ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Thousands of Southern Baptists overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to advance a formal ban on women pastors in the nation's largest Protestant denomination, sending a clear message that men alone should preach to these conservative evangelical congregations.
The amendment would tighten existing restrictions in the Southern Baptist Convention, which already has a faith statement opposing women pastors.
The vote at the annual meeting was
6,028 to 2,026 — a 3-to-1 margin — which easily exceeded the required two-thirds majority. It will require a similar two-thirds vote at next year's meeting to become part of the constitution.
Its sponsor, Albert Mohler, characterized the amendment as addressing a defining issue.
“This is an opportunity for Southern Baptists to speak in truth, in unity, in conviction,” said Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. “There’s a great line that divides liberal and biblical evangelicalism, and you can see it on this very issue. The trajectory of liberal denominations is clear.”
There was only brief debate — and none of it contained support for women pastors.
The sole opposition came from South Carolina pastor Doug Mize. He said the measure wasn’t necessary because the denomination already has a mechanism to expel churches with women in senior pastoral positions, and it’s done so on multiple times.
“What we have already works,” he said.
Southern Baptist leaders cite biblical passages that limit pastors to men. Advocates for women’s ministry cite biblical passages that proclaim men and women as equal under God and where women are called to proclaim the gospel.
While the SBC can't tell its self-governing churches what to do, it does have the power to expel churches from convention membership, declaring them not in “friendly cooperation.”
There’s already wide agreement within the denomination that its faith statement rejects the appointment of women as senior pastors who lead churches. Debate has persisted on where to draw the line regarding churches with women serving in assistant pastoral or preaching roles.
“We need constitutional clarity on this issue,” Mohler said. He had a lead role in drafting the ban, which passed in 2000.
The amendment's language requires the exclusion of any church that acts “to affirm, appoint, or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor/elder/overseer, specifically preaching to the assembled congregation.”
Wednesday’s vote came on the last day of the convention’s two-day annual meeting in Orlando, Florida. More than 11,000 delegates, known as messengers, were attending.
In the previous three annual meetings, a majority of representatives voted to amend the SBC constitution to ban churches with women in any pastoral role. But only in one of those years did the measure get the needed two-thirds supermajority, so the matter languished.
The denomination has also expelled churches with women in senior pastoral roles, including the large Saddleback Church of California, on the grounds of an existing clause in the constitution barring churches whose “faith and practice” was out of harmony with the denomination’s.
The SBC debate stands in stark contrast to the practices of numerous historic, more liberal Protestant denominations, which ordain women and have opened their highest offices to them. Practices vary widely in conservative, evangelical denominations — particularly in Pentecostal and charismatic circles, where prominent women pastors include Paula White-Cain, head of President Donald Trump’s White House Faith Office.
But other, more conservative Protestant groups do not ordain women as clergy. And the Catholic and Orthodox churches — the world’s two largest Christian communions — ordain only men to the priesthood.
The organization Baptist Women in Ministry, which works with female ministers in a variety of Baptist denominations, issued a statement lamenting the vote.
“We express our solidarity with the women in ministry who have been harmed by this vote, the hateful rhetoric and propaganda leading up to the vote, and the damaging theology the vote represents,” it said. “Women in ministry deserve affirmation, respect, and the opportunity to follow God’s call. We are heartbroken that they have been denied those fundamental freedoms in the process of this vote.”
Later Wednesday, SBC messengers will also consider a nonbinding resolution with similar language opposing women pastors. It requires only a simple majority to pass. They will also vote on resolutions addressing a range of issues, from immigration to antisemitism.
On Tuesday, delegates elected Florida pastor Willy Rice to be its next president. He won 58% of the votes over South Carolina pastor Josh Powell.
Rice supported the amendment barring churches with women pastors, as did Powell and the SBC's departing president, Clint Pressley.
Rice, senior pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, drew support from advocacy groups such as the Center for Baptist Leadership, which have argued SBC leadership has gone “woke” on issues ranging from race to gender to immigration.
The denomination is already staunchly conservative in areas such as its advocacy against abortion to its faith statement declaring the office of pastor is limited to men. But the main debates within the SBC in recent years have been over how far to move on the religious and political right.
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