Recent remarks by Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, asserting women should not interpret Scripture on podcasts, have sent shockwaves across the Southern Baptist Convention and throughout the evangelical world. Mohler’s bizarre comments regarding female podcasters have laid bare the underlying anxieties of an evangelical denomination grappling with its own leadership structure and the role of women in the local church and society.
Mohler’s dogmatic and patriarchal assertions have ignited a firestorm of controversy and have raised the question of whether complementarian and male Southern Baptist leaders, such as Mohler, are attempting to silence and repress female voices within the SBC and the American evangelical landscape.
Wade Burleson
Lee Enochs
The core of our criticism against Mohler’s stance on women interpreting or teaching Scripture — particularly in broadcast or podcast formats — centers on our concern that his application of this complementarian prohibition of scriptural exposition extends to modern, nonhierarchical mediums like podcasts. This artificially silences women’s voices and misinterprets the original context of the Scripture.
We adamantly reject Mohler’s viewpoints regarding female podcasters and believe they attempt to marginalize female expertise. Prohibiting women from formally exegeting or teaching the Bible on podcasts dismisses the theological education, spiritual gifts and academic expertise of female scholars, authors and apologists.
Additionally, we are concerned that Mohler’s views on female podcasters attempt to entrench a repressive authoritarianism and represent the very worst forms of toxic masculinity, misogyny and abusive patriarchal power structures.
“We adamantly reject Mohler’s viewpoints regarding female podcasters and believe they attempt to marginalize female expertise.”
We take great umbrage with Mohler’s views on female podcasters and postulate that restricting women from public scriptural interpretation essentially gatekeeps theological discourse. It grants men an exclusive, authoritarian monopoly on how the Bible and Christian theology are understood and communicated.
We believe his opposition to the exposition of Scripture by female podcasters is an expression of arbitrary control — an unnecessary boundary that represses women and severely curtails Christian women’s ability to utilize a popular vehicle of mass communication in our contemporary world.
We believe Mohler’s views against female exposition of Scripture via the medium of podcasting go way too far, even within the parameters of his own complementarian scriptural paradigm. They greatly undermine the ability of women in the body of Christ to communicate their perspectives on Scripture and Christian theology in our modern era.
Ultimately, Mohler’s campaign against women podcasters is not merely a theological debate over church order; it is a chilling harbinger reminiscent of the authoritarian and patriarchal reality envisioned by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid’s Tale.
By seeking to silence female voices and relegate women to the margins and periphery of the church and society, this misogynistic philosophy lays the exact ideological groundwork required to dismantle hard-won equality. Society must reject these regressive views outright and in total, refusing to surrender modern progress to a dystopian vision of forced subjugation of women.
Wade Burleson is a politician, author and retired pastor who led Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla., for three decades. He twice served as president of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma (2002 to 2004) and was a trustee for the SBC International Mission Board (2005 to 2008). Wade also president of Istoria Ministries.
Lee Enochs is a journalist and history Ph.D. student with degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Gateway Seminary and the UNT Mayborn School of Journalism. He hosts a weekly KNTU radio podcast and specializes in the history of propaganda, with his thesis available at the UNT Digital Library.
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