For the first time in 35 years, a reform candidate has been elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention, defeating an institutional candidate.
Florida pastor Willy Rice — who withdrew from the presidential race in 2022 — won the presidency June 9 in a ballot against South Carolina pastor Josh Powell. The vote was 57.56% for Rice and 42.16% for Powell, a more decisive victory than observers had expected.
BNG commentator Benjamin Cole wrote last week: “While Powell and Rice are themselves almost perfectly aligned on the convention’s basic confessional commitments and have separately endorsed the proposed constitutional amendment on women, the factions supporting each man could not be more divided.”
Willy Rice
Rice, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Clearwater, Fla., is perceived to be the candidate favored by right-wing reformers who think Powell and current SBC leaders are “woke” and too lax in opposition to women in ministry, gays in society and confessional boundaries in the church.
This group encompasses most of the Calvinists in the SBC but is not exclusively made up of Calvinists. Rice is not a Calvinist. He has, however, preached against doctrinal and political “compromise,” echoing a theme of those who in recent years have attempted without success to get more conservative presidents elected.
The day before the election, Rice preached at the SBC Pastors’ Conference and declared that success “rooted in compromise” will “foreshadow a greater defeat to come.”
Within the world of today’s SBC, there is “conservative” and “more conservative.” Few people outside the SBC would call any of its leaders “woke” or liberal.”
The current push for more conservative reform echoes themes of the “conservative resurgence” that swept the SBC from 1979 to 1991. Those former reformers are now the institutional loyalists, and today’s reformers want to push the nation’s largest Protestant body even further to the right.
“Within the world of today’s SBC, there is ‘conservative’ and ‘more conservative.'”
William Wolfe, executive director of Center for Baptist Leadership and one of the most far-right voices in the SBC, commended Rice’s election in a post on X: “Willy Rice’s win just might be the spark needed to secure true revitalization across the SBC in the years to come. In many ways, the fight has just begun. But the SBC is worth fighting for. His successful election as the next president of the SBC proves there is a real appetite for courageous, uncompromising leadership that can both honestly address the problems facing our Convention and champion our gospel work.”
Rice also was endorsed by Tom Ascol, a fellow Florida pastor who leads Founders Ministries, a group of Southern Baptist Calvinists. Ascol himself was a candidate for the SBC presidency in 2022 but lost the race by a 22-point spread to institutional candidate Bart Barber.
Ascol and other candidates backed by the now largely defunct Conservative Baptist Network had lost every race for top leadership roles in the SBC until this year. But now, what The New York Times calls the “hard-right, reform-minded faction” of the SBC holds the top elected role in the denomination.
Here are four things that could mean in the year ahead:
- Downplaying the sexual abuse crisis. Rice has been a vocal skeptic of the SBC’s handling of the sexual abuse crisis, which has consumed debate at annual meetings for the last four years.
- Stricter stance on women in ministry. Rice affirms efforts to explicitly limit the role of women in church leadership.
- Institutional reform. Rice campaigned on challenging the denomination’s existing establishment. That means looking at institutional trust issues, reducing bureaucracy and exert greater control over SBC entities. It also means demanding greater financial transparency from the North American Mission Board and SBC seminaries and pursing a “radical” 180-turn within the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission “to serve the convictions of the SBC instead of lecturing us.”
- New resurgence. Rice has written about the need for a “conservative renewal” to pull the denomination further to the right. His tenure promises a sharper focus on theological orthodoxy, cultural conservatism, and global missions.
Elsewhere, Rice has highlighted “seven pillars of renewal,” which he says are “convictional clarity, denominational accountability, missional integrity, cultural responsibility, biblical unity, global intentionality, and spiritual vitality.”
After the election, Rice posted on X: “I want to thank so many of you who have reached out personally to congratulate us and assure us of your prayers. We are humbled and accept this opportunity for service knowing it is a stewardship for which we will give account. I want to congratulate my brother, Josh Powell, and his wonderful family for his exemplary conduct and efforts during this season. My esteem for him has only grown and I know he will be a voice in Southern Baptist life for years to come. We need 1,000 pastors like him. I want to assure all Southern Baptists, those who voted for me and those who didn’t, that our desire is to serve our Lord and you and my prayer is indeed that God will bring us into a season of reconciliation and renewal. It is my hope to listen and to serve and I ask for your prayers, your patience, and your continued cooperation as we continue in the good work God has given us to do.”
This was not the first time Rice was a declared candidate for the SBC presidency. In 2022, he was to be the standard bearer for the conservative reformers but withdrew from the race three days after preaching a sermon in which he defended a deacon recently removed from church leadership because of confessed sexual abuse 17 years before.
Related:
“Stuck in the Middle with You” — SBC Orlando Preview
“Stuck in the Middle with You” — A Conversation with Willy Rice