Update: The first reading of the constitutional amendment was approved by ballot vote, with 74.66% in favor and 25.09% against. The amendment must get a second vote of two-thirds approval at next year’s annual meeting to be adopted.
Messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting voted this morning on a proposed Constitutional amendment with virtually no debate — after an ally of Al Mohler spoke passionately for the amendment and then called the question.
According to convention rules, Mohler was allowed to explain his “Truth and Unity” amendment, then the floor was opened for debate. But only two people spoke before Colin Smothers — a professor at the seminary Mohler leads — lauded the amendment and then called the question. Smothers also leads the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, an extreme complementarian nonprofit based on Southern Seminary’s campus.
With a show of ballots vote, messengers approved ending debate, leaving other speakers stunned at the microphones where they had been waiting their turn. One messenger pleaded for fairness in debate but SBC President Clint Pressley said he had to follow procedure.
The scene was reminiscent of political machinations employed by Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson during the “conservative resurgence” of the 1980s and ’90s.
Earlier, Mohler had pleaded with messengers not to amend his proposed wording. Ending debate ensured no amendments were proposed or considered.
Only one person was allowed to speak against the amendment. That was Doug Mize, pastor of First Baptist Church of Greer, S.C., who said the amendment was not needed because there are no women serving as senior pastors or lead pastors in SBC churches.
Messengers to SBC annual meetings keep voting out churches with female pastors, so the amendment “is over and beyond the reach we need to have,” he said. “That’s why this keeps getting voted down year after year. We’ve already said it’s in our Baptist Faith and Message,” the denomination’s doctrinal statement.
Mize compared those pushing to refine the prohibition on female pastors to the Pharisees of Jesus’ day who neglected other important issues to “strain at gnats and swallow a camel.”
For his part, Mohler spoke passionately in favor of his amendment that states SBC churches may not “affirm, support or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor/elder/overseer, specifically preaching to the assembled congregation.”
“There’s a great line that divides liberal and biblical evangelicalism, and you can see it on this very issue,” he declared. “The trajectory of liberal denominations is clear. The Southern Baptist Convention in adopting the Baptist Faith and Message in the year 2000 stated confessionally that the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture. The subsequent 26 years have demonstrated that we need constitutional clarity on this issue.”
His amendment, he said, “will allow Southern Baptists to move forward in unity and in truth. … This motion makes very clear that we affirm the historic Baptist understanding of the pastor/elder/overseer. The structure of the language I have brought goes all the way back to the 1689 Baptist confession where the office and function of the pastor are clearly delineated.”
Churches affiliated with the SBC cannot and must not “have anyone other than a man as pastor,” he said.
Mohler claimed his view on prohibiting women from preaching and pastoral roles goes back to the 17th century and therefore must be enforced today.
“We believe those Baptists got it right, according to scripture. This is one of those moments when the Southern Baptist Convention can get it right, state it clearly. … We stand upon the authority of God’s word; we stand for truth, yes, and that truth produces the unity of our convention.”
Smothers affirmed Mohler’s language and said the constitutional amendment is necessary because “the culture is attacking gender on all fronts.”
“We can hardly turn to the right or the left without finding confusion about gender,” he said. “What better way to express our countercultural commitment to the goodness of God’s word than to affirm God’s creation order related to the office of pastor.”