Friday's Outlander of the Day ~ Dr. Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Good coming from the delay in that there is lots of additional coverage now, I'll name Dr. Albert Mohler, President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville Kentucky, as Friday's Outlander of the Day. He's hardly dreadful as most yet he'll do, with his being tapped perhaps flowing primarily from the frustration yours truly has with the Southern Baptist church. A "recovering Southern Baptist" I am and yet nearly every day I'm feeling further along in the recovery process.

Lynne Duke gives a good summary of the stir in today's WaPo. On Friday, via his blog, Dr. Mohler posted "Was it Something I Said? Continuing to Think About Homosexuality", a response to stirrings related to a post from two weeks earlier titled "Is Your Baby Gay? What If You Could Know? What If You Could Do Something About It?". They are both long posts and I for one applaud him for putting this out there for folks to ponder. Admittedly there's something about thinking "outloud" and posting for the world to read that I find attractive. Still, there's some serious inconsistencies in what he's writing and certainly much that conflicts with the doctrine that his denomination relies on to do their (and the GOP's?) work.

J.C. Christian (George Brett's manly bulge research and resulting comments were especially clever) pointed me toward Dr. Mohler's prior concerns over "the rebellion against parenthood". Dr. Mohler wrote

... Modern Americans are determined not only to liberate sex from marriage, and not only to separate sex from the realities of male and female, but to liberate sex from procreation.

This rebellion against parenthood is nothing less than an absolute revolt against God’s design. The Scripture points to barrenness as a great curse and children as a divine gift. The Psalmist declares: “Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; they will not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate” (Psalm 127:3–5).

“Make love, not babies” expresses a worldview the Scripture rejects. Marriage, sex, and children are part of one package. To deny any part of this wholeness is to reject God’s intention in creation—and his mandate revealed in the Bible. You can’t make love (though you can have sex) if you refuse to make babies.

The Scripture does not even envision married couples who choose not to have children. The shocking reality is that some Christians have bought into this lifestyle and claim that childlessness is a legitimate “lifestyle option” for Christians. The rise of modern contraceptives and sterilization surgery has made this possible for the first time in human history. But though willed childlessness may have been made possible by the contraceptive revolution almost every American thinks a perfect blessing, it remains a form of rebellion against God’s design and order.

Scripture does not give couples the option of choosing childlessness. To the contrary, in the biblical revelation God commands us to receive children with joy as his gifts, and to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. ...

The church should insist that the biblical formula is: Adulthood means marriage, and marriage means children. This reminds us of our responsibility to raise boys to be husbands and fathers and girls to be wives and mothers. God’s glory is seen in this, for the family is a critical arena where the glory of God is either displayed or denied. It is just as simple as that.

The church must help this society regain its sanity on the gift of children. Willful barrenness and chosen childlessness must be named as moral rebellion. To demand that marriage means sex but not children is to defraud the creator of his joy and pleasure in seeing the saints raising his children. That is just the way it is.

That's some serious fundamentalism I'd suggest. And on second thought he fully deserves Outlander of the Day status. He's an intellectual giant of evangelicals? He's helping prepare the next generation of Southern Baptist leaders? Of course it might be worse at Southwestern and Liberty with the Caner brothers yet I'll argue a good chunk of today's Southern Baptist doctrine is fully radicalized.

My infamous post on Amendment One (Alabama's version of legislation to preserve the sanctity of marriage) earned me the wrath of my family yet if they'll follow this willful barrenness position I suppose we'll need legislation requiring couples to punch a baby Baptist out rather quickly after the wedding. Should we give them three years or five? And if there's some biology out there what consequence does that have as to the whole issue of sexuality? C'mon family fundamentalists, here's your chance to straighten out the Black Sheep. Peace ... or War!