Podcast: Who gets to pin labels on the armies fighting in those good 'ole SBC wars?

Once upon a time, starting in the late 1970a, the Southern Baptists Convention had a big civil war — fighting about the authority of the Bible and “biblical inerrancy,” a rather inside-baseball term that was little known by pew-folks at that time.

There were two big armies, with the gray three-piece-suit players of the Southern Baptist establishment and on the other the rebels who, if my memory is correct, sometimes wore plaid. Cut me some slack, because it’s been a long time. But this background was crucial in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), focusing on early coverage of strife leading up to the 2023 SBC meetings next week in New Orleans.

The good guys back then called themselves “moderates” because they tended to seek compromise stances on hot-button issues — such as abortion and the ordination of women. Thus, journalists called them “moderates.”

The bad guys called themselves “conservatives” and took strong stands on the big Bible issues (with the exception, let’s say, of economic justice). Thus, many journalists called them “fundamentalists” — including some rather ordinary evangelicals who didn’t fit that f-word term.

The right said there were “liberals” all over the place and the SBC left said “liberals” didn’t exist. Truth is, there were very few doctrinal liberals around (in a seminary chair or two) who were weak in defending ancient beliefs — think the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth of Jesus. Journalists were not interested in investigating facts related to these debates, since the “moderates” said that was all, well, disinformation.

Flash forward to the present. The few remaining “moderates” have mainline Protestant demographics and often have quiet disputes about mainline Protestant-style issues (think LGBTQ+ matters).

The hot-button SBC 2023 issues are (1) how tough to be on fighting sexual abuse and (2) the ordination of women (and old issue is back).

Everyone defends biblical inerrancy (while maybe offering slightly different definitions). Everyone stands together on the big doctrinal issues. In the background, however, is an important issue — when it comes to an issue like ordaining women, does the SBC have “doctrines” or “opinions”?

Why do Southern Baptists and many like-minded Protestants still bar women pastors?

THE QUESTION:

Why do Southern Baptists and like-minded Protestants bar women pastors?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Why? Simple. Because they believe that’s what the Bible teaches.

But other conservative evangelical groups see female clergy as biblically proper, for example the Assemblies of God, Evangelical Covenant Church, Free Methodist Church and Salvation Army, along with many independent congregations.

The question is timely because the June 13-14 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination, will be a landmark on this. The gathering will decide whether to expel any congregation with a women pastor, thus affirming the SBC Executive Committee’s February expulsion of five such congregations.

Among them is one of the Baptists’ biggest and most influential, Saddleback Church in California, long led by popular author Rick Warren. (See this recent GetReligion post and podcast for more information: “Women in ministry remains a hot topic in SBC life, especially at the pulpit level.”)

Among Baptists, a local congregation ordains clergy, and the SBC upholds the total decision-making independence of each local congregation, so each is free to ordain women. However, the June meeting could establish a new nationwide policy that defines women’s ordination as such a doctrinal heresy that fellowship must be severed.

Across history, Christianity has largely been led by men, as with other world religions and with most societal institutions in most times and places, Protestants have been changing that.

In the U.S., a few U.S. Protestant women were ordained beginning in the 19th Century, including by evangelical churches. In the decades after World War Two, major “mainline” Protestant denominations ended their gender barriers. Women now make up 35% of the students at campuses in the Association of Theological Schools.

Though the SBC now anchors the men-only side in the ongoing debate among evangelicals, this was not always the case.