Al Mohler to propose an amendment to SBC constitution to confirm ban on female pastors

Tuur said:

Or act as the church accountant or song leader or musician or teaching children's Sunday School. The latter has come up so often in the family that it's almost traditional, except there's no "legacy" factor. One grandmother was simultaneously a teacher in a Baptist and a Methodist church. No, I don't know how the scheduling worked.

There are two issues here. The one in the OP is whether this different than what the SBC already does. I don't think it is, and mark it up as the sort of virtue signaling the SBC has gotten into. The other is 1 Timothy 3 and 1 Timothy 2:12. That is the big thing. I know of a particular newspaper that "had it in" for the SBC because they disagreed with not ordaining women to preach, but their argument wasn't theological and more "Oh, that's so terrible," without any theological explanation or, if they were honest, consideration. The important thing in light of 1 Timothy is how to reconcile Paul's statement theological with the ordination of women. I'm assuming that such arguments exist, but they usually aren't cited, particularly by the secular press who might not know the epistles from the gospels.

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Note - the below is just my 2 cents of what I've observed of SBC male viewpoints. Personally, I'm OK with women doing any of the things you mentioned.

Church accountant - probably ok, as long as she doesn't have any kind of oversight over a man.
Church song leader - mixed. Some are ok with it. It is a very hard NO from others.
Sing, play an instrument - probably ok.
teach children's Sunday school - ok. However some churches are doing away with children's and ladies ministries.

Agree that except for adding the "function" wording it very much the same as the wording the SBC already has in place.

I saw a facebook post where a pastor was surprised at how strongly many SBC women felt against the measure. As I read the comments, it seemed many women had no desire to be a head pastor. But, they did want to do more than cook, clean, decorate, maybe sing in the choir and do nursery duty. They cited many scriptures to support that they were supposed to do more than that. I may be wrong, but the feeling I got was that they simply didn't trust the men of the SBC not to use this amendment as a tool to take away the things they can do.

That of course leads to the question, is that lack of trust the fault of the women for not having trust in the men? Or, is it because the men have largely been acting in an untrustworthy manner?

In any event, I'm surprised that the SBC has, once again, decided that out of all the problems it faces, that "uppity women" is the largest problem they face. I also wonder who they'll blame their troubles on if they ever get the "uppity women" mashed down to their satisfaction?

Tuur said:

Not really. He was in the ordination process for the Church of God is all I know. The church he attended at the time is based in Georgia, if that helps, and has the cross and a red semi-circle slash-like emblem as its logo.

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Sounds like the COG Cleveland. Did it look like the logo here - >

That's the emblem, but not Cleveland.

JustaPewFiller said:

Note - the below is just my 2 cents of what I've observed of SBC male viewpoints. Personally, I'm OK with women doing any of the things you mentioned.

Church accountant - probably ok, as long as she doesn't have any kind of oversight over a man.
Church song leader - mixed. Some are ok with it. It is a very hard NO from others.
Sing, play an instrument - probably ok.
teach children's Sunday school - ok. However some churches are doing away with children's and ladies ministries.

Agree that except for adding the "function" wording it very much the same as the wording the SBC already has in place.

I saw a facebook post where a pastor was surprised at how strongly many SBC women felt against the measure. As I read the comments, it seemed many women had no desire to be a head pastor. But, they did want to do more than cook, clean, decorate, maybe sing in the choir and do nursery duty. They cited many scriptures to support that they were supposed to do more than that. I may be wrong, but the feeling I got was that they simply didn't trust the men of the SBC not to use this amendment as a tool to take away the things they can do.

That of course leads to the question, is that lack of trust the fault of the women for not having trust in the men? Or, is it because the men have largely been acting in an untrustworthy manner?

In any event, I'm surprised that the SBC has, once again, decided that out of all the problems it faces, that "uppity women" is the largest problem they face. I also wonder who they'll blame their troubles on if they ever get the "uppity women" mashed down to their satisfaction?

