Conservative Baptist Network

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Should women serve as pastors? Big majorities of modern evangelicals say, 'Yes'

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Should women serve as pastors? Big majorities of modern evangelicals say, 'Yes'

The Southern Baptist Convention is holding its annual national meeting right now in New Orleans. About 12,000 messengers are assembled to chart the direction of the convention for the next year. There are lots of issues that are being discussed these next few days that are really about a schism in the SBC between the very conservatives and the pretty conservatives.

The most public aspect of that conflict is allowing women to be pastors in Southern Baptist Churches. In the last year, Saddleback Church, in Southern California was disfellowshipped from the SBC for ordaining women. Their former pastor is the Rev. Rick Warren, who is one of the most famous evangelicals in the United States.

He’s been mounting a social media campaign the last few days, trying to make the case for a return to fellowship for Saddleback.

But really what is happening is Warren is trying to steer the SBC in a slightly less conservative direction while groups like the Conservative Baptist Network’s rallying cry is “change the direction” — which I will argue is code for this: become more conservative in the coming years.

What does polling say about Warren’s view of women serving as pastors?

I can answer that with some polling data that I collected with Paul Djupe and Andrew Lewis in March of 2020 when COVID-19 was just ramping up. We asked folks if a woman could operate in certain capacities in a church given that they had training and certification. The results here are restricted to just those who self-identify as evangelical.

Yeah —-there’s overwhelming agreement among evangelicals that women can teach Sunday School, lead morning worship and preach at a women’s conference. Even in the case of women preaching from behind the pulpit on Sunday morning there is very little resistance.

Nearly three quarters of evangelicals agree that a properly trained and certified woman can preach on Sunday morning. Just 12% disagree with that statement and 15% have no opinion.


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Podcast: What's going on with Southern Baptist decline? Count the news hooks ...

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Podcast: What's going on with Southern Baptist decline? Count the news hooks ...

Back in the early 1980s, the Southern Baptist Convention was enduring the crucial years of its civil war over — here’s the term headline writers hated — “biblical inerrancy.”

I was at the Charlotte News and then the Charlotte Observer back then, in a city in which one of the major roads was named after Billy Graham. The SBC spectrum in Charlotte ranged from hard-core conservatives to “moderates” who were basically liberal mainline Protestants with better preaching.

During that time, a moderate church welcomed the the late Rev. Gardner C. Taylor of Brooklyn to its pulpit for a series of sermons (“moderates” don’t have “revivals”). Taylor would make just about anyone’s list — Top 100 or even Top 10 — of that era’s most celebrated preachers. In 1980, Time magazine hailed him as the “the dean of the nation’s black preachers.” That’s saying something.

During one sermon, Taylor briefly addressed the SBC wars and added, with a slight smile, that he always thought that the primary book in the Bible that Southern Baptists “considered inerrant was the Book of Numbers.”

Southern Baptists have always loved their statistics (I grew up in Texas, the son of a Southern Baptist pastor) and, for decades, those statistics made their leaders smile.

Things are a bit more complex, right now, as seen in this RNS headline: “Southern Baptists lost nearly half a million members in 2022.” That story, and some other related online materials, provided the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).

Before we get to that solid news piece, by religion-beat veteran Bob Smietana (a scribe in Nashville for years), let’s grab some context from a new Substack post by chart-master Ryan Burge, a GetReligion contributor (and former Southern Baptist), with this headline: “The 2022 Data on the Southern Baptist Convention is Out.”

Check out these numbers from the past 80 years, a period in which the SBC’s rise “is just unmatched.”


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Podcast: Return of the SBC civil war? That'd be a huge development in American religion

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Podcast: Return of the SBC civil war? That'd be a huge development in American religion

In the early 1980s, the Religion Newswriters Association (now the Religion News Association) held many of its annual meetings in the days just before the Southern Baptist Convention’s big national gatherings .

