Live updates: Southern Baptists take first step in approving ban on women pastors

NEW ORLEANS — On Tuesday, the Southern Baptist Convention reelected its current president for another term, voted on appeals from three churches disfellowshipped from the denomination, and passed six of nine resolutions. But they’re not done yet.

On the second and final day of the 2023 SBC annual meeting in New Orleans, voting delegates, called messengers, will decide on whether to renew the SBC Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force and whether to approve a measure that would enshrine a ban on women pastors.

Also, the results were announced for the votes on the three churches — Saddleback Church in California, Fern Creek Baptist Church and Freedom Church in Florida — that appealed their ouster from the SBC. The messengers will also vote on the outstanding resolutions, including one that opposes gender affirming care for transgender people.

Tuesday SBC highlights: Rick Warren gives impassioned plea for Saddleback Church in SBC debate over women pastors

Meanwhile, the reelection of incumbent SBC President Bart Barber signaled yet again a win for more mainstream conservatives within Southern Baptist life.

Decisions reached today, especially on abuse reform, will further illuminate majority sentiment in the SBC.

Follow along for live updates:

Resolutions passed on women's roles, artificial intelligence, gender-affirming care

Over Tuesday and Wednesday, Southern Baptists passed a variety of resolutions dealing with top cultural issues.

Those ranged from condemning gender-affirming care to one on artificial intelligence.

Resolutions are non-binding but considered expressions of “opinion or concern” by the messengers voting that year.

Here are some of the most noteworthy motions passed during the 2023 Southern Baptist Convention:

• A resolution on women “fulfilling the Great Commission” that says pastors should equip women in their congregations for the work of ministry and that commits the SBC to “cultivating an environment … where women are fully respected, valued, and mobilized as co-laborers for the fulfillment of Christ’s Great Commission.”

• A resolution opposing gender-affirming health care, calling such care “spiritually destructive.”

• A resolution on artificial intelligence that says Baptists “must proactively engage and shape these emerging technologies” and that “God alone has the power to create life.”

• A resolution on immigration that asks government leaders “to provide clear guidance for immigrants and asylum seekers regarding border policies.”

Sex abuse survivors hopeful for SBC's future after renewal of task force

Survivors of sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention said Wednesday that they’re hopeful for the future of the convention and that they’re grateful for how far the convention has come.

The first time Jules Woodson, a survivor assaulted by her youth pastor at a church in Texas, attended the convention in 2019 in Birmingham, survivors weren’t even allowed inside the building. Instead, they stood outside by the dumpsters trying to catch attention of passersby. Some Southern Baptist messengers wouldn’t even look at them.

This year, there’s a special room set aside for survivors.

“It was completely different, looking back to think how we were sweating standing out there in the heat by the dumpster with pastors ignoring us and whispering behind our backs and giving us dirty looks,” Woodson said. “What a difference, 2019 dumpsters outside to now the second year of having a safe space for survivors to just breathe, to process.”

Wednesday, messengers of the convention overwhelmingly approved a one-year renewal of the Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force. And the task force unveiled a website including a database soon to be populated with the names of abusers.

Marion Mann, a survivor of child sexual abuse in the SBC, said it was moving to see messengers raise their yellow ballots to approve the task force’s continuation.

“In my story, there’s a lot of institutional betrayal from the SBC that made me really jaded and just hopeless in the future of the SBC and wanting to turn away but not being able to, because there are survivors we’re doing this for and that we want to protect in the future,” she said. Now, she’s given renewed hope in the denomination.

Task force members stressed that the actions taken so far are just baby steps, but nonetheless important ones. “I hope people are getting it and I hope people are starting to understand and the messengers are holding the SBC accountable for the long term,” Woodson said. “That’s how it should be and it’s about time. It’s about dang time for some accountability.”

SBC takes first vote to approve constitutional ban on women pastors

A constitutional amendment enshrining the Southern Baptist Convention’s ban on women pastors was approved by messengers Wednesday.

The SBC already says in its Baptist Faith and Message that the office of pastor is to be reserved for men, but now, if approved in a second vote next year, the constitution will also say that the convention is only in friendly cooperation with churches that “affirm, appoint or employ only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.”

While two churches were kicked out of the convention for having women pastors earlier Wednesday, the addition of the constitutional amendment could pave the way for more churches to be disfellowshipped.

The SBC Executive Committee referred the motion to the full convention due to the “significance of the matter,” but told messengers they opposed the amendment.

Before the vote, messengers debated whether it was necessary to add this measure to their constitution.

Sarah Clatworthy, a messenger from Texas, said messengers “must stand our ground and keep the door shut to feminism and liberalism.”

Churches with women pastors should join the United Methodist Church, she said.

“We should leave no room for our daughters and granddaughters in the generations ahead to have confusion on where the SBC stands,” she said. “Let them know Scripture is our authority and not the culture.”

Southern Baptists hold to a complementarian view, which believes men and women hold different roles.

Messengers renew abuse reform task force for another year

Signaling a sustained appetite among Southern Baptists for ongoing sexual abuse reform, messengers overwhelmingly voted to renew the SBC Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force to continue its work for another year.

The raised ballot vote shows messengers are willing to continue supporting abuse reform beyond the 2022 SBC annual meeting, when messengers initially voted to create the abuse reform task force.

"To fail to approve this recommendation would make that day nothing more than an unkept or at best partially kept promise, an unfinished work," Georgia pastor Griffin Gulledge said on the floor of the convention, speaking in support of a recommendation to renew the task force.

