babies within conservative evangelical spaces, because that’s the way to raise up that theology.”
The resolution, along with others being considered during the two-day meeting, is nonbinding but reflects the beliefs of messengers attending the annual gathering.
In another resolution, the messengers urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to revoke its approval of mifepristone, a drug used in medical abortions as well as to control some types of high blood sugar, and encouraged “those considering chemical abortion to pursue alternative solutions which protect and promote life.”
They also adopted a resolution on “the Harmful and Predatory Nature of Sports Betting,” encouraging fellow Baptists to condemn all forms of it, but especially pointing to the rise of gambling facilitated by the internet.
“The sports betting industry fosters a culture of greed while specifically exploiting and preying upon young adults, the impoverished, and those with addictive personality traits,” the resolution reads.
Messengers vote during the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, June 10, 2025. (RNS Photo/Tim Heitman)
One resolution celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Cooperative Program, their funding mechanism that has been supported with more than $20 billion given through local churches for domestic and foreign missions, the operations of seminaries and other national entities and of state conventions.
During a presentation ahead of the passage of the resolution, Taffey Hall, director and archivist at the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, described how over the decades giving to that program has been based on Baptists’ trust in the system.
“Just as our Baptist forerunners from the 1920s accepted that challenge, it’s up to us to renew that commitment, because when we don’t work together, the gospel retrenches,” Hall told the Southern Baptists in the convention center. “But when we do work together, the gospel advances and all this broad scope of missions and ministries that Southern Baptists care about, well, they multiply and expand too.”
Recent debates, including about how respond to sexual abuse scandals, within the denomination have prompted some churches to withhold their mission giving.
SBC Executive Committee President and CEO Jeff Iorg, speaking Tuesday about a proposed business plan and 2025-26 budget, asked Baptists to increase their giving as SBC leaders seek to set aside $3 million they may need to spend on legal expenses and other costs.
SBC Executive Committee President and CEO Jeff Iorg addresses the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, June 10, 2025. (RNS Photo/Tim Heitman)
“If we resolve our legal costs without using these funds, they can be distributed to SBC entities according to the Cooperative Program allocation percentages,” he said. “And a 1% increase in Cooperative Program giving by churches next year would more than offset whatever we would spend on these legal expenses.”
Southern Baptists also continued to condemn pornography, asking for churches and parents to work against it and for Congress and state legislatures to pass laws that ban pornographic content, citing as a model the recently enacted “Take It Down Act,” which prohibits online publication of individuals’ intimate visual depictions.
Southern Baptists also passed a resolution expressing their continuing advocacy for international religious freedom and “support and solidarity with our brothers and sisters experiencing persecution worldwide.”
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