Why did the Southern Baptists kick out churches with female preachers?
Let’s study a puzzling move
This week the Southern Baptist Convention kicked out churches with female preachers — a historic move, and one that might not make much sense.
Most Evangelical Christians support female pastors. Until very recently it didn’t seem all that controversial. Then, suddenly, it was?—when membership of Southern Baptist churches is in steep decline.
What was the logic? I had to go find out.
The Southern Baptist Convention saw huge growth in the post-War years.
Since the early 2000s, however, it’s been losing about a half-million members every year. Coming back into dominance doesn’t seem to be in the cards, however. The SBC is viewed favorably by just 27% of the American population.
Plus, their membership is old, with 60% being age 55 or older.
Really, the denomination is getting ready for its funeral.
In this light, I realized, kicking out women pastors made total sense. The appeal of Southern Baptist churches is very traditional sexual hierarchy that celebrates men.
To kick out female pastors is firming up their status as a fetish taste.
Mike Law was the instigator of the move to eject churches with female pastors.
He is a nice study in the appeal of Southern Baptist theology. Michael Wayne Law, age 41, is a pastor of a tiny Baptist church in Arlington, Virginia. He posts his sermons to iTunes. They’re plodding to an extreme.
He’s imitative, a parody of a preacher, just doing the act. He recites the lines. He follows the script.
He’s married with four children, overweight, with bad skin, and has little in the way of professional accomplishments. I find a whiff of androgyny. Law must surely be sometimes mistaken for a lesbian.
But by the magic of Southern Baptist theology, he’s proclaimed a mighty male, and a special servant of God—tasked with policing the human race for any “sex problems.”
In May 2022, Mike Law began to notice area Baptist churches had female staff.
He wrote to the SBC asking if this was allowed. The SBC tried to brush him off. There’s a rule on the books, but the leaders did not want to go there. Many attend churches that have women on staff.
Mike Law kept writing letters. Then he was starting a campaign against women employed in churches. He made a list. He set up a website.
The goal was never to persuade these churches he saw as ungodly. He did not approach them, talk to them, or try to convince them of his way of reading the Bible.
He make a list and set them up for termination. Women on staff at churches had to scurry and see if they were on Mike Law’s list.
The act caught the imagination of the denomination.
Suddenly, Mike Law was the young reformer insisting on God’s word! He headed to the SBC’s annual meeting to prompt the denomination to boot out churches with female pastors.
It felt purposeful, like the religion returning to its roots.
“Mr. Smith Goes to the Convention,” as one puff piece was headlined.
Rick Warren tried to warn them off the mission.
The retired pastor of Saddlback Church is the last Southern Baptist leader to try to be popular with the public. In 2002, he had a mega-bestseller in The Purpose-Driven Life, and gave the invocation at President Obama’s 2008 inauguration.
Saddleback Church has long had women on staff and was on the SBC’s chopping block. Warren tried to talk Bible. He notes that some verses seem to oppose women leaders as others support it. As he put it:
“Now, if you’re honest, you’ll have to admit that Paul often says things about women in Scripture that appeared to contradict each other. So, tell me what you want to believe…and I’ll show you the verses you have to ignore or rationalize away.”
But Southern Baptists often hate Rick Warren.
They call him a “heretic.” His focus on helping the poor and having inter-faith dialogue are held out for scorn.
The “rule” against female pastors began to look like a move to dethrone a king—by the ‘kings’ they play in their minds.
On social media, insults against Warren were now flying. A photo of Derek Webb, the maverick CCM musician, done in sympathy with Pride month, was edited to have Warren’s face, and widely circulated.
The idea was both ‘queering’ and beheading.
Warren seemed to be going on an emotional journey.
Saying he’d been shut out of the communication channels of his denomination, he took to social media. He tweeted:
“I truly feel sorry for men who deprive their souls of learning profound spiritual truth from godly women hindered by their belief that NO WOMAN can TEACH them anything. Grateful for my grandmother, mom, wife…”
He seemed to be prompted to a bold stance: to apologize to Christian women. He added:
“But I DO want to do this: I PUBLICLY APOLOGIZE to every good women in my life, church, and ministry that I failed to speak up for in my years of ignorance.”
The SBC voted, and female pastors were out.
One member puts it: “This is only the beginning of the work to rid the SBC of the leaven.”
I noticed a lot of that talk — as if female pastors weren’t even the main issue these guys had on their minds.
A panel, including Mike Law, was talking about evicting women pastors being an opening move to deal with “other violations of God’s Word.”
Taking place during Pride month, was diminishing women just an expedient to get to the one issue they actually care about?—and that is queer people.
Southern Baptist theology can seem to be many issues, but really it’s just one.
Soft, effete males banish the ‘queer’ from their midst, and in doing so, feel they become men.
Did it make Southern Baptist women feel bad? One commentator notes of the religion’s women that many “feel like they’re waking up the day after a traumatizing car accident — hurt, confused, bruised, angry, not sure what comes next for them. Or if they are even wanted in this convention.”
But of course they are wanted—as subordinates, as submissives.
We’ll see if it’s a role they care to play. 🔶
