In the runup to the biggest theological fight of his life this week, Rick Warren has issued a public apology to “Christian women.”
“My biggest regret in 53 years of ministry is that I didn’t do my own personal exegesis sooner on the four (biblical) passages used to restrict women,” he tweeted June 10. “Shame on me. I wasted those four years of Greek in college and seminary.”
Warren, founding pastor of the largest church in the Southern Baptist Convention, will show up at the SBC annual meeting in New Orleans this week to appeal a decision of the SBC Executive Committee to expel Saddleback Church from the denomination because the otherwise conservative church now ordains women and allows women to preach.
“I publicly apologize to every good woman in my life, church and ministry that I failed to speak up for in my years of ignorance.”
Warren previously explained how he researched the Scriptures a few years ago and realized he had been wrong in his previous assumption that women are prohibited by Scripture from serving as pastors and preaching.
The recently retired pastor, author of two best-selling books, has more than 2 million followers on Twitter and communicates with tens of thousands of people via an email distribution list. He is using those means to make his case before the SBC annual meeting, because denominational officials have shut him out from access to other means of communications, he has charged.
His social media apology to women drew the same kind of mixed response the entire controversy in the SBC has drawn. Many who disagree with him thanked him for his thoughtful words, others expressed agreement with his views, and the far-right crowd that has been his greatest antagonists mounted a full-throttled attack on his theological bona fides.
The gist of that attack is that the pastor who grew the largest church in the denomination from scratch and who has baptized more Christians than entire state Baptist conventions just doesn’t understand the Bible.
Independent fundamentalist pastor James White, who leads Alpha and Omega Ministries in Phoenix, ridiculed Warren on Twitter June 10.
White wrote: “Rick Warren has never given us reason to identify him as an exegete. His Purpose Driven stuff was fluff in its day. And now he actually has the temerity to not only view himself as a teacher of literally millions for having produced that pablum back then, but now he is telling us that it is a SINGLE TERM (αὐθεντεῖν) that stands between all women and the position of ἐπισκοπῆς? Aside from the fact that the term itself must be viewed in its context (it is being used jointly with διδάσκειν and this impacts the resultant semantic domain) this is not the ONLY verse relevant to the topic. I will ask what I ask everyone on this topic: Where are the qualifications for the female elders? We have lists of such qualifications for the men, where is it for the women? No such list exists, of course, because the Spirit did not intend us to have such a list. Warren’s ‘exegesis’ is once again found to be as shallow as that which made him famous.”
The gist of that attack is that the pastor who grew the largest church in the denomination from scratch and who has baptized more Christians than entire state Baptist conventions just doesn’t understand the Bible.
Other critics called him a “fake pastor” and a “heretic.” Some accused him of “deconstructing” his Christian faith and falling into a “slippery slope” of liberalism that will cause him to embrace gay Christians next.
For his part, Warren takes the criticism in stride and keeps preaching his newfound message of inclusion for women.
In his apology to women, Warren when he finally engaged in “proper due diligence” and laid aside “50 years of bias,” he was “shocked, chagrined and embarrassed.”
The traditional view against women as church leaders violates “so many hermeneutical rules,” he said. “Never build a doctrine on a single word that is used only once in Scripture! There’s nothing to compare it to (correlation). Do your own study of authentein in ancient Greek and you’ll be shocked too. I think maybe it was because I didn’t want to know anything that might challenge the view I wanted to believe for 50 years.”
But now, “integrity required that I read over 70 commentaries by inerrantist scholars that blew apart my comfortable, traditional and culture-based interpretation,” he wrote. “No seminary told me that those commentaries even existed, and Baptist Bookstores refused to carry them. (My mother managed a Baptist Bookstore.) So I accepted the interpretation that was most comfortable for me as a man with my background.
“Then reading over 100 books on the early church and the history of the Great Commission … demanded my repentance. That journey was both painful and humbling.”
Warren admits he does not expect to win his case in New Orleans, “and I certainly don’t expect to change the mind of any angry fundamentalist. They are responsible to God, not to me. I’m doing this as an act of obedience to the Holy Spirit.”
But he can apologize, he concluded. “I publicly apologize to every good woman in my life, church and ministry that I failed to speak up for in my years of ignorance. What grieves me is that I hindered them in obeying the Great Commission command (and Acts 2:17-18) that everyone is to teach in the church. I held them back from using the spiritual gifts and leadership skills that the Holy Spirit had sovereignly placed in them. That breaks my heart now, and I am truly repentant and sorry for my sin.”
Related articles:
An open letter to all Southern Baptists | Opinion by Rick Warren
A primer on why Southern Baptists are fighting over women in ministry once again | Analysis by Mark Wingfield
Scripture changed his mind on women in ministry, Rick Warren tells Russell Moore
If you’re going to quote 1 Timothy 3:2, be sure to read Exodus 20:17 | Opinion by Brad Bull
I knew the truth about women in the Bible, and I stayed silent | Opinion by Beth Allison Barr
