Editor’s Note: Rick Warren published this open letter Friday, June 2, and sent it to various media outlets, including BNG. Rather than write a news story about the letter, we decided to run the full letter as an opinion piece….
A primer on why Southern Baptists are fighting over women in ministry once again
Casual observers might have thought the Southern Baptist Convention settled its position on women in ministry 30 years ago. Turns out, that’s not the case at all. An issue that was explosive for the SBC during the heyday of its…
Rick Warren outlines five reasons Saddleback will challenge its expulsion from SBC
Rick Warren and Saddleback Church plan to vigorously object to their expulsion from the Southern Baptist Convention at the SBC annual meeting next month in New Orleans. Warren, who was founding pastor of the Southern California megachurch and recently retired,…
Fundamentalism and politics are hampering SBC’s moral witness, Leonard says
The Southern Baptist Convention’s continued embrace of fundamentalism and conservative politics is undermining its ability to “moralize to American culture,” church historian Bill Leonard said during a lecture at Baylor University. “How did a once engaging gospel of grace, repentance,…
Let’s stop treating the dignity of women as a secondary issue good Christians can disagree on
While complementarians sacralize the subjugation of women, perhaps the strongest obstacles to change are the priorities of egalitarians. We’ve witnessed the muscle of complementarian men weaponizing the Bible and wielding the gospel to fortify their authority and power in the…
Scripture changed his mind on women in ministry, Rick Warren tells Russell Moore
The Great Commission is one of several scriptural reasons Rick Warren believes women are called by God to leadership in the church, he told Russell Moore in a March 8 podcast. Warren, recently retired pastor of Saddleback Church in Southern…
Think you’ve ‘decided’ about women in ministry? Here’s why there’s more to do
In my work advocating for women in ministry for more than a decade, there have been many instances in which a conversation with a male pastor or religious leader has included some form of the following: “Our church/organization decided about…
Want to understand why the SBC expelled its largest church? Listen to W.A. Criswell
W.A. Criswell would be so proud of the Southern Baptist Convention this week. The man who once was the spokesman for why women should not — cannot — be pastors has reached peak influence 114 years after his birth. About…
Southern Baptist Convention ousts its largest church, Saddleback, for having a woman pastor
The Southern Baptist Convention has removed its largest congregation, Saddleback Church of Lake Forest, Calif., for appointing a woman as a teaching pastor. The SBC Executive Committee, which acts on behalf of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination in-between the convention’s…