Lamar Wadsworth of Rockmart was a Southern Baptist for 42 years but eventually left the denomination over several issues, one the banning of women from senior pastoral roles.
Now, the former pastor attends a North Georgia church affiliated with the Decatur-based Cooperative Baptist Fellowship where the newly ordained associate pastor is a woman.
“Fundamentalism has always been defined by the urge to purge, to get rid of those who don’t toe the line on every point of doctrine,” said Wadsworth. “And Southern Baptists have gotten more extreme over this in the last decade.”
Later today the issue of women in senior pastoral roles will be front and center as roughly 12,000 pre-registered messengers gather in New Orleans for the Nashville-based SBC’s annual meeting.
On the agenda are appeals this afternoon from Saddleback Church of California and Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky. over their recent ouster from the denomination because both have ordained women in leading pastoral roles.
Also, to come up are issues some have around the Guidepost Solutions report on sexual abuse, reforms and Guidepost’s support of the LGBTQ community. The report found that the denomination mishandled hundreds of allegations of sex abuse and in some cases ignored the victims.
Messengers will also elect a president for the denomination.
Saddleback’s founding pastor Rick Warren, author of the international bestseller, “The Purpose Driven Life,” and probably one of the most recognizable Southern Baptist figures, wrote a letter to Southern Baptists in June. In it Warren, who led one of the denomination’s largest churches, said this meeting could be the SBC’s “finest moment”
“This should be the moment where 47,000-plus autonomous, independent, freedom-loving churches say no to turning the Executive Committee into a theological magisterium that controls a perpetual inquisition of churches and makes the EC a centralized hierarchy that tells our congregations who to hire and what to call them.”
Steven R. Harmon, professor of historical theology at Gardner-Webb University School of Divinity in Boiling Springs, N.C. doubts that Warren will be successful.
A total ban of women as senior or lead pastors is “a relatively recent development in Southern Baptist life, compared to an earlier history of welcoming women to such roles,” he said. “It will position the SBC further to the right and will probably prevent any further progress towards including women in leadership roles in the life of the church.”
The SBC, he said, is still the most numerous Protestant denomination in the United States and so the Southern Baptist perspective on the role of women will have broader implications for American society.”,
That may not change many Southern Baptist minds among men and women.
Michelle Herring of Acworth, a Southern Baptist, for one, doesn’t plan on changing her position.
“Women can teach, but men should preach. If God says it, I’m not going to argue,” said Herring who plans to follow some of the proceedings livestreamed.
However, many other denominations welcome women pastors into the fold.
Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, presiding prelate of the Sixth Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Georgia, estimates that women are in about 25% of the pulpits.
“In fact, most of the people we are ordaining today are women,” he said. “I think they are as equipped and prepared as men are, so when it comes to the time to make a decision it’s not whether person is male or female but who is the best one for a particular church.”
In the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, which covers Middle and North Georgia, there are 26 female priests out of 90 priests who lead parishes or other ministries .
The Southern Baptist Convention, though, is not the only denomination that bans women in top clerical roles.
In the Roman Catholic Church women cannot serve as priests or deacons, although they can serve in other ministries, according to a spokeswoman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta.
Also, this week SBC messengers will vote on a new leader, pitting current President Bart Barber of Texas against Mike Stone, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Blackshear, Ga. Both men oppose women in senior or lead pastoral roles.
Stone believes the Bible forbids women from serving in that role. Some have questioned why women can lead corporations but not a Southern Baptist church.
“There is no similar prohibition in the Bible related to “global corporations and nonprofits,” wrote Stone in response to emailed questions. “To be clear, the question is not one of ability. Men and women are equally gifted. The question is one of Divine authorization. And the Bible limits the office of pastor or elder to qualified men.”
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