Earlier this week I served as a messenger at the 2025 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). I already shared a little bit about what happened with respect to the vote on the Sanchez/Law amendment. Here are some reflections on the rest of the meeting and some further thoughts on the amendment. The President Clint Pressley did a fabulous job as chair. I couldn’t be more grateful for his leadership and the spirit with which he presided over the meeting. I have heard almost universal praise for how he led us. To him, I say well done and congratulations on winning a second term. The Resolutions Andrew Walker…
-
-
A Post-Mortem on the Sanchez/Law Amendment
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…
-
Did Aristotle Really Say that Women Are Deformed?
Aristotle has regularly been pilloried by modern writers (and especially feminists) for saying that “The female is as it were a deformed male.”1 New feminist Prudence Allen, for example, argues that this statement from Aristotle among many others renders him morally retrograde in his views on women.2 It may be the case that he is guilty as charged. I do not intend to adjudicate that point. I do wonder, however, if his statement about women being “deformed” has been rightly understood on its own terms. The Greek term translated as “deformed” is peperomenon, and it literally means maimed or mutilated. Figuratively, it denotes something like incapacitated.3 But Aristotle’s usage of…
-
How Rejecting Gender Essentialism Can Lead to Transgenderism
On this week’s CBMW podcast, we discuss how egalitarian error can lead to transgender error. In Christa McKirland’s chapter in Discovering Biblical Equality (3rd ed.), she argues that some transgender people need to discern whether sex-change surgeries or hormone therapies “can be done in submission to the Spirit and in order to become more like Christ.” It is astonishing that this perspective appears in what purports to be an evangelical work on gender. That is what we discuss below. How Rejecting Gender Essentialism Gets You Transgenderism – On this episode, @DennyBurk, @colinsmo, and Jon discuss a chapter from the egalitarian book Discovering Biblical Equality called “Image of God and Divine Presence:…
-
What does the failure of the Law Amendment mean?
Last month, pastor Willie Rice said something about the Law Amendment that was prescient. He predicted that after the SBC annual meeting, we are going to find one of two headlines. Either “Southern Baptists oppose women pastors” or “Southern Baptists keep the door open on women pastors.” He said that messengers would decide through their vote which headline we would be written. After the Law Amendment failed to meet the necessary supermajority earlier today, Rice’s prediction proved pretty accurate. Here are some of the headlines that began to appear almost immediately after the vote: “Southern Baptists reject ban on women pastors in historic vote.” –USA Today “Southern Baptists Reject Tighter…
-
The SBC Credentials Committee Yet To Recommend Removal of Church that Affirms Female Senior Pastors
The Baptist Press confirms that the Credentials Committee has yet to recommend removal of a church that employs women as pastors and that affirms women serving as senior pastors. This is full-fledged egalitarianism, and now the Baptist Press is reporting that our own Credentials Committee received a referral two years ago and still has made no recommendation for their removal (see update below). The church is FBC Alexandria, VA, and according to Baptist Press the Credentials Committee sent an inquiry to the church in April in the form of a questionnaire. The questionnaire asked the church a variety of questions about their faith and practice concerning the office of pastor.…
-
Another Argument against the Law Amendment and in Favor of Female Pastors
Executive Committee member Russ Barksdale published an article this morning explaining why he intends to vote against the Law Amendment next month at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). He argues that the New Testament allows women to serve as pastors in local churches. He contends that female pastors rightly function as shepherds over the men in the church and even over male leaders in the church. He writes: Does a woman who is leading a children’s ministry “pastor” (verb poimaino) the children? Absolutely! Does she shepherd (verb poimaino) the parents, including the fathers? Absolutely! Does she pastor/shepherd (verb poimaino) the leaders, including the adult males, for…
-
Responding to Three Concerns about the Law Amendment
The leader of Tennessee Baptists, Randy Davis, just released an article opposing the Law amendment. He gives three reasons for opposing it. First, he says that it is not necessary because Southern Baptists demonstrated last summer that they can remove churches that violate our confessional parameters. Second, the amendment legalistically imposes a confession on SBC churches and violates principles of “soul competency” and “priesthood of believers.” Third, passing the amendment will set a precedent of going beyond the BF&M to establish the parameters for our cooperation (e.g., Millennial views, Reformed theology, etc.). What are we to make of these arguments? I don’t know Mr. Davis personally, but I am grateful…
-
Can Complementarianism include female associate pastors?
Someone recently asked me a question about complementarianism, and I thought it might be useful to share with readers more broadly the answer that I gave privately–especially in light of recent controversies in the Southern Baptist Convention concerning women serving as pastors. Here’s the question followed by my lightly edited answer. Do you think complementarianism is a big enough tent to include those who restrict the office of elder/senior pastor to men but still allow women to serve in associate pastors roles? From a normative perspective, I think the answer is clearly no. If we take The Danvers Statement as baseline complementarianism, it says that some governing and teaching roles…
-
Responding to Opposition to the Law Amendment
Pastor Steven Bezner has published an article arguing “Against the Law Amendment” in which he urges messengers to to vote against the measure at the upcoming SBC meeting in Indianapolis. Interestingly, Bezner doesn’t really argue against what the amendment actually says but against what he perceives as ulterior motives on the part of those who support the amendment. He writes: The Law Amendment seeks to clarify the extent of complementarian commitments within the SBC, answering this question: can a church remain in good standing with the Southern Baptist Convention if they have women staff members holding the title of pastor? If the question stopped there, the conversation around the Law…