The so-called Mohler Amendment to prohibit women from functioning as pastors in Southern Baptist churches is being hailed by his minions as “critical for us at this juncture.”
According to Brian Arnold, pastor of First Baptist Church Paducah, Ky.: “In a day and age of rampant egalitarianism, it is incumbent on us to return to what Scripture and the history of the faith have said on this issue. And it couldn’t be clearer that the office and the title and the function of the pastor belongs to men. … Men alone.”
In his post, Arnold attempts to reassure everyone, “This is not about misogyny, it is about fidelity.”
There is no reasoning with complementarian men over being faithful to what they believe the Bible says. We could quote verses, parse words and discuss ancient culture all we want. But they are the ones who hold the authority to pick and choose how to interpret and enforce the Bible.
“It is a picking and choosing of which verses they decide are universal, universally applicable to folks, and which are not,” Baptist Women in Ministry Executive Director Meredith Stone told me on a recent episode of “Highest Power: Church + State.” “It is all about who has the power to make those decisions. They are trying to maintain their power to do that.”
What if Mohler’s “No Girls Allowed” club was about more than his attempt to be faithful to the Bible?
“What if Mohler’s ‘No Girls Allowed’ club was about more than his attempt to be faithful to the Bible?”
Complementarian men have a very simple script. From Adam and Eve, God established a created order that prioritizes male headship and female submission. Men are called to lead families, churches, businesses and governments, with women submitting as their helpers. Like Arnold, they’re very careful to deny any accusations of misogyny.
But when they go off script and speak extemporaneously, they often present their case in a way that reveals ulterior motives we may not have noticed before. In the case of Mohler’s amendment, his presentation last week to the Heritage Foundation reveals that perhaps part of what’s going on here is that his control and exclusion of women is motivated by winning a competition.
A competitive sport for boys
During the Q&A portion of Mohler’s talk, a woman asked him how his presentation applies to education. Then Mohler replied, “When I was a boy, learning was made a competition. In other words, it was a competitive sport. And, I mean, you had an entire educational elite come to the conclusion that that was wrong, morally wrong.”
“I think there was an intentional effort to concentrate away from boys, and I think it’s come with devastating consequences,” Mohler added. “It turns out, you have to put enormous energy into boys or the civilization fails.”
According to Mohler, boys are motivated by competition. The survival of civilization itself hangs on boys competing with one another, trying to gain advantage over one another. So, what if the enormous energy Mohler is pouring into creating male-only spaces in SBC pulpits is also about male competition?
Mohler’s competition with the left
During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Mohler appeared on CNN and asked, “Is it worth destroying our moral credibility to support someone who is beneath the baseline level of human decency for anyone who should deserve our vote?”
He was referring, of course, to Donald Trump.
But then during the 2020 election, Mohler publicly backed Trump “because the alternative is increasingly unthinkable.” That alternative was the devout Catholic Joe Biden. But Biden is a Democrat, and Mohler is a lifelong Republican.
In other words, Mohler’s political competition against the Democrats ultimately took precedence over a candidate’s moral credibility.
“For Mohler, the competition between Republicans and Democrats is ultimately a competition between kingdoms.”
For Mohler, the competition between Republicans and Democrats is ultimately a competition between kingdoms. In his presentation at the Heritage Foundation, he distinguished between “thick Christianity” and “thin Christianity” and suggested, “A thin Christianity is no threat to that kind of Nietzschean structure.”
A Nietzschean structure typically refers to the application of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical concepts, emphasizing interpreting systems not as objective truths, but as shifting power dynamics built on subjective interpretations
“Most of the denominations were doing incredibly well in terms of church attendance … up until the early 1960s. Then, of course, you have the Mainline Protestant trajectory and the evangelical trajectory,” Mohler said. “But the fact is that even among a lot of evangelicals, the thought was, ‘Yeah, well, we’re winning this thing. The culture is going our way.’”
Mohler believes this evangelical assumption that they were winning was premature. But he added, “The difference is now most young Christians are very aware of the fact that we’re in a long-term struggle.”
So Mohler thinks there’s a long-term civilizational competition to be won, where his version of Christianity needs to threaten the left, where boys need to engage in sport, and where winning is measured to some degree by church attendance. It’s no wonder then why he’d take interest in a rise of young men returning to religion.
Many would call this language “tribalism,” an accusation Mohler seems comfortable embracing. He said, “There’s a tribal identity that is part, I think, of conservative Christian survival.”