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Except I've observed none of that. The main issue for accounting is ability to act as an accountant. Since it's not preaching, it doesn't fall under the restriction found in the epistles. The one time I saw a woman accountant hand-off to a man in an SBC member church, it was because she'd done it for years and years and basically wanted to retire. I know of that because I had to help move the filing cabinet.

Note: Accountant is also called Church Treasurer.

For song leader, haven't seen any resistance to that at all. Standing up and saying "If you'll take the Green Book*, turn to 97; first, second, and fourth verse" doesn't contradict the aforementioned restriction.

For instruments, if you didn't have women playing the piano and the organ, it would be a cappella in well over 90% of SBC churches. Knew of one guy who'd play hymns in Dixieland style on his trombone, and it might be fun to sing to that, but...

For children's ministries, that depends on the number of children in the church. Where there's a lot, there's a children's ministry. Where there's not, it's usually no more than Sunday School, Training Union, and Vacation Bible School. Ladies ministries are the same. Large congregations, yes; small congregations, not so much. Really, small congregations tend not to have anything other than preaching, revivals, Sunday School, Training Union, and Vacation Bible Schools. And Homecoming. Oh, and Sunrise Service.

*The old Broadman Hymnal

Tuur said:

Except I've observed none of that. The main issue for accounting is ability to act as an accountant. Since it's not preaching, it doesn't fall under the restriction found in the epistles. The one time I saw a woman accountant hand-off to a man in an SBC member church, it was because she'd done it for years and years and basically wanted to retire. I know of that because I had to help move the filing cabinet.

Note: Accountant is also called Church Treasurer.

For song leader, haven't seen any resistance to that at all. Standing up and saying "If you'll take the Green Book*, turn to 97; first, second, and fourth verse" doesn't contradict the aforementioned restriction.

For instruments, if you didn't have women playing the piano and the organ, it would be a cappella in well over 90% of SBC churches. Knew of one guy who'd play hymns in Dixieland style on his trombone, and it might be fun to sing to that, but...

For children's ministries, that depends on the number of children in the church. Where there's a lot, there's a children's ministry. Where there's not, it's usually no more than Sunday School, Training Union, and Vacation Bible School. Ladies ministries are the same. Large congregations, yes; small congregations, not so much. Really, small congregations tend not to have anything other than preaching, revivals, Sunday School, Training Union, and Vacation Bible Schools. And Homecoming. Oh, and Sunrise Service.

*The old Broadman Hymnal

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...and I would say I've observed all of it. Both, exactly like you mentioned, and exactly like I mentioned - I have seen both.

For what it is worth -(I'll say it again) I actually agree with you. I do not think any of those examples you gave of roles women can do violate scripture in any way. But, there are currently some very loud voices within the SBC that say those examples *do* violate Scripture.

It is almost like people could look at the same set of Scriptures and interpret them differently - even within the SBC. Crazy eh?!

This is just what I have observed. For simplicty I'm going to break it down into 3 camps. Camps A, B and C.

Camp A - There certainly are those in the SBC that are ok with (and want) women as lead pastors and cite Scripture to back up their view. - but that is not most within the SBC. Those that want that seem to be in the minority.

Camp B - Then, there are certainly those in the SBC that feel the role of women in the church should be VERY limited. They too, site Scripture to back up their view. They feel that some of the women of old the SBC currently holds up (Lottie Moon, Annie Armstrong, Bertha Smith) were WAAAY out of line, should never have happened and should never happen again. They feel that the things you and I mentioned women doing (and are ok with) violate Scripture. Or, to give a very relative example, that a woman answering questions about the week's sermon as part of a mixed panel on a podcast is "a problem", in Al Mohler's view. Again, those that hold these views seem to be in the minority. But, currently, their voice is VERY loud. They are agasht that the SBC credentials and executive committees have only kicked out a tiny fraction of the 170 churches on the list Mike Law submitted some years ago (98% of those remain in friendly cooperation). They grumble mightly about the credentials and executive comittee's "not doing their job" and point as evidence all the churches from the "Law list" that are still in friendly cooperation. The fact that it is possible the churches are not doing anything wrong and that their viewpoint is just incorrect is often flatly rejected by those in this camp.

