Women should have the right to vote in U.S. politics but should not be allowed to interpret Scripture on a podcast, Al Mohler said last week.
In separate segments of his podcast “The Briefing,” the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary addressed the restrictions that would happen for women if his proposed amendment to the Southern Baptist Convention Constitution is enacted next month and a listener’s question about whether he supports household voting, which would disenfranchise women.
The latter idea is being advanced by Calvinist pastors including Doug Wilson based on their view that women should submit in all things to their husbands. Therefore, the husband ought to represent the entire family in voting.
While Mohler said on his May 22 podcast he understands this point of view and might not oppose it in some contexts, such a change in the United States is “politically implausible.” And then he pointed again to the importance of “creation order.”
“When you have a society that is so intentional in subverting creation order, so intentional in confusing these issues, I don’t think we should be surprised that a significant number of conservative Christians are asking, ‘How could this be avoided? How could our political arrangement be different? ‘”
Within the SBC, however, Mohler does want the political arrangement to be different. He recently announced his intention to propose a constitutional amendment that would make clear that no participating SBC church could allow women to serve as pastors or carry the title “pastor” in any form.
A similar amendment has failed to achieve the required two-third majority vote two of the last three years.
On his May 15 podcast, Mohler answered another listener who said her SBC church offers a podcast where the pastor and staff members answer questions from the previous Sunday’s sermon, and one of those answering questions is a woman. “I believe she’s acting as a pastor in this context because she’s giving advice to the whole church body,” the listener says.
“If she is functioning as a pastor, then she is assuming the role of a pastor and I think that’s what’s implied here.”
Yes, this woman is teaching, Mohler responds, even if she doesn’t carry the title of “pastor.”
“If she is functioning as a pastor, then she is assuming the role of a pastor and I think that’s what’s implied here. And yes, I do see that as a problem. I don’t think the church should ever lean into offering confusion on this issue but should lean into clarity. … If this person is functioning with other pastors as a pastor, the title really doesn’t matter all that much. That’s because the biblical conception of pastor is both the title and the function, the title and the role. And so avoiding the title doesn’t mean you’ve avoided the problem.”
That set off a firestorm of protest from others in the SBC who claim Mohler has gone too far.
On X, a user named Jay the Baptist asked: “I just want Al to explain how a woman answering follow-up questions on a podcast is functioning as an elder but women like Megan Basham or Allie Beth Stuckey are not, particularly given their Christian audiences.”
Basham and Stuckey are two high-profile female writers and speakers who come from a far-right perspective on matters of theology and politics.
The fullest and sharpest response, however, came from Oklahoma Baptist pastor and politician Wade Burleson, who published a lengthy retort on social media. Burleson is no liberal but often challenges the official positions of SBC leaders.
Wade Burleson
His comments were titled: “WARNING TO THE SBC: Church Leadership Is About Gifting, Never Gender; Service, Never Status; Humility, Never Hubris.”
In 2007, he says, he warned the SBC that not taking action to document and stop sexual predators from “hopping from church to church” would extract a high price from the denomination. And now 20 years later, “not listening to me cost the SBC millions in lawsuits, public humiliation and the near bankruptcy of the SBC’s Executive Committee.”
In a similar warning, he said, “The Mohler Amendment contradicts the Bible. It also diminishes the very principles that gave birth to Southern Baptist life: Soul competency, local church autonomy, liberty of conscience, and the priesthood of every believer.”
The very arguments used against creating a database of known clergy abusers is being flipped in service of Mohler’s amendment, he said. “We were told the Southern Baptist Convention had no authority to interfere in the affairs of local congregations because each church stands under Christ’s authority alone. However, in 2026, many of the same voices that rose to speak against my database motion wish to amend the SBC Constitution and dictate to autonomous churches who may or may not lead them. … Apparently, autonomy matters only when it protects institutional liability, but it disappears when gifted women teach Scripture, lead ministries, exhort believers, or administer churches.”
What that means, he claims, is the Mohler amendment “is not a debate about biblical authority. In reality, it is a debate about male spiritual authority over females. The Mohler Amendment is built on an unbiblical, illogical and destructive religious institutional hierarchy of male authority over females in the body of Christ.”
The amendment proposed by Mohler would add to qualifications for cooperating SBC churches that they may not “act to affirm, appoint or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor/elder/overseer, such as preaching to the assembled congregation.”
Mohler has dubbed this his “Truth and Unity Amendment.”
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