It’s exhausting to the soul. That’s what I’m feeling as I consider all the possible stories I could write regarding what white conservative men have planned for this year’s Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Indianapolis.
Capturing most headlines is the Law Amendment, which states: “The SBC only cooperates with churches that do not affirm, appoint or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind.”
The proposed amendment has a Frequently Asked Questions page filled with 28 questions related to why women shouldn’t be pastors. Their answers are packed with inflammatory lies about those who disagree, false assumptions about the Bible, and bigoted language against women and LGBTQ people.
Going line by line to respond to all 28 questions would require writing an entire series of books.
Rick Pidcock
Despite the power they’ve accumulated over the decades through their conservative resurgence and the rise of Calvinism, conservative men from a variety of denominations seem really paranoid the amendment may not pass.
Earlier this year, Doug Wilson peddled a conspiracy theory that Baptist News Global was teaming up with Salon and the Dallas Morning News to criticize Southern Baptist pastor Josh Howerton’s sexually coercive jokes in order to defeat the Law Amendment. Wilson prophesied, “Clearly, if the Law Amendment passes, we are going to be dealing with a lot more jokes … (because) women pastors wouldn’t tell those.”
So do we invest the energy to demonstrate how their 28 answers don’t add up? Do we sit quietly while they continue to tell sexually coercive jokes? Do we really need to explain to pastors why telling sexually coercive jokes from the pulpit is inappropriate? Perhaps to that latter question, we need to, given the way they handle sexual abuse.
Whatever response we consider, I’m left shaking my head before the convention even starts, weary of the total nonsense.
As if that weren’t enough, Baptist News Global’s Mark Wingfield wrote last week that the Law Amendment may not even be the most important decision of the week. The SBC also is choosing among six men to be their new president. They continue to ignore making significant decisions to protect children from sexual abuse. And in a strange departure from Baptist tradition, they may be adopting an amendment to include the Nicene Creed in the Baptist Faith and Message.
Pastors speaking with inerrant authority
Adding any creed would be significant because Baptists traditionally claim to have “no creed but the Bible.”
On the surface, that saying may appear to level the playing field of biblical interpretation by valuing the perspectives of the congregation in the pews without privileging the theological pontifications of powerful church councils who wield the sword of excommunication. But in the world of conservative Baptists, having no creed but the Bible has become a smokescreen for fallible, unimpressive, often abusive pastors to use the Bible’s authority as a way of exerting their own.
Fundamental to all the proposed resolutions and motions are the assumptions that the Bible is inerrant and that conservative Southern Baptist men are correctly upholding its inerrant authority.
Kristen Ferguson, this year’s Resolutions Committee chairwoman, explained: “Working from the word of God as our inerrant authority and the Baptist Faith and Message as our confession, these resolutions represent what we believe to be Southern Baptist resolve on emerging and urgent topics of our day.”
Wingfield added: “In the conservative resurgence, the battle lines were about biblical inerrancy. Today, the battle lines are about a subset of inerrancy that demands complete conformity.”
“The simplicity of a call to love your neighbor as yourself shouldn’t be this exhausting.”
So do we work to expose the false assumptions and white male privilege that were instrumental in forming the modern conservative belief in inerrancy? Do we discuss the diverse ancient perspectives inherent to the Bible that make biblical inerrancy impossible? Do we work to plant doubts in their minds with the hope that these men might become less certain about demanding absolute submission?
We shouldn’t have to try this hard. The simplicity of a call to love your neighbor as yourself shouldn’t be this exhausting.
From the seeds of slave ownership
Unfortunately for everyone other than straight white conservative men, the SBC is a tree whose fruit has grown from the seeds of slave ownership. As Dave Roberts pointed out last year: “Southern Baptists split from Baptists in the North over the appointment of slave owners as missionaries, demanding that those who saw nothing wrong with enslaving a foreign people be supported while trying to witness even in the very countries from which people had been kidnapped and sold into slavery in the United States.”
Roberts remembered how Southern Baptist Theological Seminary “had the hidden history of having invested all its endowment into Confederate War Bonds in the hope of continuing slavery.”
When SBTS lamented its past by releasing a 71-page report on the SBC’s history of racism and slavery, Wendell Griffen observed: “The report conveniently and inexcusably fails to include the last half century of racism practiced by school’s faculty, trustees and other stakeholders.”
“SBTS must start using its power to produce justice, rather than using it to maintain longstanding systems of injustice,” Griffen recommended.
But watching the seeds of slave ownership grow with remorse rather than rooting them out with repentance is never going to bear fruit worthy of repentance.
Comparing women to slaves
Lest we forget, Mohler appeared on Larry King Live in 1998 and argued, “If you’re a slave, there’s a way to behave. … I want to look at this text seriously, and it says to submit to the master. And I really don’t see any loophole here as much as, in terms of popular culture, we’d want to see one.”
Of course, Mohler expressed regret over his words when he was called out 22 years later. But he offered no explanation of why his understanding of “inerrant Scripture” changed.
“The passages he drew from to promote the submission of slaves are part of the household codes that parallel wives submitting to their husbands.”
Perhaps one reason why Mohler didn’t explain his changed interpretation is that the passages he drew from to promote the submission of slaves are part of the household codes that parallel wives submitting to their husbands. And while Mohler and the white men in charge of the SBC today cannot get away with forcing Black people into slavery, they are convinced they can at least force women into submission.