Camp C - Caught in the middle are the churches (and women within those churches) quitely performing the roles and serving God just as they have done for years. Most of them don't want a woman as lead pastor, but they do feel that there are many vital roles women can ( and do ) play in the church. From that stance, many in Camp C are ok with the ammendment as they believe it will only target women behind the pulpit. However, there are those in Camp C that fear that Camp B is going to use this amendment as a weapon to come after women doing most any kind of ministry, and that Camp B will not stop or compromise until either they (or Camp B) are gone from the SBC or they cave into the desires of Camp B. Also given Mohler's words about the podcast they fear much of SBC leadership is sliding into Camp B.

Lastly, it would be fair to mention that the SBC itself is also caught in middle on this. Of course, there are issues with church autonomy and all of that. But, I'm going to focus on a practical matter of numbers and process. You see, it is this SBC process itself that is probably going to ensure that nobody in Camp B is ever really going to be statisfied.

Lets say the ammendment passes. Does that mean all of the churches on the "Law list" (or whatever the current list those in Camp B have) are going to be automatically kicked out in a speedy manner? Of course not. Camp B insists that women doing things they should not is a HUGE issue in the SBC and a large number of churches are out of line. Say they submit 2,330 churches (5% of those in the SBC) to the creditals committee. To me 5% seems a low number to be a HUGE problem.. but I'm going with it. The credentials committee is 9 people and I don't think being committee members is their full time job. Suddenly, they have 2330 churches to look into. It will take them many years to get through that many churches. When the credentials comittee reaches their recommendation, and if they determine the church is not in friendly cooperation, it then it goes to the exectutive committee who vote. Assuming the executive committee votes the church is not in friendly cooperation, then the church has the right of appeal. It is easy to see how this could take a long time for even 1 church to get through the process. Getting 2330 churches through it would take decade or more given the current process.

I admit, I pulled 5% of the churches out of the air as I keep hearing how this issue is a HUGE problem. If we go with Mike Law's numbers. 170 churches. That is only 0.36% of the total churches in the SBC. Less than 1% In most any institution, if only .36% is out of line - then it really isn't a HUGE problem in the 1st place is it? That is making a mountian out of a molehill and an indication that the current process of the SBC is actually working very well. That the issues is being vistied AGAIN, for the 3rd time, is an indication that Camp B isn't going to be satisfied until they get their way or go away.

In the meantime, giving to the SBC is down and the argument could be made that SBC may need the churches more than the churches need the SBC. But that is another matter..

If the ammendment passes..

Camp A (those in favor of women pastors) will obviously be unhappy.
Camp B (those who want a VERY limited role for women) will be happy for a short time until they see how long it takes to remove a church from friendly cooperation with the SBC. Then they will be unhappy all over again. The only thing that would bring them long term happiness is a change to the process such that such removal of churches can happen very quickly and lines up with their views.
Camp C - what I would call "normal" SBC churches will still be stuck in the middle, not bothered unless someone in Camp B takes a look at them and finds a women doing something they don't approve of. Then they'll be stuck in the process I mentioned above for however long it takes.

For what its worth, there is another more cynical view....

As I mentioned above, the existing process actually seems to be working very well. By the latest list (the "Law List") of those opposed to women pastors in title and function only 0.36% of the total number of SBC were identified as having women in those roles. Some of those have been kicked out already.

When your existing process for keeping women out of the role of pastor only has a 0.36% rate of being out of line, and you have a working method in place to deal with the outliers, that is a hallmark of existing policies, processes and procedures that actually work very, very, very well. In other words, it is successful 99.64% of the time. That means the existing process is working wonderfully! Al Mohler and the high-ups in the SBC realize that.