The task force presented an initial version of a database of ministers credibly accused of sexual abuse. In the near future, the task force intends to add names people who have received a criminal conviction or civil judgment or have confessed to abuse in a non-privileged setting.

A major reason why the task force sought renewal is to be able to further study the implementation of a fourth category of names: ministers facing abuse allegations from an independent third party.

Important context: The SBC embarked on sexual abuse reforms last year. What's at stake at 2023 meeting?

Rick Warren: 'I wanted to push the conversation'

Following the announcement that messengers overwhelmingly voted to uphold the ouster of Saddleback Church, Saddleback founding pastor Rick Warren addressed the media at a news conference Wednesday morning.

"I wasn’t expecting to win," Warren said. "I wanted to push the conversation that’s been stagnant for years.”

Though he expected the outcome, Warren warned the decision sets a dangerous precedent and said it's not representative of many Southern Baptists' stance on the issue.

"The face of Southern Baptists does not look at all look like our annual meeting," Warren said.

Warren's tone was combative, criticizing SBC leaders for poor communication with him and pastors who lack a platform but who use controversies at the annual meeting to gain notoriety.

At the same time, Warren reiterated an apology he published before the annual meeting to women pastors for his previous stances on women in ministry.

Three churches ousted from convention

Southern Baptists on Wednesday overwhelmingly affirmed the decision to disfellowship three churches from the convention, two over women pastors and one over its response to sexual abuse allegations.

The vote by messengers, taken Tuesday and reported Wednesday, makes final the decision that the three churches, including California megachurch Saddleback Church are not in “friendly cooperation” with the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

It also is a signal that the SBC continues in its opposition to women pastors. It also is a signal that the convention was serious when it indicated that local churches, while autonomous, must correctly respond to sexual abuse.

The decision to disfellowship Fern Creek Baptist in Louisville, which has a woman pastor, was upheld by more than 91%.

The decision to disfellowship Freedom Church in Florida, which the denomination says responded incorrectly to sexual abuse, was upheld by more than 96%.

Saddleback, the large California church founded by pastor Rick Warren, received the greatest amount of support, but more than 88% of voters still affirmed its ouster.

ERLC president recalls impact of Covenant School shooting

March 27 was the worst day of Brent Leatherwood’s life, the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission told messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention on Wednesday.

That day, a shooter entered the Covenant School in Nashville, killing six people including three children.

Leatherwood’s children attend the school.

Wednesday, Leatherwood tied the shooting and loss of life to how “our culture of anger and animosity can so quickly be turned into one of annihilation,” including through abortion, gender transitions, drug use and the villification of sexual abuse victims, he said.

“And so I know now the Lord is revealing to me all the ways he wants this Commission – and our SBC churches – to be a voice for the voiceless, to speak up for the marginalized, to truly be a servant of the widow, the orphan and the vulnerable,” Leatherwood said. “Because, each day when I see the three little survivors of the Covenant School shooting in my own home, I know that I cannot be quiet … and cannot stand idly by while our culture tears itself apart.”

The ERLC is the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention and, like the convention itself, is headquartered in Nashville.

On Tuesday, leaders with the SBC’s North American Mission Board honored Metro Nashville Police Department chaplain Andrew Ivey, a Southern Baptist who’s a North American Mission Board-endorsed chaplain, for his response to the Covenant shooting. The audience responded with a standing ovation for Ivey.

Pompeo urges political involvement, decries State Department focus on LGBTQ rights

The U.S. Secretary of State’s focus on LGBTQ rights is putting the country at risk, said Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State, head of the CIA and Kansas congressman, to a group of Southern Baptists on Tuesday night.

In a speech and question and answer session titled “Twilight’s Last Gleaming: The State of Religious Liberty in America,” Pompeo encouraged Southern Baptists to get involved in politics as well as “practical” ways to make an impact such as teaching Vacation Bible School.

If you do those practical things, Pompeo said, citing his time as a Sunday School teacher in Wichita, Kansas, “Then the Lord will thank us and put us in the right place and we will begin to build this nation back to the place that the world is counting on us to be.”

The session Tuesday night was hosted by the Standing for Freedom Center at Liberty University in partnership with the Conservative Baptist Network. It was the only instance of a national political leader speaking at a Southern Baptist Convention-adjacent event this year.

Pompeo currently leads Champion American Values PAC and Champion American Values Fund, which are described as organizations “dedicated to pushing back against the ‘woke’ liberals who are shoving their ideology into our homes, schools, military, workplaces, and communities.”

“If we think that somehow we can just hide in our church … If we think we’re going to avoid politics, you should know, politics will find you and government will find a way to take away that thing you do indeed find the most precious and the most lovely,” Pompeo said.

During his speech, Pompeo spoke about the importance of defending religious liberty, his top priority as secretary of state.

Today, the State Department has made LGBTQ rights a top issue, and ambassadors are also focused on things like abortion access and climate change, Pompeo said.

“In many nations around the world they see that and say, well, I might just be better friends with China than with you,” Pompeo said.

Tuesday live updates: Live updates: Rick Warren gives impassioned plea for Saddleback Church in SBC debate over women pastors

Measure to enshrine women pastors ban: Southern Baptists to vote on measure enshrining ban on women pastors at annual meeting

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Southern Baptist Convention: Live updates as ban on women pastors up