When It Comes to Christians and Policy, Pastor Willy Rice Gets It
Christians in America would be well served if more pastors in churches shared the same convictions as Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) President Willy Rice.
Senior Pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, Florida, since 2004, Dr. Rice has a burning passion to rally fellow ministers in Christendom to engage the culture and their community. Speaking last month to seminarians at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, his alma mater, the SBC leader was blunt.
“The need of the hour is not for executives, celebrities, intellectuals, life-coaches, podcasters, authors or performers,” he said. “The greatest need in our movement is for faithful, Christ-honoring pastors that will take up the task of shepherding the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
According to Dr. Rice, part of that pastoral task includes encouraging Christians to engage in the political process.
“Throughout American history, pastors have had a strong voice at key moments in American political history, even in the revolutionary times—maybe especially in the founding of our country,” Rice said.
Pastor Rice isn’t shy about confronting the mistaken belief that Christian leaders should stay silent on hot-button cultural issues.
“It’s quite interesting, over the last several years, among many conservatives—and by conservative, I’m not talking politically there as much as I’m talking theologically; I’m talking about historic Christian orthodoxy,” Rice stressed. “Many Bible-believing, conservative evangelicals were actually being encouraged to be more quiet, to withdraw from the political process.”
He continued:
“Some of those voices came externally from pressure saying, ‘You shouldn’t mix religion and politics,’” Rice argued. “But some of those voices came internally from those who said, ‘In order to be faithful in our mission, we needed to decouple, divorce ourselves as it were, from some controversial political issues.’”
Pastor Rice has been calling on pastors and Christian believers to help clarify the rampant confusion that’s seeped into the minds of some believers and churches.
Calling same-sex “marriage” and the gender revolution “assaults on the truth of God and His creation,” Rice has recommended revising the “Baptist Faith & Message” to leave no doubt what the Bible says about both. That document is the official statement of faith and doctrinal guide of the SBC.
Dr. Rice is proposing that the Convention include two new sentences in the document that declare, “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.”
Since assuming his role as head of the SBC, Dr. Rice has attempted to debunk the ignorant belief that pastors can’t address cultural issues out of fear of getting political.
“Should pastors engage in the political process? They absolutely should,” said Rice. “Because there are many political issues that are, at their heart, theological issues and moral issues that strike at the very center of what we believe to be true and what we believe people need to know in order to flourish personally and as a culture.”
These theological issues include the sanctity of life, the biblical definition of one-man, one-woman marriage, the biblical distinction between male and female, and religious freedom.
“The abortion issue, the sanctity of human life, has been a critical issue for us,” stressed Rice. “Because what it means to be a human being and whether human life is sacred, made in the image of God is a deeply theological issue. It is at its core a theological issue. And of course, even in this midterm, there are amendments on the ballot in places like Virginia. The issue of the sanctity of human life is as relevant and as critical and as important as it has ever been.”
He concluded: “Pastors need to continue to articulate not just how to vote on these issues but why we need to vote those ways.”
Please join us in praying for Dr. Rice and for the receptivity of his message to pastors all across America.