In the meantime there are several past and current issues in play in the SBC.. (below likely isn't all of them).

There is the ongoing fallout from the sexual abuse lawsuits.
People wanted more financial transparency (990 level) regarding what the SBC was doing with their contributions. What they got instead was less transparency, more secrecy and even more shut out of being able to find out what is going on with the $.
As a result of that, giving to the cooperative program is falling.
There has been ongoing hub-bub and controversy about the NAMB and IMB.
The more conservative voices are also upset about the ERLC and want major changes to that.

Now, if I was cynical, politically minded, and had a certain agenda (to keep power and preserve the status quo), I would realize that the same very conservative crowd that always makes a lot of noise about female pastors can be relied upon to make noise about it again. I would also realize that the data shows that female pastors really are only a very tiny issue in the SBC numerically and the existing process to deal with it works well. In other words, out of all the issues the SBC faces, this one is very very very small and already well managed.

But, I would also realize that bringing the point about female pastors forward again would once again ignite a firestorm of debate and arguments both within the SBC ranks and in the general public. The ongoing smoke-screen from that would serve as a very handy distraction from all the other, more thorny, issues.

To put it another way. Someone in the castle noticed the peasants were becoming unhappy, the coffers were low, and some cracks in the normal order of business were starting to appear. In response, they pointed out the window and shouted, "EEEK! Rally the troops!! It is time for all of us to pull together!! The barbarians (women in pastoral roles) are at the gate!!"

It could very well be a crazy conspiracy theory, but the data does point to it being plausible.

Tuur said:

Hate to tell you, but unless you're much older than me, that is the SBC. The principle of the priesthood of the believer isn't a blank check. There comes a point where belief isn't Baptist in general or Southern Baptist in particular. A good reference is Hobb's What Baptists Believe. Without looking up the particulars, remembered one case where the SBC disfellowshipped a member church that was allowing a non-Christian religion to use part of the premises for worship. If you have a pastor who comes to the conclusion that Jesus Christ didn't have to die on the Cross (as one pastor did), that's flies in the face of what Baptists believe. What Christians do, too, but that's another topic.

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I would like to add to this that the priesthood of believers is the belief that, because God ripped the veil in the temple from top to bottom, we don’t need a to go through to approach God. We can go directly to Him to confess our sins, to interpret scripture. But where scripture boldly states specific things, it doesn’t give us permission to act against what the scriptures say.

I attended a non-denominational church (that had originally been a Congregational church) that hired a woman pastor, but she could only oversee the women and children. She was not allowed to preach. (She left after only about a year. I think she wanted to have the same privilege (and responsibility?) as the male pastors.

I now attend an independent Baptist church that is in the process of changing its constitution, and some church member have said they want female deacons (though that change is still way off in the future, right now they are just bringing it into the 21st century.). So I don’t know how the SBC is, but I believe they have a right to set restrictions that would define what it means to be a (Southern) Baptist, and IMO, those things should be scripturally sound. There’s still a lot of wiggle room with those parameters.

A New Dawn said:

I now attend an independent Baptist church that is in the process of changing its constitution, and some church member have said they want female deacons (though that change is still way off in the future, right now they are just bringing it into the 21st century.). So I don’t know how the SBC is, but I believe they have a right to set restrictions that would define what it means to be a (Southern) Baptist, and IMO, those things should be scripturally sound. There’s still a lot of wiggle room with those parameters.

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Have seen the issue of female deacons come up in the affirmative in SBC churches. That said, besides acknowledging that there is no biblical prohibition against women being deacons, haven't met one in an SBC church. OTOH, with the exception of the person I I knew who went church shopping until he found one that would make him a deacon, I haven't encountered a deacon who sought the job. Then again, I'm not aware of an SBC church nominating a woman to serve as deacon. Make of that what you will. Then again, having seen some of the work doled out to deacons, don't know if that's good or bad.