“There’s a tribal identity that is part, I think, of conservative Christian survival.”
Again, the language of “winning this thing” and “survival” fits very well into Mohler’s claim that boys are motivated by everything being turned into a competitive sport.
Human existence, dignity and the created order
In order for the Mohler tribe to win the competition against the left, he and his boys first have to identify who is part of their tribe.
The title of Mohler’s presentation to the Heritage Foundation was, “Young Men Turn to Religion: What’s Going on Here?” He was explaining why young men are reportedly returning to organized religion, while young women are leaving it.
Mohler claimed young men are returning not to religion in general, but to a certain kind of religion. “It is these three branches of Christianity,” Mohler explained. “It is traditional Catholicism, it’s Eastern Orthodoxy, it’s confessional Protestantism, basically Reformed Protestantism.”
He claimed the reason young men are turning to these three branches of Christianity is because they are the branches that believe in “creation order.” That’s the idea that God established an order in Adam and Eve that requires men to lead and women to submit. To Mohler, this “basic creation order fact” is what “grounds human existence and human dignity, that grounds human rights and right and wrong and morality.”
In other words, human existence and dignity depends on “thick” Christians being in charge, which depends on boys being in power. So the dignity of women depends on keeping them in submission. This is why complementarian men consider women who step out of submission by desiring to preach to be undignified.
Mohler declared: “I think young men are looking for thick, they are looking for substance, they’re looking for truth, they’re looking for creation order, they’re yearning for these things. There are different challenges now faced by this generation of young men. And this is showing up in the workplace, it’s showing up in the schools, it’s showing up in all kinds of things, including social media, online existence and all the rest.”
Mohler’s church competition for boys
In order to win the competition against the left, Mohler believes “thick” churches have to win the competition against “thin” churches. So sprinkled throughout his presentation to the Heritage Foundation are quite a few snarky comments about progressive churches failing to attract young men.
“In order to win the competition against the left, Mohler believes ‘thick’ churches have to win the competition against ‘thin’ churches.”
“Mainline liberal Protestantism has basically just dropped out of the conversation,” he claimed. “No one really talks about you, and no one goes to your churches.”
At one point, Mohler recalled sitting in the balcony of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville with his wife and pulling out his phone to snap a picture of all the young men sitting in one of the rows. “I mean like 40, 45 seats of young men about college age just sitting in a row,” he reminisced. “OK, you do not see that at the church with the rainbow flag flying up front.”
“Liberal Protestantism can’t pay the bills,” he piled on. “And so if you can confiscate money from conservatives to pay liberal bills, that would extend the liberal project. In Protestantism, you know, they’re turning churches into condos.”
Mohler gloated, “I think conservative space is a lot better at sorting that out than progressivist space. Look at the crowd.”
Regarding women preaching, he said, “It’s just, I think it’s contrary to Scripture. And evidently, it’s contrary to church attendance as well.”
And ultimately, he projected his obsession with young men’s church attendance onto progressive Christians, suggesting, “What frustrates the progressivists more than anything else? It is how many young men reject it from the get-go.”
Winning the boys by controlling the women
Why are traditional Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Reformed Protestant churches attracting these young men?
“There are unique pathologies,” Mohler explained. “It’s very interesting to see how this is being expressed in this deep ontological desire for thick Christianity.”
“They are turned off by feminized religious space.”
Then he cut to the chase: “They are turned off by feminized religious space. And I just think we need to be honest and say, it’s not just Mainline Protestantism. In terms of culture, an awful lot has been feminized, in terms of even, say, the broader consumer evangelical culture. They’re looking for something as an alternative to that.”
In case it’s not clear, an alternative to “feminized religious space” is a “No Girls Allowed” club, which is what Mohler wants to create in the pulpit.
Because Mohler believes the survival of civilization depends on the survival of Christianity, which depends on boys winning the competition of church attendance, these “feminized religious spaces,” which include women preaching, are posing a threat to civilization itself.
Where should women be instead? Until today, Mohler claimed, “no society had faced a crisis of turning girls into women, in terms of functionality. … But we now face a crisis, I think, unique to Western civilization in terms of convincing young women to move ahead in terms of the hallmarks of what it means to embrace the female role, and in particular in terms of marriage and the bearing of children.”
According to Mohler’s “No Girls Allowed Club,” the survival of humanity depends on Southern Baptist men keeping women in the kitchen and in the bedroom, fulfilling the female role, while the men get to go out and pursue their dreams with absolute authority. But they’re totally not misogynists.