And that’s what the Law Amendment is all about. While 1998 Mohler said to Black people, “If you’re a slave, there’s a way to behave … submit to the master,” the 2024 Law Amendment is saying to women, “If you’re a woman, there’s a way to behave … submit to the pastor.”
The high and lofty ones
One of the things that makes me so weary is how constantly angry and accusatory these men are. With the evolution toward conservative evangelical complementarian Calvinism, they preach a self-glory obsessed God who creates the universe as a hierarchy of authority and submission with them in charge, and where justice is wrath satisfaction through violence against those who won’t submit.
At times, reading these men online feels like reading Yahweh’s words in parts of the Hebrew Bible. Like these men, Yahweh saw himself in Isaiah 57 as “the high and lofty one, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy.” Like these men standing in their pulpits, Yahweh spoke about dwelling in “the high and holy place.”
Even though he is not a Southern Baptist, this is how slavery apologist John MacArthur spoke of the pastorate when he told Beth Moore to “go home.” Speaking of women who want to preach, MacArthur declared: “They want power, not equality. This is the highest location they can ascend to — that power in the evangelical church.”
To men like Mohler and MacArthur, the pastorate is a high and lofty place and pastors are the godlike high and lofty ones who have ascended to power in the evangelical church.
Yahweh’s deconstruction of the high and lofty ones
The ancient idea that the gods ruled over humans through kings ruling over humans is based on an ancient cosmology that isn’t literally true. The universe is not a vertical chain of divine and human hierarchies separated by a sky dome where the actions of the gods above are paralleled through the actions of human kings below. So human hierarchies of men ruling in high and lofty places over others are human constructs.
Unlike these white Southern Baptist men with their history of race and gender hierarchies, Yahweh seemed to understand this because, according to Isaiah 57:15, he added that he dwelled “with those who are contrite and humble in spirit.”
The high and lofty men of complementarianism want to claim humility while exercising authority over their underlings. And that’s not how humility works.
The presence of God, according to this passage, is with those on the underside of power for the purpose of revival. But it’s not the typical revival of getting the underlings to bend the knee. Instead, it’s “to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
Revival of weary hearts
From the perspective of an outsider, it seems these Southern Baptist men are constantly angry, continually accusing anyone who won’t submit to them of being unbiblical and rebellious.
“It seems these Southern Baptist men are constantly angry, continually accusing anyone who won’t submit to them of being unbiblical and rebellious.”
But unlike these white Southern Baptist men, Yahweh seemed to understand the effect this would have on people over time. Of course, there are plenty of passages in the Hebrew Bible that describe Yahweh as quite angry. But Isaiah 57:16 says, “For I will not continually accuse, nor will I always be angry, for then the spirits would grow faint before me.”
This is why so many of us are exhausted. Our spirits are growing faint because the men at the top of the hierarchy are constantly making accusations and expressing anger at those who won’t submit. Unlike Yahweh, these guys never let up. So we’re weighed down because sacralized hierarchy is top heavy with ego and weighs everybody down.
So why was Yahweh angry to begin with?
Given how so many of us have been hurt by the Strict Father theology of conservative Baptist churches, it’s reasonable to wonder why Yahweh would be so angry to begin with. If Yahweh is revealed as the high and lofty one lording over everyone with accusations and anger, then Yahweh sounds very much like the men who abused us. But if Yahweh is present in and among the humble whose hearts are fainting due to the accusations and anger of those at the top, then Yahweh’s anger is one that is ordered toward liberation from the powerful.
Isaiah 57:17 put it this way: “Because of their wicked covetousness I was angry.”
What does covetousness have to do with hierarchy?
Those who are on the underside of empire know that nobody should own another human. And in hierarchies that demand inescapable submission, authority is ownership. Thus, to sacralize your power over another human is to covet a high and lofty place over your neighbors that isn’t rightfully yours.
“There is no ‘both sides’ to the anger of conservative white men and the anger of those they oppress.”
There is no “both sides” to the anger of conservative white men and the anger of those they oppress. The anger of powerful men is covetousness. The anger of the oppressed is lament over the violence of dehumanization.
So Yahweh’s anger is at the bottom of human hierarchy, not toward women and children who won’t submit, but toward the men who are coveting a high and lofty place they have no right to claim.
There is no rest for the wicked
Despite how certain these men are about their beliefs and authority, they aren’t at peace with God. They’re actually quite insecure, threatened by anyone who won’t submit to their inerrant authority.
They’re like Medieval kings who knew at any moment they might be knocked off by another seeking their throne.
So they restlessly pass resolution after resolution, motion after motion, year after year against the same exact people who they see as threats.
Those of us at the bottom of their hierarchy are weary as we face another full week of constant accusations and anger. But we’re not wicked because we’re not threatening to posture ourselves over them. We’re hurting because we simply want to belong and be valued for who we are. So we’re hoping to have our exhausted spirits and hearts revived by perhaps finding the presence of God in community elsewhere.
These white Southern Baptist men are the ones who cannot keep still with their mudslinging against everyone who won’t submit to them. They are the empire. They are wicked. So they have no rest.
This is why Isaiah 57 concludes: “But the wicked are like the tossing sea that cannot keep still; its waters toss up mire and mud. There is no shalom, says my God, for the wicked.”
Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.