Albert Mohler and Me: What He Said About Preparing Clergy on Sexuality

Rev. Albert Mohler didn't much like the report we released last week, Sexuality and Religion 2020: Goals for the Next Decade.

He's the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and his bio says that Time magazine called him "the reigning intellectual of the evangelical movement."

He had this to say:

Evangelical Christians will see this report as further evidence of the theological accommodationism and biblical revisionism that marks liberal Christianity.

He seemed particularly to delight in pointing out that we quoted the influence of queer and feminist theologians in our understanding of scholarship. I guess in his mind that's evidence we are subversive.

But, in an interesting twist, he also definitely got our call for ALL clergy -- regardless of theological or ideology inclination -- to be better trained and better prepared to deal with the sexuality needs of their congregations. That was a major emphasis of our report.

He wrote:

"Evangelical Christians will rightly reject about everything found in this new report from the Religious Institute, but they should not avoid its urgency in calling pastors and Christian leaders to teach and preach about sex and sexuality. It is not enough to know the truth and believe the truth, we are called to preach and teach the whole counsel of God -- and that includes all that God has to say about sex."

Am I naive to think that there might be common ground here? Rev. Mohler, you are the president of a major seminary. We'd be happy to help you assess how your curricula and seminary prepares your future clergy to do just that.