Southern Baptists Move to Purge Churches With Female Pastors
The crackdown comes at a moment when the country is broadly re-examining women's rights, a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. For the Southern Baptists, it also comes as victims' advocates continue to press the denomination to take action following devastating reports of sexual abuse of women and children, and are met with resistance from some men in the organization.
As the convention got underway Monday in New Orleans, Mike Law, a Virginia pastor, pushed for his proposed amendment to the S.B.C. constitution that would further restrict the role of women in leadership, by stating that a church can be Southern Baptist only if it "does not affirm, appoint, or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind."
More than 2,000 male pastors and professors signed a letter in support of the proposed amendment before the convention began. Church officials decided on Monday to advance the proposal to a full floor vote this week, even as they cautioned that they opposed it, arguing that it was unnecessary given the denomination's existing theological positions. The amendment would need to be passed twice, in consecutive years, to go into effect.
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How will the Southern Baptist Convention move forward with or without the proposed amendment?
Some Southern Baptists view female leaders as "as an early harbinger of a raft of other changes," said Joshua Abbotoy, whose church left the denomination last year because of concerns about a liberal drift. Mr. Abbotoy is the managing director of New Founding, a conservative organization whose journal published an analysis over the weekend estimating that there were more than 1,800 female pastors serving in S.B.C. churches.
As Mr. Abbotoy sees it, letting go of the belief in some distinct roles for men and women calls into question whether "the human person is differentiated between two genders" at all, and leads to broader questions about sexuality and gender.
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How will this affect the theological debates within the Southern Baptist Convention moving forward?
Rick Warren, Saddleback's founding pastor and the author of one of the best-selling books of all time, has long been a hero within a tradition that prioritizes church growth and electric preaching. But his church was ousted from the denomination in February because he had named a husband and wife as his successors.