With good cause: The SBC was in the midst of a spectacular, painful civil war — “moderates” fighting the armies of “biblical inerrancy” — for control of America’s largest non-Catholic flock Big headlines were a certainty, year after year. Religion reporters knew their editors — back in the days when more newsrooms had travel budgets for this sort of thing — would pay to get them to the SBC front lines.

Thus, the trip was a twofer. Religion-beat pros arrived early and started work during the meetings that preceded the actual convention, such as the Pastors’ Conference (a preaching festival featuring rising SBC stars) and the Women’s Missionary Union. The RNA would work its own seminars into the gaps.

One of my favorite memories was in New Orleans in 1982. Religion-beat patriarch Russell Chandler of the Los Angeles Times and some other scribes got into a convention-hotel elevator, carrying a box of wine and liquor for an RNA social hour. The elevator was packed with WMU women, who didn’t like the looks of that box.

When the RNA folks got off the elevator, one of the women said, under her breath: “Well, they’re not here for the Southern Baptist Convention.” Over his shoulder, Chandler replied: “Oh, yes we are.”

I bring this up because there’s plenty of evidence that the Southern Baptists are about to have a second civil war. As I argued during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), that would be a big news story for at least three reasons.

Before we get to those, here’s a few key passages from a Religion News Service story by Bob Smietana describing a big SBC domino that tipped over this week: “SBC President Ed Litton won’t run again — to focus on racial reconciliation instead.” Here’s the overture:

Saying he wants to spend his time focusing on racial reconciliation, Southern Baptist Convention President Ed Litton announced via video Tuesday (March 1) that he would not seek a second term in office.

Litton will become the first SBC president in four decades to not seek reelection after his first one-year term.


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About Southern Baptist wars and the Merritt family: Here's some inside baseball worth covering

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About Southern Baptist wars and the Merritt family: Here's some inside baseball worth covering

I rarely write about Southern Baptist affairs unless one of their annual conventions is at hand, but I can’t resist commenting on a fascinating sideshow happening between the highly symbolic Merritt family and their fellow conservatives.

Jonathan Merritt is the openly gay (and I assume celibate, based on previous comments) son of the Rev. James Merritt, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. It’s been a tough ride for the past 10 years as the younger Merritt has tried to reconcile his sexuality with his faith, while working as a news- columnist. His father has been under immense pressure as well.

The latest fracas, with a hat tip to JulieRoys.com, has to do with the elder Merritt walking away from his position as a visiting professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. The whole affair has gone unnoticed by many newsrooms, even though this is a topic that is newsworthy for a variety of reasons. Here is what Roys wrote:

Former Southern Baptist Convention President James Merritt resigned last week as a visiting professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary over controversy sparked by Merritt’s decision to share a sermon online by his son who’s gay. …

The decision came after Merritt, who’s also pastor of Cross Pointe Church in Duluth, Georgia, tweeted a link to a sermon by his son, Jonathan Merritt. The younger Merritt is a graduate of Southeastern Baptist and an author, journalist, and popular speaker. In August, Jonathan Merritt announced on Instagram that he’s gay.

“I don’t agree with my loved son @JonathanMerritt on everything to be sure,” James Merritt tweeted November 22. “But I encourage you to listen to his message on Mark 13. It is both brilliant and faithful to the gospel and the coming of Jesus!”

After that, things got really interesting. Here is the chronology:

Nov. 22 — James Merritt publishes his tweet.

Nov. 23 — The Conservative Baptist Network, a group of some 6,000 members based in Memphis, issues a statement with the headline: “Promoting homosexual preachers is not loving, biblical or Baptist.” The elder Merritt responds that same day.


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It's hard to write SBC news reports when key players keep hanging up their phones

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It's hard to write SBC news reports when key players keep hanging up their phones

What are reporters supposed to do when key actors on one side of a controversy in a major religious group keep refusing to respond to calls and other contacts seeking their input and information?

I ask this because of the challenges that reporter Liam Adams is facing as (welcome to the religion-news beat) he tries to cover the legal questions and accusations swirling around the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention — America’s largest non-Catholic flock.

