The annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention wrapped-up last night. A strong majority of SBC messengers voted in favor of the Sanchez/Law amendment (61%), but it fell short of the required supermajority (66%). So that effort is now dead. Some take-aways:
1. It is very clear that majorities of messengers at the last three conventions want this amendment. But it is very difficult to get a supermajority to pass a measure when the platform opposes it. The platform mounted strong opposition the last two years.
2. I thought the amendment had a good chance of reaching a supermajority until the platform warned messengers during the debate that the amendment would put the SBC in legal jeopardy. At that point, it seemed clear to me that we would likely get a majority again but that enough messengers would be scared away to keep the effort from a supermajority. I was right.
3. I am very concerned about the platform’s argument against the amendment. The platform argued that if our constitution clarifies that the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture, then we would be at risk of being sued for defamation. And yet, our constitution already says that cooperating churches must closely identify with our beliefs about pastors. Why would we be in more jeopardy for making it clearer? Our constitution also says that churches that endorse homosexuality, racism, and abuse are not in friendly cooperation. Should we remove prohibitions on homosexuality, racism, and abuse from the constitution because of legal risk? If not, then why would clarity about a prohibition on female pastors be a problem? If we can’t defend the boundaries of our cooperation on this point, then how can we defend them on any point?
4. I hope the Credentials Committee has gotten the message from the last three conventions that strong majorities of messengers want something like the amendment. Perhaps that will help them to hold the line on our confession of faith. If they don’t, then I suspect we will have to adjudicate more membership challenges on the floor of the convention. That is a very inefficient and a poor use of the short time we have to meet every year, but that will likely be the result. We missed an opportunity to avoid that today.
The bottom line is that a near supermajority of messengers don’t want to cooperate with churches that have female pastors. I suspect the messengers will have their way on this one way or the other. While the attempt to pass an amendment is dead, this isn’t over.
UPDATE: A clarification based on comments I’ve been reading:
By “platform,” I do not mean the entire platform. I’m only referring to those on the platform who weighed-in on the amendment during the debate.
