KENNESAW, Ga. — Two weeks after being kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention, Towne View Baptist Church celebrated its 32nd anniversary by formally accepting members the SBC believes they should have turned away. One by one, Pastor Jim Conrad introduced seven new members, which in the Baptist tradition have to be approved by a majority of the congregation. He didn’t mention that Brockton Bates and his partner Skyler were gay nor that another new member was transgender. He didn’t have to. His church knew who they were accepting and had spent the last two years coming to terms with the fact that inclusion for Towne View had to look different than what was required to remain in the SBC, whose bylaws state that “churches which act to affirm, approve, or endorse homosexual behavior would be deemed not to be in cooperation with the Convention.”On February 23, the SBC Executive Committee voted to remove Towne View for affirming LGBTQ members, the culmination of a two-year inquiry.“Essentially the SBC has decided that because we welcomed these folks into our family that we’re no longer welcome in their family, and we’re OK with that,” Conrad said. “What we decided is that when we say everybody’s welcome, that means everybody.”The journey to oppose the nation’s largest Baptist convention was an arduous one that cost the church members and financial contributions. And its exclusion from the SBC has sparked wider conversations about what it means to be a Southern Baptist in modern America. For Bates, a lifelong Baptist who as a child was pushed toward faith-based conversion therapy to “literally try to pray the gay away,” Towne View had taken a meaningful stand. After he and his partner took the stage on March 7, the church’s first anniversary since the SBC’s decision, the church “exploded” with applause and approval. For the first time in his life, he fully celebrated his Baptist faith without hiding his sexuality.“It was different than any other experience of joining a church,” Bates said. “I could authentically be who God created me to be and I didn’t have to hide it.“To see that happen for us means it can happen for other people as well.”The SBC movement against LGBTQ members gained traction 1992, when the convention amended its bylaws to include the language opposing LGBTQ members. That year, the SBC used the new rules to disfellowship two North Carolina churches, said Curtis Freeman, Director of the Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School.“It’s a contested issue that goes back a number of years,” Freeman said. “Since then a number of churches have been removed.”Conrad never imagined it was a rule he would have to contend with. That changed in May 2019 when he received an email from John Reynolds, a hospital administrator from Indiana who had just moved to Dallas, Georgia, with his partner John McClanahan and their three adopted boys.
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