Southern Baptists reject constitutional ban on women in pastoral roles

A day after the Southern Baptist Convention expelled a Virginia church for affirming women in pastoral roles, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination voted down a resolution to add an amendment banning the roles in its constitution.

The amendment failed to meet the two-thirds threshold necessary for adoption, a vote that surprised many at the annual meeting.

Although the amendment failed, the denomination still opposes women in pastoral roles and a church that goes against that part of the statement of faith can still be found to be “not in friendly cooperation” and expelled.

The issue of women in pastoral roles was among several major resolutions that the nation’s largest Protestant denomination considered during its annual meeting this week at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis. Resolutions also included support for religious liberty and opposition to in-vitro fertilization,

The denomination also elected Clint Pressley, senior pastor of Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte, as its new president.

“We know that others voted against the amendment for other reasons, but we hope the message of your support for female pastors will be amplified,“ said Meredith Stone, executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry.

“But even though the amendment did not pass, we are also grieved that this vote has ever even taken place. Further, the 61% of messengers who voted for it (66% was required to pass) demonstrate that women in ministry are still devalued,” Stone said.

The amendment would have reaffirmed a ban that prohibits women from serving as pastors in its roughly 40,000 cooperating churches.

The denomination’s Baptist Faith and Message states that “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”

“It is hard to see how anyone outside this increasingly restrictive and parochial religious subculture could find this move anything other than misogynist, backwards and reactionary,” said David P. Gushee, distinguished university professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University and author of “Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies,.

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