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NEW ORLEANS — The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, took a major stand this week on the role of women in the church, emphatically making clear that the office of pastor is reserved for men only.
The role of women was one of the most high-profile topics of debate in New Orleans this week as Southern Baptists from across the nation conducted their annual business. The decisions made clear that the conservative denomination would kick churches out with women pastors.
“These votes devalue the worth and callings of women to participate in God’s work through the local church,” Meredith Stone, executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry, said in a statement. Stone’s nonprofit works with women ministers in churches in the SBC and other Baptist denominations.
“The emotional, spiritual, and physical safety of women is further threatened when they are not only devalued, but used in a political denominational battle,” Stone said.
Bestselling author and Saddleback founding pastor Rick Warren and Fern Creek pastor Linda Barnes Popham gave impassioned pleas Tuesday afternoon for 12,000-plus messengers to allow the two churches back into the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.
The SBC changed its doctrinal statement, the Baptist Faith & Message, in 2000 to say, “the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.” But a debate about whether the SBC should enforce that belief statement and how emerged only recently. Southern Baptists hold to a complementarian view, which believes men and women hold different roles.
At the 2023 SBC annual meeting here in New Orleans, Southern Baptist voting delegates, or messengers, upheld the ouster of Saddleback Church in Southern California and Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, for having women in lead or senior pastor roles and took steps to enshrine in its constitution a prohibition on female pastors.
“So, why now?” Popham said in her address to the convention Tuesday afternoon, repeating a question she has posed since February.
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Fern Creek and Saddleback were among five total churches the SBC Executive Committee — which manages denomination business outside the annual meeting — disfellowshipped in February for practices out of sync with the SBC’s doctrinal statement because they have women pastors. This week, the full convention had the chance to make the final call on the fate of those churches.
“It is an issue of biblical authority. It is one that has actually led to the unity of the Southern Baptist Convention as Southern Baptists have gone forward with an issue of clarity here,” R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said on Tuesday in a rebuttal to Warren on the convention floor. “It is the unity and harmony of the Southern Baptist Convention that is now at stake.”
Mohler also gave the rebuttal to Popham, whose church is just miles from Mohler’s seminary in Louisville. Fern Creek’s geographic proximity to Mohler and other SBC leaders who are calling for a stricter stance on women pastors contributed to the emotionally charged nature of Popham’s address.
“Satan loves dividing us, he’s tearing this convention apart,” Popham said. “He loves seeing religious leaders sitting on protected and padded pontifical thrones being consumed by tradition and opinions and power and non-salvific issues.”
Warren’s appeal was less personal and more broadly sought to challenge the SBC on fellowshipping with churches who share differing views on certain issues. In recent weeks, Warren has been on a major public relations campaign to back the church he founded, one of the the SBC’s largest.
“If you think if every Baptist thinks like you, you’re mistaken,” Warren said. “Saddleback disagrees with one word (of the Baptist Faith & Message 2000). That’s 99.99999% in agreement. Isn’t that close enough?”
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Though the national convention has decided to uphold the ouster of Saddleback and Fern Creek, both churches remain part of their respective state conventions.
At the national level, the decisions about Saddleback and Fern Creek sets a precedent for the SBC Credentials Committee, an oversight group that evaluates churches’ affiliation with the Nashville-based SBC, to recommend disfellowshipping more churches with women pastors in the future. The SBC Executive Committee decides whether to approve those recommendations.
Warren addressed the media in a news conference after leaders announced the results of the vote on Saddleback.
Though he expected the outcome, Warren warned the decision sets a dangerous precedent and said it’s not representative of many Southern Baptists’ stance on the issue.
“The face of Southern Baptists does not look at all look like our annual meeting,” Warren said.
On Wednesday morning, SBC leaders announced 88% of messengers voted to uphold Saddleback’s ouster and 92% voted the same for Fern Creek.
Constitutional amendment and resolutions
Messengers’ approval of the constitutional amendment further cements a new reality that materialized when messengers voted to uphold the ouster of Saddleback and Fern Creek.
Already, the outcomes for Saddleback and Fern Creek simplified guidelines for the credentials committee. The constitutional amendment, which requires a second round of approval at next year’s SBC annual meeting, leaves no doubt for the credentials committee to recommend disfellowshipping churches with women pastors.
Before the vote on the constitutional amendment on Wednesday, messengers debated whether it was necessary to add this measure to their constitution.
Sarah Clatworthy, a messenger from Texas, said messengers “must stand our ground and keep the door shut to feminism and liberalism.”
Churches with women pastors should join the United Methodist Church, she said.
“We should leave no room for our daughters and granddaughters in the generations ahead to have confusion on where the SBC stands,” she said. “Let them know Scripture is our authority and not the culture.”
Messengers also approved two resolutions on women in ministry and on the debate over women pastors. One of the resolutions, titled “On the Southern Baptist confessional heritage of the office of bishop/elder/pastor” was a doubling down of the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 and its statement on male pastors.
Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on Twitter @liamsadams.
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