{"id":34192,"date":"2023-06-22T03:51:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-22T03:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=34192"},"modified":"2023-07-02T08:03:44","modified_gmt":"2023-07-02T08:03:44","slug":"southern-baptists-expel-churches-with-women-pastors-but-the-debates-not-just-about-gender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/southern-baptists-expel-churches-with-women-pastors-but-the-debates-not-just-about-gender\/","title":{"rendered":"Southern Baptists expel churches with women pastors \u2013 but the debate\u2019s not just about\u00a0gender"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Andrew Gardner<\/a>, Baylor University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant group<\/a> in the United States, overwhelmingly voted to expel<\/a> two congregations with women pastors on June 14, 2023, during their annual convention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SBC messengers, as convention delegates are called, also put forward an amendment to make churches\u2019 membership within the denomination contingent upon prohibiting women pastors<\/a>, which will be voted on next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Media coverage<\/a> of this debate has focused on gender. However, as a scholar of Baptists in the U.S.<\/a>, I believe an underlying conversation about sexuality has also shaped the church\u2019s opposition to women preaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A denomination\u2019s decisions about one social issue often influence its position on others, as I have written about<\/a> with sociologist Gerardo Marti<\/a>. We argue that the SBC\u2019s stance on issues of gender and sexuality have not always been just about fidelity to their interpretation of scripture. Rather, the SBC uses these issues to differentiate itself from other, more progressive denominations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My recent book, \u201cBinkley: A Congregational History<\/a>,\u201d examines the history of one of the first congregations to be expelled from the SBC over the issue of sexuality, in 1992.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gay and called<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 1990, a Duke Divinity School student named John Blevins, who was openly gay, began attending the Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church<\/a> in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. After his first year of Divinity School, he approached the church about the possibility of being ordained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blevins was drawn to Binkley<\/a> for its progressive theology. Founded in 1958, the church became an interracial congregation and supported the Civil Rights Movement at a time when many Southern Baptist churches prohibited Black worshippers from becoming members or even attending Sunday services. Later, the congregation called women to serve as associate pastors and, ultimately, senior pastor as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blevins\u2019 request for ordination raised questions among some of Binkley\u2019s leaders and members. Between 1976 and 1991, the SBC had passed six resolutions on homosexuality. The first<\/a> encouraged congregations \u201cnot to afford the practice of homosexuality any degree of approval through ordination, employment, or other designations of normal life-style.\u201d Subsequent resolutions grew increasing harsh. In 1988, the SBC passed a resolution<\/a> that declared homosexuality an \u201cabomination in the sight of God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Convention resolutions are not binding on individual congregations, however, and many members of Binkley thought about sexuality differently. Senior pastor Linda Jordan thought<\/a> that since Blevins was still completing his divinity degree, the church should license him to preach<\/a>, but wait to formally ordain \u2013 meaning he could not preside over communion or weddings, nor hold the title of Reverend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The church went through a yearlong process of studying faith and sexuality as members wrestled with Blevins\u2019 request. In April 1992, the congregation voted to license Blevins<\/a> to preach the Gospel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Removal from the SBC<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

That same year, in Raleigh, North Carolina, Pullen Memorial Baptist Church held a ceremony to honor a same-sex union. As Pullen\u2019s pastor Mahan Siler reflected in 2022<\/a>, it was a first: \u201cthere wasn\u2019t a congregation we knew out there who we could learn from.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both congregations\u2019 decisions drew the ire of the North Carolina Baptist Convention, as well as the national convention of the SBC, where messengers voted to expel both churches. Minutes from the meeting<\/a> note that the crowd burst into the \u201cappearance of elation\u201d at the decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Messengers proceeded to propose an amendment that congregations \u201cwhich act to affirm, approve or endorse homosexual behavior\u201d would not be \u201cin friendly cooperation with the Convention.\u201d It was adopted the following year<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barring membership to the SBC over the issue of sexuality presented an opportunity for conservatives who also opposed women\u2019s leadership. During the same meeting, in 1993, another proposed amendment sought to prohibit the membership of churches that ordained women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proposal failed before being put to a convention-wide vote. Yet it shows how issues of sexuality and gender were entwined for conservative members of the SBC, who sought similar constitutional amendments for both. One amendment created the opportunity for the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
Congregation at the Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., which was one of five churches disfellowshipped from the Southern Baptist Convention because they have female pastors. AP Photo\/Jessie Wardarski<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Logical consequence\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The amendment the SBC is currently considering, which seeks to prohibit women pastors, acknowledges this history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mike Law, the Virginia pastor who proposed the amendment, does not seek to block women from ordination, as the proposal put forward in 1993 would have done. Rather, his amendment seeks to block women from holding the title of \u201cpastor\u201d<\/a>. This distinction would allow women to be ordained and serve as other types of church leaders, such as deacons or missionaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a series of videos he released before the vote, Law described the issue of women pastors as a \u201ccanary in the coal mine<\/a>.\u201d \u201cOnce a denomination allows female pastors it\u2019s usually just a matter of time until they affirm practicing homosexuals as pastors,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, offered a similar concern on his blog<\/a> in 2018. \u201cThe same negotiation and \u2018reinterpretation\u2019 of the biblical text that allows for the service of women pastors will logically lead to the acceptance of the LGBT revolution,\u201d he argued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both men, in other words, believe one kind of acceptance leads inevitably to the other \u2013 the proverbial slippery slope. The SBC\u2019s history<\/a> suggests that \u201cslippery slope\u201d could easily cut the other way, too: Once a denomination rejects gay pastors, it may only be a matter of time until it rejects women pastors, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Either way, when the SBC is wrestling with issues of gender, issues of sexuality are not too far away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrew Gardner<\/a>, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Baylor University, Baylor University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Gardner, Baylor University The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant group in the United States, overwhelmingly voted to expel two congregations with women pastors on June 14, 2023, during their annual convention. SBC messengers, as convention delegates are called, also put forward an amendment to make churches\u2019 membership within the denomination contingent upon prohibiting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":34193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2450],"tags":[1829,10967,14270,6610,8561,14272,11971,14271],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34192"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34192"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34334,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34192\/revisions\/34334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}