From the soaring white steeple and red brick facade to the Sunday services filled with rousing gospel hymns and evangelistic sermons, the First Baptist Church of Alexandria, Virginia, bears many of the classic hallmarks of a Southern Baptist Church.
On a recent Sunday, Women and Children’s Minister Kim Eskridge urged members to invite friends and neighbors to an upcoming Vacation Bible School — a Perpetual Baptist activity — to help “reach families in the community with the gospel ‘.
But because that pastor is a woman, in the days of the First Baptist in the Southern Baptist Convention may be numbered.
At the SBC’s annual meeting June 11-12 in Indianapolis, representatives will vote on whether the denomination’s constitution should be amended to effectively ban churches with female pastors — and not just in the top position. That measure received overwhelming support in a preliminary vote last year.
Leaders of First Baptist – which has given millions Southern Baptist causes and has been involved with the convention since its founding in the 19th century – are preparing for a possible expulsion.
“We are saddened by the direction the SBC has taken,” the church said in a statement.
And it’s not the only one.
A ban could have consequences for hundreds of municipalities
By some estimates, the proposed ban could affect hundreds of congregations and disproportionately impact 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 claim 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 investigation in April.
Southern Baptists disagree on which ministry jobs this doctrine applies to. Some say it is only the senior pastor, others that a pastor is anyone who preaches and exercises spiritual authority.
In a Baptist tradition that values the autonomy of the local church, critics say the convention should not enshrine a constitutional rule based on one interpretation of the nonbinding doctrinal statement.
By some estimates, women serve in pastoral roles in hundreds of SBC-affiliated churches, a fraction of the nearly 47,000 within the denomination.
But critics say the amendment would amount to a further reduction in the numbers and mentality of the country’s largest Protestant denomination, which has moved steadily to the right in recent decades.
They also wonder if the SBC has better things to do.
It took effort to respond to it cases of sexual abuse in his churches. A former professor at a Southern Baptist seminary in Texas was charged in May with falsifying a dossier on alleged sexual abuse by a student to obstruct a federal investigation into sexual misconduct at the convention.
SBC membership has fallen below 13 million, the lowest level in nearly half a century. Baptism rates have been declining over the long term.
If the amendment is adopted, it would not lead to an immediate purge. But it could keep denomination leaders busy investigating and expelling churches for years.
Predominantly black churches may be the most affected
Many predominantly black churches have men as lead pastors, but award pastor titles to women in other areas, such as worship and children’s ministry.
“Excluding like-minded churches… based on a local church board decision dishonors the spirit of cooperation and the guiding principles of our denomination,” wrote Pastor Gregory Perkins, president of the SBC’s National African American Fellowship. church officials.
The controversy complicates the already shaky efforts of the predominantly white denomination diversify and overcome the legacy of slavery and segregation.
Supporters of the amendment say the convention should strengthen its doctrinal statement, the Baptist Faith and Message, which states that the office of pastor is “limited to men as qualified by the Bible.”
“If we don’t stand up for this issue and be unapologetically biblical, then we won’t stand for anything,” said amendment proponent Mike Law, pastor of Arlington Baptist Church in Virginia.
Because Baptist churches are independent, the convention cannot tell them what to do or who to appoint as pastor.
But the convention can decide which churches are in and which are not. And even without a formal amendment, the Executive Committee has started telling churches with female pastors that they are out. That including one of the largestSaddleback Church of Southern California.
When Saddleback and a small church in Kentucky called for the 2023 annual meeting, delegates overwhelmingly refused to take them back.
Before the vote, retired pastor Rick Warren, who founded Saddleback, made a futile appeal to members not to move forward with expelling his church.
“I’m not asking you to agree with my church,” Warren said at the convention at the time. “I’m asking you to act like a Southern Baptist.”
The amendment would give such enforcement actions more teeth.
Some churches with female pastors have closed on their own in the past year. They range from Elevation Church, a megachurch in North Carolina, to First Baptist of Richmond, Virginia, which has had close ties to the SBC since the convention’s founding.
Law claimed the issue was a “canary in the coal mine” for liberal denominations, several of which began ordaining women and later LGBTQ+ people.
“Southern Baptists are facing a defining moment,” he said in a video on a pro-change website. “This is the trajectory of doing nothing: Soon, Southern Baptist churches will support openly gay clergy, same-sex marriage, and ultimately transgenderism.”
Women pastors for generations in other denominations
Others point out that Pentecostal and other denominations have had female pastors for generations and remain theologically conservative.
Some SBC churches with female pastors are deeply involved in the convention, while others have minimal ties and identify more closely with historically black or other progressive denominations.
Also, some SBC churches interpret the 2000 Statement of Faith as applying only to senior pastors. As long as the church leader is male, women can take on other pastoral roles, they say.
Such churches may leave if SBC leaders interfere with congregations that “follow their conscience, biblical beliefs and values by recognizing that women can receive a pastoral gift from God in partnership with male leadership,” said Dwight McKissic, an Arlington pastor, Texas. social media platform
Other churches say women can serve in any role, including senior pastor, and churches can agree to disagree if they embrace most of the SBC’s statement of faith.
The First Baptist of Alexandria also belongs to that category. Although the current senior pastor is male, she recognizes “God’s call to ordain every qualified individual, male or female, for pastoral ministry,” the church said in a statement.
First Baptist leaders declined interview requests but have posted extensively about the issue on their website.
It said that while it plans to send representatives to the SBC’s annual meeting, it was warned to expect a motion to deny them the right to vote.
“I really believe we need to be heard and represented,” senior pastor Robert Stephens told members in a videotaped meeting.
The SBC’s highest governing body is against the change. Investigating churches’ compliance would take an unsustainable amount of time and energy in something that should not be a litmus test for fellowship, wrote Jeff Iorg, chairman of the SBC Executive Committee, in a Baptist Press commentary.
Baptist Women in Ministry, which started within the SBC in the 1980s but now works in several Baptist denominations, has taken note. The Rev. Meredith Stone, executive director, said some female pastors within the SBC have asked for support.
On the eve of the SBC meeting, the group plans to release a documentary, “Midwives of a Movement,” about pioneers for women in Baptist ministry in the 20th century.
“Because they say that women have less value before God than men in the church, we want to make sure that women know that they have the same value and that there are no limits to how they follow Christ in the work of the church,” says Stone. said.
