Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 04:2 (Fall 2022)
Article: Why Nashville And Why Now?
Author: Denny R. Burk

Eikon 4.2 (Fall 2022) p. 7

Why Nashville And Why Now?

Denny R. Burk

Denny R. Burk is President of The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and Editor-in-Chief of Eikon.

When I left the office of CBMW on the last Monday of August 2017, I did not yet know what we were about to unleash. It was the eve of the public release of the Nashville Statement. Three days earlier, we had convened a meeting of over 80 Christian leaders and scholars in Nashville, Tennessee to finalize a doctrinal statement concerning the Bible’s teaching on sexuality and gender identity. We had three days to gather initial signatories before the statement’s public release on Tuesday, August 29. We were elated about the impressive list of evangelical signatories who signed-on in those three days — J.I. Packer, R. C. Sproul, Jim Dobson, John Piper, Albert Mohler, Kevin DeYoung, John MacArthur, Don Carson, Marvin Olasky, H. B. Charles, Rosaria Butterfield, Nancy Leigh DeMoss, and many more. It was a veritable who’s who of evangelical leaders and scholars. We could hardly have been more pleased by the response from signatories on the eve of the public release.

And yet as I left the office that evening, I remained dubious about how much of an impact the statement would make. After all, when CBMW launched the Danvers Statement 30 years earlier, only one media outlet (Christianity Today) showed up to the press conference.1 Why would anyone

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pay attention to a doctrinal statement that simply proclaims what Christians everywhere have believed for the last 2,000 years about sexual morality? We never intended for the Nashville Statement to be a culture war document. We designed it to be a resource for churches and ministries who wanted a faithful articulation of the Bible’s teaching on one of the most difficult and pressing challenges of our time. Would anyone pay attention to this? I wasn’t sure that they would. So as I was leaving, I stopped in the doorway and said to the staff, “I hope someone will cover this. Maybe Christianity Today will pick it up?”2

Little did I know that — within the next few days — The Nashville Statement would be covered by news outlets from coast to coast and would be going viral online for days and weeks to come. The overwhelming response was provoked by the Mayor of Nashville, Megan Barry, who denounced the statement in a tweet: “The @CBMWorg’s so-called ‘Nashville Statement’ is poorly named and does not represent the inclusive values of the city & people of Nashville.” Those 22 words thrust the Nashville Statement into the national spotlight and under...