Mere weeks after the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) elected their first transgendered bishop to lead the mainline protestant denomination, a Baptist denomination has followed suit, welcoming Laura Bethany Buchleiter to become the trans man to be ordained within the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF).
The CBF was formed nearly 30 years ago after a group of malcontent Southern Baptist Churches decided that they wanted to ordain women into ministry. They insisted that they were still conservative, but argued that the scriptures permitted the ladies to be ordained and therefore needed to follow their consciences. As a result, nearly 1400 churches and hundreds of thousands of members jumped ship, formally cutting ties with the SBC a decade later.
Since 1990, the years have not been kind to the denomination. The ordination of women was like being a dam that burst, carrying with it other deviant beliefs like approval of homosexuality and tolerance for abortion that soon became a mainstay within the denomination, with many churches having openly gay leaders. Consequently, the trans ordination is merely more proof of their unfaithfulness and a harbinger of further damnation and judgment.
To wit – the 49-year old Buchleiter divorced his wife in 2014 after coming out as trangendered, and then came out as a lesbian in 2016, much to the surprise of his three children. He spent several years at Christian Theological Seminary before ultimately joining the staff at University Baptist Church in Bloomington, Indiana, under the auspices of current pastrix Annet Hill Briggs. About Buchleiter’s ordination, she told the Hoosier Times:
Our church self identifies as a church that listens to the call of the people irrespective of gender or sexual orientation. It’s not relevant to us. We’re not ordaining Laura Beth because she is transgender.
If you hate your ears, have a sermon from him.