Winning the boys by excluding the women
During Mohler’s Q&A, men from the three traditions Mohler mentioned began to make things even more weird. One traditional Catholic man stood up and ranted about Pope Francis’ opposition to the Traditional Latin Mass and how progressive Catholics supposedly don’t like how TLM Catholics are so committed to childbearing.
Then an Orthodox man stood up and mentioned how they have “all male priesthood, all male bishops,” but lamented, “There’s been attempts to feminize those churches with female altar boys and that tends to drive out boys and has an effect on vocations.” The mere presence of girls causes the boys to tuck and run.
So Mohler responded by mentioning his proposed amendment to the Southern Baptist Convention Constitution and joked, “I’m in a little bit of a controversy at the moment. Surprise. Surprise.”
“If boys do not grow up to take this role, … something essential isn’t going to happen.”
And in that context, Mohler said, “We don’t have girls as altar boys. But what we have is a culture in which we are confused about ever saying that this is a necessary male role, and that if men do not fulfill this role, if boys do not grow up to take this role, this isn’t going to happen. Something essential isn’t going to happen.”
Why does Mohler assume something essential won’t happen if men don’t exclude women from the pulpit? Why doesn’t it dawn on him that by excluding women, he may be missing some essential perspectives? What does he gain by excluding women?
He admitted: “I think if you leave these roles ill-defined, young men just don’t come. They want to know what is the role I’m supposed to fulfill. They want to aspire to it, get ready for it, step into it, be mentored in it. If you say it doesn’t matter, well, what you end up with is the space of liberal Protestantism. You don’t have to say, ‘Where’s the laboratory experiment?’ You just look at liberal Mainline Protestantism. You look at how the gender has been transformed in terms of pastors and bishops and all the rest. And you’ll notice that, look at the crowd.”
Apparently, Mohler thinks women don’t have any aspirations.
And that’s what this Mohler amendment is all about. It’s a Game of Thrones. He believes boys are motivated by the sport of competition. He is competing for civilizational survival against the left. He thinks it all depends on which churches have higher attendance numbers for young men. And he thinks if you don’t clearly define young men as being exclusively entitled to the roles of absolute authority, and have the roles all prepared for them to step into without any fear of having to compete against women for those spaces, then they won’t come.
How pathetic are these boys? And what kind of sick project does Mohler think God is working in the world that God would make the survival of humanity dependent on reducing church leadership to a “No Girls Allowed Club” that feeds the tribalistic desires of insecure young men to control and silence women?
There’s more to the story
It’s also clear Mohler needs to get out more. His vision of what’s happening in America’s churches seems limited by his own blinders.
While the trend of some young men returning to conservative churches is true, changes in the gender gap are not as easy to explain as Mohler wants you to think.
Ryan Burge is one researcher who has raised questions about the data. What’s happening is more about the ratio of young men attending church compared to young women attending church.
He quotes Greg Smith of Pew Research: “To be sure, there are some interesting things happening with religion among young people. For example, young men are now about as religious as women in the same age group. That’s a notable change from the past, when young women tended to be more religious than young men. It also differs from the pattern seen among older people today: Older women are much more religious than older men. However, this narrowing of the gender gap is driven by declining religiousness among American women. It is not a result of increases in the religiousness of men.”
And Mohler’s portrayal of all progressive Christian churches as devoid of young men just isn’t true. Three notable examples make the case:
Cathedral of Hope in Dallas is the largest predominantly gay church in America. It’s also one of the best-known liberal to progressive Christian churches. And every Sunday, its sanctuary fills three times with men of all ages, including many young men turned off by the conservative churches of their youth.
Bridgetown Church in Portland, Ore., attracts a huge following of Gen Z and Millennials to its intentionally inclusive and progressive fellowship.
The Riverside Church in New York City is an iconic, interdenominational progressive church with active and diverse young adult and men’s groups. You just can’t get any more Mainline progressive than the church built by John Rockefeller.
God does not need Al Mohler’s help to save the church in America from decay.
Rick Pidcock
Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and is the author of a forthcoming book, Weapons of Worship: How the Songs of Evangelicalism Form the Soundtrack of Extremism. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.
Related:
In conversation with Meredith Stone about Mohler’s amendment | Opinion by Rick Pidcock
“Highest Power: Church + State”: Conversation with Meredith Stone
“Stuck in the Middle with You”: Why is Al Mohler Still Talking About Women in Ministry?