Good, this is very good news. Now if only we can get them removed from the other major Protestant denominations, as female clergy have caused so much harm - I’ve come to the realization that my previous position of toleration was fundamentally misguided in part because of a lack of humility on the part of female clergy regarding traditional Christians and the use of identity politics to advance their cause in the case of the episcopate of the Church of England, and an analysis of the timing of this issue and its relationship to other issues of modernism such as human sexuality, since aside from a complete lack of Patristic evidence to support female presbyters (and the limited nature of the ministry of deaconesses) as opposed to female evangelists, which were a thing, but the real issue is the pastoral ministry - women are not called to be presbyters but presbyteras, the wives of pastors and the mothers of the parish following the Orthodox model (in the West, the historic disicpline of celibate clergy complicates things; the Council of Nicaea wisely rejected a proposal from the two Roman legates to expand this eastward, and my own view is that at present there is so much temptation in the world that celibate clergy not attached to a religious vocation are problematic.

JustaPewFiller said:

When your existing process for keeping women out of the role of pastor only has a 0.36% rate of being out of line, and you have a working method in place to deal with the outliers, that is a hallmark of existing policies, processes and procedures that actually work very, very, very well. In other words, it is successful 99.64% of the time.

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In the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian Church of the East and among conservative continuing Anglicans and most other denominations without female pastors, even, for the moment, the Roman Catholic Church, what we have works 100% of the time. The issue with the SBC is that since it only meets annually and lacks continuing monitoring and enforcement of denominational policies due to extreme congregational polity and nothing like a continuing committee or anything that might resemble the Scriptural office of episkopoi (congregationalism is not unscriptural but it is unmanageable at scale since the early church did have one parish dioceses but never exclusively, and what is more even among dioceses the idea of conciliarity and communion kept the bishops in line, and reducing the number of pastors with the full authority of bishop to a small number rather than making every parish a diocese is actually a very good idea precisely because of this issue; the SBC struggles to maintain doctrinal unity because the checks and balances to prevent a congregation from drifting from the apostolic teaching are limited; that said I understand the appeal of congregationalism and have been a congregationalist at times in my career, in part due to the problems caused by institutional capture of the episcopate by the theological and political left in the UMC, Episcopal Church USA and increasingly the Roman Catholic Church, which is also a risk in Orthodoxy which cannot entirely be excluded, but there the appropriate safety valve appears to me to be allowing congregations who paid for their church building to own it, and also the most important safety mechanism should be in the form of not allowing those in the pastoral office to make changes.

Whatever process existed that allowed female clergy to be ordained in some denominations is defective. No change which could cause a schism should be admitted; every schism since Nestorius has resulted from unilateral changes to worship. The answer is what made the ancient church of Rome (in Rome itself, the provinces, not so much) and makes the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches relatively stable - extreme unwillingness to admit any change in faith or any change in praxis and careful formation and supervision of liturgical artists such as architects, musicians and iconographers to ensure that beauty is not conflated with disruption.

I should add I have spent my entire career wrestling with this issue. I also swear and affirm in the sight of Almighty God that no part of this post was written using AI, nor did I consult AI in the writing of it (indeed I wrote all of this using my thumbs on my ipad rather than my keyboard and did not use AI proofreading and my wrists regret that decision so if one sees typos well that is why)

In all honesty, this probably wouldn't have created anywhere NEAR the hub-bub it has created (because it really is a very rare thing in the SBC as I pointed out).

However 2 things brought about the hub-bub, (1) being the "function" wording and (2) Mohler himself making the pod-cast comment discussed above.

Put those 2 things together and you open the flood-gates to 1000's of "what about a woman doing this or that" questions. For most examples that involve a woman stepping out of the kitchen, away from the mop bucket, or out of the nursery, you can find SBC men that are ok with it, and SBC men that are dead set against it, each using Scripture to back their positions.

