Conservative outrage over Episcopal bishop Mariann Budde’s appeal to President Donald Trump to show mercy is symptomatic of the heresy afflicting the Southern Baptist Convention, according to social media influencer Megan Basham.
In response to Budde’s Tuesday sermon on unity in which she appealed to Trump to show mercy to immigrants and the LGBTQ community, Basham posted this: “It cannot be said enough that we have men leading the Southern Baptist Convention who have actively worked to ensure we follow the same trajectory that led to this woman occupying a pulpit. I don’t know if they’re wolves. But I know they’re agents of destruction. I will never stop opposing them in strongest terms. What I want to know is why they have so little zeal for their Father’s house.”
Megan Basham
Basham is a John MacArthur-like figure on the far right, a woman who uses her platform to argue against women in church leadership. She is author of a controversial book titled Shepherds for Sale in which she alleges all manner of impropriety among evangelical pastors she says have succumbed to “woke” culture.
She has been a culture warrior on the side of those who want to strictly prohibit women from preaching and pastoral roles in Southern Baptist churches. And in that context, she said Bishop Budde’s message to Trump is what happens when women are allowed to preach.
She tied her beliefs to the so-called Law Amendment that passed at the SBC annual meeting in 2023 but narrowly failed to get enough votes for final adoption at the 2024 SBC meeting. That amendment would specifically prohibit the SBC from being in fellowship with any church that allows women to preach or carry the title “pastor” — something that’s already policy in the SBC.
“When the Law Amendment passed, (JD) Greear, (James) Merritt, and their patriots moved into action to try to swiftly undo efforts to ensure that no women like that female bishop would ever occupy a southern Baptist pulpit. They moved to ensure that biblical distinctives were muddy. This is the front performance of all the back room strategizing,” Basham wrote in a follow-up post on X.
Basham was not alone in capitalizing on MAGA outrage at Bishop Budde to advance their complementarian views that women should not be called pastors and should not preach.
Denny Burk, a Southern Baptist who is president of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, called Budde “a false teacher who has no authority or right to speak in the name of Jesus.” He also said, “We don’t need (the president) to be led away from Christ by an apostate priestess usurping the pastoral office.”
Tony Perkins, head of the Focus on the Family related Family Research Council, said Budde represents “the cause of America’s decline.” He explained, “The cause of America’s decline was not what was sitting in the pew but what was standing behind the pulpit. What we heard today was not a prophetic voice from the church, but rather pathetic.”
Joe Rigney, who is a pastor related to far-right leader Doug Wilson and New Saint Andrews College, also joined the action: “Women’s ordination is a cancer that unleashes untethered empathy in the church (and spills over into society).”
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