I can imagine a scenario in which some readers read this recent Nashville Tennessean story — “Resignations follow Baptist vote on privilege” (text is behind a high paywall) — and asked themselves: Hey, where are the quotes from people on the more conservative (if that’s the right word in battles over sexual abuse) side of this story? And why are there so many quotes from someone like Ed Stetzer, a hero of the current SBC leadership?

This story is so complex that it’s hard to pull out individual chunks of material, but lets try this long passage::

After two failed attempts at meetings on Sept. 21 and 28, the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee met for a third time Oct. 5 and voted to waive privilege. The committee acts on behalf of the convention when it is not in session.

In response, at least 10 executive committee members resigned either just before vote or shortly after — including some who are supporters of the Conservative Baptist Network. …

Conservative Baptist Network’s supporters on the executive committee all voted against allowing third-party investigators access to privileged files.

“It’s hard to see the correlation between the CBN and the objection to the waiver of privilege,” said Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center. 'But there is clearly a correlation.'

In a news release last week, the Conservative Baptist Network said the group desired '“ruth and integrity.”


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Nashville 2021 revisited: For Southern Baptists, sermons are part of how their work gets done

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Nashville 2021 revisited: For Southern Baptists, sermons are part of how their work gets done

Whenever the Southern Baptist Convention gathers in times of trials and turmoil, one thing is certain -- someone will preach a sermon that makes a difference.

That's how Southern Baptists do what they do. These sermons may not produce as many headlines as SBC elections or fiery debates about hot-button social issues. But the sermons matter.

The big sermon during the 2021 convention in Nashville came at a logical moment -- when SBC President J.D. Greear gave his farewell address, just before tense voting to elect his successor.

In this "defining moment" address, the leader of the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., offered a stinging quote about an elephant that has camped in the SBC fellowship hall.

"We have to decide," Greear said, "if we want our convention primarily to be a political voting bloc or if we want it to be a Great Commission people. … Whenever the church gets in bed with politics, the church gets pregnant, and the offspring does not look like our Father in heaven."

America is important, he stressed. But America is not the whole picture for believers striving to build churches around the world. "God has not called us primarily to save America politically. He has called us to make the Gospel known to all," said Greear.

Southern Baptists can agree that "no compromise should be tolerated" on crucial social issues, he said. And no one wants to stop defending the inerrant truth of the Bible.


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New podcast: Is SBC President Ed Litton 'woke'? What is a 'conservative' stance on CRT?

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New podcast: Is SBC President Ed Litton 'woke'? What is a 'conservative' stance on CRT?

It certainly was an interesting way to start a podcast (click here to tune that in) about press coverage of the 2021 national meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Here’s the gist of what “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken wanted to know: If journalists were going to write that the Rev. Mike Stone — who lost his bid to become SBC president — was “right-wing” and “ultraconservative,” then why didn’t they pin “left-wing” and “ultraliberal” labels on Bishop-elect Megan Rohrer, the first trans/queer/gender fluid bishop in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America?

Think about it this way: Stone and the new Conservative Baptist Network — many flew pirate flags — set out to attack the already conservative (theologically speaking) leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention, saying that it was not conservative ENOUGH on several issues. In other words, the goal was to move the SBC further right and away from recent pronouncements by the convention.

Meanwhile, Bishop-elect Rohrer is an open advocate of the CURRENT teachings of the ELCA. In the context of this denomination and its doctrines, Rohrer is part of the ruling class.

Now, is Rohrer “ultraliberal” in the context of American culture? How about liberal mainline Protestantism? How about other Lutheran bodies? Was Stone “ultraconservative” in the context of today’s SBC?

You can see the struggle here. Are journalists supposed to label religious leaders in the context of the wider culture or of their own flocks? I have argued that this depends: I go with the “flock” framing when discussing news events that are taking place inside a given “flock.”

