The Nashville Statement: Evangelicals' Manifesto On Sexuality Draws Fire In Its Namesake City

NASHVILLE, TN — There's precious little contemporary evidence for how, say, Nicaea reacted to its name being attached to a statement of early Christian faith. In any event, Emperor Constantine threatened anyone who opposed it with exile, so maybe dissenters who didn't buy homoousios just kept their mouths shut. They certainly didn't take to Twitter, what with the Nicene Creed being written in 325 A.D.

Nashville's city leaders, on the other hand, are being open to their opposition to the so-called "Nashville Statement," a "Christian manifesto" on human sexuality, gender identity and marriage issued this week by the evangelical group The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which convened a meeting of pastors, lay leaders and scholars during last week's Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics And Religious Liberties Commission meeting in Nashville.

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"As Western culture has become increasingly post-Christian," the statement's preamble reads, in part, "it has embarked upon a massive revision of what it means to be a human being. By and large the spirit of our age no longer discerns or delights in the beauty of God’s design for human life. Many deny that God created human beings for his glory, and that his good purposes for us include our personal and physical design as male and female. It is common to think that human identity as male and female is not part of God’s beautiful plan, but is, rather, an expression of an individual’s autonomous preferences."

In a release, John Piper, co-founder of the CBMW, said the statement is meant to help pastors and others provide guidance.

"It speaks with forthright clarity, biblical conviction, gospel compassion, cultural relevance, and practical helpfulness," Piper said. "It will prove to be, I believe, enormously helpful for thousands of pastors and leaders hoping to give wise, biblical, and gracious guidance to their people."

The statement itself is a list of 14 affirmations and denials of what the council believes. For example, it affirms that God created marriage between one man and one woman that was not designed to be a "homosexual, polygamous or polyamorous relationship."

Though the statement affirms that "people who experience sexual attraction to the same sex may live a rich and fruitful life pleasing to God," it says "it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism."
The statement goes on to say that a "self-conception" that denies biological sex are "at odds with God's revealed will." Another portion urges followers to "speak truth in love" and "deny any obligation to speak in such ways that dishonor God's design of his image-bearers as male and female." That article of the statement, among others, has come under fire from LGBTQ rights groups for sanctioning the practice of referring to people who are transgender by their birth names or gender.

After the statement was published Tuesday, Nashville Mayor Megan Barry took to Twitter to distance the city from its name.

Metro Councilman Freddie O'Connell echoed the mayor.

The city's LGBT Chamber of Commerce issued a Twitter rebuttal of its own (though incorrectly attributed the statement to the SBC).

While the SBC did not write the statement, a number of its top leaders are among the 148 signatories, including ERLC President Russell Moore, who called it "an urgently needed moment of gospel clarity."
SBC brass who signed it include five agency heads, the presidents of all six of the convention's seminaries and eight current and former convention presidents.

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Brandan Robertson, lead pastor of Missiongathering Christian Church in San Diego and an LGBT activist, told Baptist World News that the Nashville Statement appears to be a retreat by the SBC, which he felt was softening its stance.

"In 2014, I organized a group of nearly 20 national LGBT leaders to meet with nearly 30 SBC leaders at the ERLC conference in Nashville,” Robertson told BWN. “We spent nearly three hours in deep conversation in a suite provided by the SBC. ... Now, it seems, they are tremendously fearful, probably because of the political climate of our country and the pressure Moore faced for speaking against Trump.”

Moore drew national attention for his early and vocal opposition to then-candidate Donald Trump, who he called "awful" and, after the tape of Trump making lewd comments about women during an "Access Hollywood" became public, Moore tweeted "How any Christian leader is still standing behind this is just genuinely beyond my comprehension."

In the wake of the issuing of the Nashville Statement, there's been increased social media attention on the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee's Nashville United Resolution, which was written as a statement of unity in the wake of the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va. CFMT published the resolution and its earliest signatories in the August 27 edition of The Tennessean, but is still accepting digital signatures as it makes the rounds on the Internet again.

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