At the annual meeting in New Orleans this week, Southern Baptists stepped up their campaign against women clergy. “Messengers” of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination have approved the expulsion of two congregations, one of which is Lake Forest’s Saddleback Church, for allowing women to be ordained.
The venue was meaningful. In March 1967, in New Orleans, Texas judge Paul Pressler and a seminarian named Paige Patterson met at the Café du Monde to discuss, according to enduring legend, the conservative takeover strategy of the Southern Baptist convention. is said to have been erected. Fundamentalists within the sect argued that the sect’s members were on a slippery slope to theological liberalism by refusing to accept female ministers and affirm the inerrancy of the Bible.
I would argue that the term “liberal Southern Baptist” is an oxymoron, but the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist convention in the ’70s wiped the denomination of all traces of “liberalism.” became. Fundamentalists began to use the authority of the sectarian presidents to systematically recruit like-minded conservatives to the boards of church institutions, especially seminaries.
Many lifelong Southern Baptists still bear the scars of these purges.
As the cult’s institutions and educational institutions were shut down, fundamentalists turned to the supposed scourge of female pastors. Abandoning the foundational Baptist principles of liberty of conscience and congregational autonomy, which had given ordination powers to local churches rather than to the SBC, the new government in 1984 forced women into “work other than their ordination roles”. passed a resolution to limit
However, the resolution was not an order, and some congregations insisted on the Baptist doctrine of self-government and refused to follow it. Moreover, even the inerrant Bible has multiple ways of interpreting the role of women.
Saddleback Church has gone further than others. Founded in 1980 by Rick Warren, it is one of the largest congregations of the denomination, but Warren told me several years ago that the church flaunts the label “Southern Baptists.” “They need us more than we need them,” he said.
Apparently not anymore. After Saddleback ordained three women and announced a husband-and-wife pastoral team to replace the retired Warren, the congregation found the church “not in friendly partnership” with the SBC. bottom. Warren appealed for his dismissal at the annual convention in New Orleans.
“If doctrinal differences between Baptists are considered a sin, we will all be banished,” he said, reminding the famously contentious Baptist denomination, whose doctrinal statement states: It added that it contained more than 4,000 words. “Saddleback disagrees with a single word” He said, figuratively speaking. “99.9999999999999 I agree! Isn’t that close enough?
The representatives yelled back, “No!”
R. Albert Moeller, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said, “The issue of women entering the ministry is a matter of basic biblical authority and a real violation of both the doctrine and order of the Southern Baptist convention. ‘ he told the audience. ”
This is also a matter of fundamentalist cultural fear.
Conservatives see women pastors as “an early harbinger of many other changes,” as Pastor Joshua Abbotoy, who quit the Southern Baptist Convention because he became too liberal, told The New York Times. I am considering Humans are distinguished by her two genders. ”
Another pastor suggested that the women clergy permit would soon “allow gay marriage and even allow gays to serve as pastors.” slippery slopes.
After the New Orleans congregation ended, Southern Baptists not fully assembled yet A horrific 2022 report details sexual misconduct by prominent figures within the sect. But they overwhelmingly supported the expulsion of the Saddleback and Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, where Linda Barnes Popham was pastor for 30 years.
The convention also approved, for the first time, a constitutional amendment to move the issue beyond a mere solution, requiring that all congregations be “only males in biblically qualified ministers or elders of any kind.” The amendment would need to be passed two years in a row for it to take effect.
Why do conservatives believe that the “slippery slope” applies only to liberals? The sad history of Southern Baptists over the past 40 years suggests that narrow and restrictive reading of the Bible leads to anger, condemnation, exclusion, and even abuse.
The Jesus I know said, “Come to me.”
Randall Ballmer is an Episcopalian priest, professor at Dartmouth College, and author of Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America.
