BALTIMORE -- Despite several years of membership declines, a Southern Baptist Convention leader said Wednesday that Southern Baptists needed to stand by their central values on issues such as abortion, contraception and gay marriage.

Russell Moore, president of the convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, condemned the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which mandates that health plans cover contraceptives unless the plans are sponsored by certain religious employers. He then commended the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., for sticking to its religious beliefs in refusing to provide worker insurance coverage for contraceptives. The company has sued President Barack Obama's administration over the mandate.

"[The Greens] believe the government is not the Lord of their consciences," Moore said. "So they have taken it to the United States Supreme Court, which is set to rule this month -- a ruling that probably will determine the next 100 years of what it means for us to be a free people in this country."

Moore gave the commission's report Wednesday during the annual meeting of the nation's largest Protestant denomination, touching on what Southern Baptist Convention leaders have done on public policy matters. Wednesday marked the last day of the convention, held at the Baltimore Convention Center, which centered on restoration and revival.

More than 5,000 delegates, also known as messengers, met as the 15.7 million-member denomination saw a seventh-consecutive annual decline in membership and a second-consecutive annual drop in baptisms.

On Wednesday, the convention presented Steve Green, Hobby Lobby president, with the John Leland Religious Liberty Award in honor of the family's "steadfast commitment to the sanctity of all human life," Moore said.

Hobby Lobby, based in Oklahoma City, is one of many for-profit companies opposing the contraception requirement in the Affordable Care Act, and it has asked the highest court to allow businesses religious freedoms. The company has at least 15,000 full-time employees in just under 600 stores nationwide.

"We're living in a time right now in which religious liberty is imperiled at home and around the world," Moore said.

He recalled a conversation with a woman who identified herself as agnostic. She asked Moore why Southern Baptists believe "the things we do," he said. The woman told him she knew of no one else in her community who believed in the Southern Baptists' values, Moore said.

That is the type of culture Southern Baptists must engage if they plan to be a Great Commission people in the 21st century, he said.

"It is no accident that we are here at this time. It is no accident that we are serving at the time we are serving," Moore said. "God appointed us to be born and then to be born again in a time and in a place where sometimes even the most basic principles of Christianity are going to sound increasingly strange and freakish to the culture around us."

But that shouldn't drive Southern Baptists away, Moore said.

"That should drive us to hands lifted in prayer," he said.

The commission has worked alongside others in the court system, which Moore said seems to be moving "very, very fast in the other direction." Southern Baptist Convention leaders have asked for certain freedoms and protections through the court process, including those for conscience for the nation's contraceptives mandate.

The leaders have also worked in Congress to "speak out for the unborn and for protection of these little ones endangered by a culture of death," Moore said.

With the legal advances for gay marriage, Southern Baptists have mobilized to prepare churches "to think biblically what this means for evangelizing our neighbors ... for rearing children in a world in which even the words 'marriage' and 'family' are contested," he said. In the fall, the group plans to host a conference in Nashville to answer any lingering questions churches may have about the Gospel and gay marriage.

More than a dozen states allow same-sex couples to marry.

Now, more than ever, Moore said Southern Baptists needed to extend the invitation of the Gospel to those who will believe, but also prepare children for "a world where following Christ will be seen as strange."

"We are ready to answer a questioning culture about what we believe about moral principles," he said. "But we don't stop there. We also say, 'Yes, and we believe stranger things than that.'"

Southern Baptist Convention President-elect and Springdale pastor the Rev. Ronnie Floyd then led a prayer asking God to help the denomination "stand strong in our land so the Gospel of Christ can be advanced."

"Your word tells us in the Book of Daniel that God alone is in charge," Floyd said. "Today, we agree together that you alone can open doors and you alone can shut doors. Give us a Great Awakening in this nation so that the Great Commission can be completed."

During segments in the past two days, the convention took motions for committees to consider for next year's annual Southern Baptist Convention to be held June 16-17 in Columbus, Ohio. The motions include:

• one for a study on revitalization of established churches.

• one that would form a task force to assess the convention's progress on racial reconciliation.

• one that would reduce fees for online seminary courses.

Metro on 06/12/2014