It was encouraging to read recently that Pastor Willy Rice, the newly elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), wants to amend the denomination’s confessional statement, the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. He told the SBC Executive Committee that one of his first priorities in office is to add provisions that specifically deal with gender and human sexuality.
Gender and human sexuality are now gigantic battlefields, certainly in the secular public square, but also within individual churches and denominations. They should not be controversial at all, of course, because the Bible is clear on these subjects.
The new amendment on gender and human sexuality, Rice said, “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.”1
I cannot think of a better description of what the followers of Jesus Christ should be doing in these troubled times. Rice took his inspiration from a statement of truth adopted by the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Florida. It reads:
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.2
Well said!
Of course, it reflects what Dr. James Dobson believed and devoted his entire life to defending. While he was best known as “the family guy,” he was also very clear about what he believed about marriage and human sexuality. Marriage is the union of a man and a woman—God’s ordained institution for bringing children into the world. Dr. Dobson and I did countless radio shows, wrote regular essays and traveled the country exhorting Christians to stand strong and vote right. We went to Capitol Hill over and over again to defend marriage and the family.
We were leaders in the Arlington Group, a coalition of Christian and conservative organizations that promoted faith, family, and freedom. One of our top priorities was defending marriage as the union of a man and woman. We fought for the idea that God’s creation is clearly defined. We also warned that LGBTQ ideology, at its core, is at war with God’s vision for what humankind was intended to be and how we are to organize ourselves.
Thirty states—from conservative Alabama to liberal California—voted in referenda to preserve marriage as the union of one man and one woman, the definition that has prevailed for centuries. But then, sadly, the Supreme Court in 2015, before the three justices that Donald Trump appointed years later, ruled that it was unconstitutional for a state to define marriage as only the union of a man and a woman. President Barack Obama bathed the White House in the colors of the homosexual rainbow flag to celebrate the decision.
Dr. Dobson and I warned at the time that if we abandoned the biblical definition of marriage, the cultural and moral dam would break. We predicted that our religious liberty would be in jeopardy, and more perverse things would ultimately emerge in the wake of same-sex marriage. Today, we have the transgender movement demanding that boys be allowed in girls’ sports and in girls’ bathrooms.
The LGBTQ agenda was on steroids during the Biden/Harris administration. It was rammed into the classrooms of America through the radical teachers’ unions. Multiple medical associations, hijacked by the radical Left, embraced transgender ideology. Then hospitals, following the zeitgeist, started authorizing doctors to sterilize confused children and to perform mutilating surgeries on them. Transgender ideology has been used to attack parental rights, further damaging the family.
As JDFI has repeatedly warned, we cannot separate the biblical worldview from our daily lives. We can’t just lament these things in our church and not fight them in the public square.
JDFI is committed to promoting Dr. Dobson’s teachings not only in America but around the world. We are also committed to urging you and your church leaders to bring the teachings of our faith into every aspect of our lives and to the conduct of our government.
The idea that we “cannot legislate morality” is a lie from the pit of hell. All law is someone’s version of morality—that certain behaviors are good and others are bad. The question is, whose morality will prevail? What does our government uphold? What does it say is decent and good and should be promoted? What do we say is bad and must be avoided? We must be in that battle, or we will be marginalized to the fringes of American society.
We look forward to working with the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee and their new president, Willy Rice, and we will pray for their success. We believe that this battle over the meaning of marriage and the acceptance that God created us as male and female, man and woman, will be a major factor in whether Western Civilization survives.
- Smith, Lawrence/Kentucky Today. “Rice Proposes BF&M Amendment Addressing Gender, Marriage • Pathway.” Pathway, September 24, 2026. https://mbcpathway.com/2026/09/24/rice-proposes-bfm-amendment-addressing-gender-marriage/.
- MacDonald, Logan. “First Baptist Church Jacksonville Requiring Controversial Agreement Document for Members.” Action News Jax, January 26, 2023. https://www.actionnewsjax.com/news/local/first-baptist-church-jacksonville-requiring-controversial-agreement-document-members/WTNKT23JTRBYPDB2XM6YOKMNR4/.