As I argued the other day (#SBC21: Press wrestles with Twitter-niche labels as Southern Baptists choose a new leader), most of the religion-beat pros who gathered in Nashville tried to be very cautious when describing the various groups under the conservative SBC umbrella. The exception was the New York Times, which offered a kind of acid-flashback return to the SBC civil wars of the early 1980s.

The key was the labeling in this early headline — “Southern Baptists Narrowly Head Off Conservative Takeover” — and then this overture:


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#SBC21: Press wrestles with Twitter-niche labels as Southern Baptists choose a new leader

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#SBC21: Press wrestles with Twitter-niche labels as Southern Baptists choose a new leader

If you have followed mainstream coverage of religion (and politics) in recent decades, you know that many journalists tend to make liberal use of the vague term “moderate.”

This has certainly been true of coverage of warfare inside the Southern Baptist Convention.

Since “liberal” is kind of scary, journalists have long divided the SBC into “moderate” and “conservative” camps. With very few exceptions, your typical “moderate” Southern Baptist would be a “fundamentalist” in the world of mainline Protestantism.

Thus, in the great SBC civil war of 1979 and the years thereafter, the term “moderate” came to mean Southern Baptists that mainstream journalists thought were acceptable. These were the folks in the white hats who backed abortion rights, women’s ordination and, at first, were silent or vague on LGBTQ issues. Most of all, they were the enemies of those Southern Baptists who fit under the Religious Right umbrella.

With that in mind, consider the tweaked double-decker headline on The New York Times report after the fireworks at the SBC national meetings in Nashville:

Southern Baptists Narrowly Head Off Ultraconservative Takeover

Ed Litton, a moderate pastor from Alabama, won a high-stakes presidential election with the potential to reshape the future of the country’s largest Protestant denomination.

The original headline stuck with the old-school “moderate” vs. “conservative” language.

The leadership of the Conservative Baptist Network may have been sad about their candidate, the Rev. Mike Stone of Georgia, losing the election. But they had to be elated at how the Times described this event in terms that meshed with their views on SBC life. Here is the top of that report:

NASHVILLE — In a dramatic showdown on Tuesday, Southern Baptists elected a moderate pastor from Alabama as their next president, narrowly heading off an attempted takeover by the denomination’s insurgent right wing.


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#SBC2021, CRT and sexual abuse: Are compromises possible in this complex showdown?

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#SBC2021, CRT and sexual abuse: Are compromises possible in this complex showdown?

When most journalists, and thus most news consumers, think of Southern Baptists it’s highly likely that “compromise” is not one of the first words that leaps to mind.

But think about this for a moment. The current firestorm surrounding the Southern Baptist Convention’s national meetings in Nashville (tomorrow and Wednesday) centers on recent efforts by the convention’s leaders to find working compromises on two explosive issues in church life — racism and sexual abuse. In both cases, forces have pulled at convention leaders to move further to the right or to pursue more “progressive” options that would clash with realities in SBC life and polity.

Consider the hellish realities of racism and, in particular, the complex secular doctrines of “Critical Race Theory.” The SBC could praise CRT and embrace it or totally reject this school of thought. A compromise? That would stress listening to conservative Black church leaders and saying that CRT makes some points about racism in America that are valid, but that it also contains secular views of evil and race that do not mesh with traditional Christian beliefs. Hold that thought.

On sexual abuse, there are progressives who want the SBC to start some kind of national agency that would be granted powers to yank abusive clergy and congregations into line. This would clash with Baptist teachings on the autonomy of local churches. At the same time, others say SBC leaders have already gone to far while trying to create a centrist, compromise, stance — providing some guidelines for churches facing accusations of sexual abuse, as well as best-practices materials on how to help victims.

So, here is the journalism question to ponder in the next few days: Can national-level religion reporters find a way to avoid the classic two-army, left vs. right, template that dominates most news coverage of clashes of this kind? This would allow readers to see the larger picture — the attempt to find compromises between two extremes that please enough conservatives to prevent a damaging explosion in SBC life.


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