Today, Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, joined Focus on the Family’s Jim Daly on his radio program to discuss the news that the Obama administration would no longer defend DOMA in court.
During the discussion, Mohler said that it is all but inevitable that day is coming when marriage equality will “become normalized, legalized, and recognized in the culture” and that Christians had better be prepared for living in a nation where they find themselves in the minority:
Daly: Do you think, as we look at those demographics and the polling data and all the other things, as the Christian community, is this something that is inevitable? I know this is a tough question here on Christian radio but I think it’s time to start talking about what if.
Mohler: Well Jim I appreciate your candor in that because I think a lot of Christian conservatives are going to try to deny the obvious. I mean, when we’re talking about same-sex marriage, we’re talking about something that is already legal in one form or another in basically twelve states. So whether they call it marriage, as they do in a few states, or marriage lite as they have now in twelve states, the reality is that a good number of Americans are living where they’re already facing not just the inevitably, but the reality, of same-sex marriage. I think it’s clear that something like same-sex marriage – indeed, almost exactly what we would envision by that – is going to become normalized, legalized, and recognized in the culture. It’s time for Christians to start thinking about how we’re going to deal with that.
I think in the United States, Evangelical Christians in particular, have kind of grown accustomed to having our beliefs and moral convictions and ways of life supported by the state, by the larger culture and we’re going to have to learn what it means to live faithfully as Christians when we do not have those supports. You know, it’s one thing to live believing that you’re in the majority position – everything comes pretty easy that way …
Daly: A Christian nation.
Mohler: That’s right. But when you live in a situation where we’re clearly a minority holding to certain convictions that the larger culture either doesn’t hold or doesn’t hold tenaciously or as very important, we’re going to find out just where we stand as Christians.
