A constitutional ban on women pastors and a proposal to abolish a public policy agency accused of compromising with leftists narrowly failed on the last day of this year’s Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas.
Close margins on both key votes demonstrated the staunchly conservative views of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, which counts 12.7 million .
“Although we had a lot of discussion about several things, there wasn’t a real sense of a contentious spirit in the room,” SBC President Clint Pressley told reporters at a news conference after the votes.
The Southern Baptist Convention held its annual meeting, which rotates cities each year, from June 8-11 at downtown’s Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. The meeting was expected to draw between 18,000 and 20,000 visitors, according to Downtown Dallas, Inc.
A proposed amendment to the denomination’s constitution that would enshrine barring women from holding a role like women’s or children’s pastor failed for the second year in a row. A proposal to abolish the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the denomination’s public policy arm, received about 43% of voting delegates’ but narrowly failed.
Daily Wire writer Megan Basham, a leading critic of the commission, told The Dallas Morning News the narrow vote margin showed that many Southern Baptists don’t want their political advocates to compromise their convictions or pursue more “palatable” positions on topics like immigration or abortion.
About 90% of SBC churches see less than 250 attendees at weekly worship services, according to Lifeway Research, an evangelical research firm.
Presidents of SBC seminaries also gave reports Wednesday on their institutions, which receive funding from the convention. David Dockery, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, said his school had improved its financial health, removed all of its short-term debt and increased its total net assets by more than $20 million. The seminary published a 2023 report that disclosed $140 million in overspending over a 20-year period.
Dockery also highlighted that the school was celebrating the 100th anniversary of its official affiliation with the SBC.
Women pastors
The proposal to add a constitutional amendment prohibiting women pastors “of any kind” narrowly failed to gather the two-thirds majority needed for adoption, garnering roughly 61% of the vote.
Those in favor of the amendment argued that the SBC needed more clear guidelines on how to enforce its rules against women pastors. Juan Sanchez, a pastor from Austin who introduced the proposal, said the aim of his amendment was to clarify what the denomination’s Baptist Faith and Message already says about women pastors and provide guidance to the denomination’s credentialing committee.
“This is the time for us to clarify what we believe,” Sanchez said.
Since 2000, the group’s nonbinding statement of faith has declared that only men are qualified for the role of pastor. It’s been interpreted differently across the denomination, with some believing it doesn’t apply to associate pastors, like women’s or children’s ministry pastors, as long as a church’s senior pastor is male.
The convention has attempted before to a constitutional amendment barring churches from letting a woman hold a pastoral title of any kind. The issue has come up in each of the last two conventions.
At the 2023 SBC convention in New Orleans, an attendee proposed an amendment to the group’s constitution that would have barred women from serving in any pastor or elder role. The proposal ed an initial vote that year, as the denomination also ousted its then-second-largest church for having a woman pastor.
At last year’s convention in Indianapolis, that same proposed amendment needed to receive a second consecutive supermajority vote. It narrowly failed to garner that necessary .
Beth Allison Barr, a Baylor professor who specializes in women’s and church history, attended the convention yesterday and said she was disheartened by the continued efforts to further restrict the roles women could hold in SBC churches. Barr’s husband pastors a small Baptist church in Waco that officially voted to leave the SBC in 2023.
“The amount of intellectual gymnastics you have to do to convince yourself that saying women cannot be in pastoral roles in a church is freeing them — I don’t even understand how [Sanchez] can make that and it sounds logical to people,” Barr said. “But it does.”
“Not for sale”
The proposal to abolish the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission failed Wednesday, receiving the of about 43% of voting delegates.
“If they came that close to being abolished, in the room where they have the most favorable conditions, that shows just how little faith they have right now from average, ordinary Southern Baptists,” Basham, a leading critic, said after the vote.
Basham’s 2024 book Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda took aim at the SBC’s public policy arm. Basham argued that the ERLC, along with more moderate-leaning SBC leaders, had been influenced by “progressive powerbrokers” including George Soros and prioritized compromise over conservatism. She said the ERLC vote shows that SBC voters don’t want their denomination to “align more with the culture on more ‘palatable’ issues” or to compromise on topics like immigration or abortion.
The commission helps churches apply biblical principles to political questions and advocates for policy the SBC cares about in Washington. It has been accused of being ineffective, divisive and insufficiently conservative.
The agency’s future was one of the most heated debates heading into the convention this year.
Last month, 10 former SBC presidents released a letter expressing for the agency. Pressley was not among them. R. Albert Mohler Jr., longtime president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Plano megachurch pastor Jack Graham are some of the agency’s prominent critics.
Willy Rice, a preacher from Florida who introduced the proposal to abolish the commission, said Wednesday he introduced the proposal as a “wake up call” for the commission.
Rice made several apparent references from the floor to Basham’s work. He ended his remarks with: “Send the message: this Southern Baptist Convention is not for sale.”
Adrian Ashford covers faith and religion in North Texas for The Dallas Morning News through a partnership with Report for America.
