Southern Baptists are poised to ban churches with women pastors; some are urging them to reconsider
From its towering white steeple and red-brick facade to its Sunday services filled with rousing gospel hymns and evangelistic sermons, First Baptist Church of Alexandria, Va., bears many of the classic hallmarks of a Southern Baptist church.
On a recent Sunday, its pastor for women and children, Kim Eskridge, urged members to invite friends and neighbors to an upcoming vacation Bible school to help “reach families in the community with the gospel.”
But because that pastor is a woman, First Baptist’s days in the Southern Baptist Convention may be numbered.
At the SBC’s annual meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in Indianapolis, representatives will vote on whether to amend the denomination’s constitution to essentially ban churches with any women pastors — and not just in the top job. That measure received overwhelming approval in a preliminary vote last year.
Leaders of First Baptist — which has given millions to Southern Baptist causes and has been involved with the convention since its 19th century founding — are bracing for a possible expulsion.
“We are grieved at the direction the SBC has taken,” the church said in a statement.
And it’s not alone. By some estimates, the proposed ban could affect hundreds of congregations and have a disproportionate impact on predominantly Black churches.
The vote is partly the culmination of events set in motion two years ago.
That’s when a Virginia pastor contacted SBC officials to contend that First Baptist and four nearby churches were “out of step” with denominational doctrine that says only men can be pastors. The SBC Credentials Committee launched a formal inquiry in April.
Southern Baptists disagree on which ministry jobs this doctrine refers to. Some say it’s just the senior pastor, others that a pastor is anyone who preaches and exercises spiritual authority.
And in a Baptist tradition that prizes local church autonomy, critics say the convention shouldn’t enshrine a constitutional rule based on one interpretation of its non-binding doctrinal statement.
By some estimates, women are working in pastoral roles in hundreds of SBC-linked churches, a fraction of the nearly 47,000 across the denomination.
But critics say the amendment would amount to a further narrowing in numbers and mindset for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, which has moved steadily rightward in recent decades.
They also wonder if the SBC has better things to do.
It has struggled to respond to sexual abuse cases in its churches. A former professor at a Southern Baptist seminary in Texas was indicted in May on a charge of falsifying a record about alleged sexual abuse by a student in order to obstruct a federal investigation into sexual misconduct in the convention.
SBC membership has dipped below 13 million, nearly a half-century low. Baptismal rates are in long-term decline.
The amendment, if passed, wouldn’t prompt an immediate purge. But it could keep the denomination’s leaders busy for years, investigating and ousting churches. Many predominantly Black churches have men as lead pastors but assign pastor titles to women in other areas, such as worship and children’s ministries.
“To disfellowship like-minded churches ... based on a localchurch governance decision dishonors the spirit of cooperation and the guiding tenets of our denomination,” wrote Pastor Gregory Perkins, president of the SBC’s National African American Fellowship, to denominational officials.
The controversy complicates the alreadychoppy efforts by the mostly white denomination to diversify and overcome its legacy of slavery and segregation.
Amendment proponents say the convention needs to reinforce its doctrinal statement, the Baptist Faith and Message, which says the office of pastor is “limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”
“If we won’t stand on this issue and be unapologetically biblical, then we won’t stand on anything,” said amendment proponent Mike Law, pastor of Arlington Baptist Church in Virginia.
Since Baptist churches are independent, the convention can’t tell them what to do or whom to appoint as a pastor.
But the convention can decide which churches are in and which are out. And even without a formal amendment, its Executive Committee has begun telling churches with women pastors that they’re out.