In any event, since SBC is congregational and lacks a "centralized church police force" any enforcement will still be down to the local church or someone reporting the local church to the SBC where it will go through some version of the process I outlined above.

Two updates...

Al Mohler was recently asked about women voting. I'll clock his response as "interesting"...as that it likely reveals his true stance. He indicated that it would "politically implausible" to take away women's right to vote at this point. Note - what he didn't say he was in favor of women voting, just that it was unlikely to get enough political traction to take it away.


I bring that up, because the language in his original amendment could have been used to prohibit women from doing most anything other than cooking, cleaning, nursery, etc if one wanted to push that far. This has caused considerable hub-bub in SBC circles. In response, Al Mohler has changed the scope of the amendment. Personally (my view only) I think it similar to the women's voting issue. He realized it was politically implausible (for now) to take that much away from SBC women in one go.

In the original the word "specifically" was "such as" originally in the below - which when coupled with his comments about the lady on the pod-cast indicated he was casting a far wider net than just women preaching..

New text below..

does not act to affirm, appoint, or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor/elder/overseer, specifically preaching to the assembled congregation.

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Just an aside - do I think this will finally be the end of it if this amendment passes? No, of course not, some SBC church, somewhere will give the title "pastor" to some lady that does a wonderful job in her role but doesn't preach to the assembled congregation, or some lady will teach a thriving mixed Sunday school and it will stir up again.

JustaPewFiller said:

Two updates...

Al Mohler was recently asked about women voting. I'll clock his response as "interesting"...as that it likely reveals his true stance. He indicated that it would "politically implausible" to take away women's right to vote at this point. Note - what he didn't say he was in favor of women voting, just that it was unlikely to get enough political traction to take it away.

Mohler: Women should vote but not interpret sermons on podcast – Baptist News Global

Women should have the right to vote in U.S. politics but should not be allowed to interpret Scripture on a podcast, Al Mohler said last week.

baptistnews.com

I bring that up, because the language in his original amendment could have been used to prohibit women from doing most anything other than cooking, cleaning, nursery, etc if one wanted to push that far. This has caused considerable hub-bub in SBC circles. In response, Al Mohler has changed the scope of the amendment. Personally (my view only) I think it similar to the women's voting issue. He realized it was politically implausible (for now) to take that much away from SBC women in one go.

In the original the word "specifically" was "such as" originally in the below - which when coupled with his comments about the lady on the pod-cast indicated he was casting a far wider net than just women preaching..

New text below..

Update on the Truth & Unity Amendment - AlbertMohler.com

Cultural commentary from a Biblical perspective June 2, 2026 An Update on the Truth and Unity Amendment I want to come back to speak to you about the motion I intend to bring to the 2026 meeting

albertmohler.com

Just an aside - do I think this will finally be the end of it if this amendment passes? No, of course not, some SBC church, somewhere will give the title "pastor" to some lady that does a wonderful job in her role but doesn't preach to the assembled congregation, or some lady will teach a thriving mixed Sunday school and it will stir up again.

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It seems there is some misogyny among SBC men.

And it seems there's bias against the SBC, but we already knew that. And I'm someone who's called the SBC a wholly owned subsidiary of Lifeway.

Tuur said:

And it seems there's bias against the SBC, but we already knew that. And I'm someone who's called the SBC a wholly owned subsidiary of Lifeway.

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'Lifeway??'

SBC publishing company.

Aussie52 said:

It seems there is some misogyny among SBC men.

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Tuur said:

And it seems there's bias against the SBC, but we already knew that. And I'm someone who's called the SBC a wholly owned subsidiary of Lifeway.

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....and it is very possible for both these statements to be true.

For what it is worth, I currently attend a wonderful little SBC church. Which is a tiny part of the overall 40some thousand churches that make up the SBC.

Calling out issues with an organization I'm a part of, could mean I care about it and want it to be better rather than I am bias against it.