INDIANAPOLIS — One of the largest yearly gatherings of evangelical Christians globally is often filled with drama over internal policies and external attitudes about pressing political issues.
Welcome to the Southern Baptist Convention's annual two-day meeting, which officially gets underway Tuesday.
Delegates who participate in the Nashville-based denomination’s legislative summit, who are known as messengers, are expected on Tuesday to take up a contentious resolution opposing in vitro fertilization, or IVF, elect a new president, and consider reports on abuse reform and cooperation. The latter item touches on a key theme of this year’s convention due to conflict surrounding a proposed measure to enshrine a ban on women pastors.
Catch up with Monday's SBC news:SBC live updates: Seminary leader condemns Trump verdict, voices opposition to IVF
The constitutional ban on women pastors — commonly called the “Law Amendment” after its original submitter, Virginia pastor Mike Law — may come up for a vote Tuesday or on Wednesday.
SBC President Bart Barber, a Texas pastor who’s concluding his second and final term as the convention’s highest-elected position, will preside over the business of the annual meeting throughout the next two days. Many important legislative sessions are scheduled for tight windows, requiring brief yet passionate speeches for and against certain legislative proposals.
Follow along for live updates.
SBC presidential results set for Wednesday
The Southern Baptist Convention will announce on Wednesday the results of its presidential election. Six candidates were running to lead the nation's largest Protestant denomination and the top three — Clint Pressley, David Allen, Dan Spencer — moved on to a runoff.
Vote on IVF resolution delayed
As business moved into the evening, the Southern Baptist Convention delayed until Wednesday a debate and vote on a resolution condemning the use of in vitro fertilization.
The resolution criticizes IVF and calls on Southern Baptists to only support reproductive technologies that affirm the "unconditional value and right to life of every human being, including those in an embryonic stage."
The resolution was authored by Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Southern seminary professor Andrew Walker. It comes in the wake of an Alabama Supreme Court ruling in February. Thecourt said frozen embryos are legally considered childrenand are protected under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, a ruling that sparked national debate.
Presidential election heads to runoff between top three
A pool of six candidates was cut Tuesday evening in half with the top three vote-getters in the group headed to a runoff for SBC president.
Candidates Clint Pressley, David Allen and Dan Spencer received the most votes in the initial round of voting, sending them onto the next round.
SBC ousts Virginia church over stance on women in ministry
The Southern Baptist Convention on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved the ouster of First Baptist Church Alexandria in Virginia for its egalitarian stance on women in ministry.
A debate over the church's ouster on Tuesday echoed that of last year when the messengers voted overwhelmingly to uphold the ouster of Saddleback Church and Fern Creek Baptist Church from the denomination, which SBC leaders disfellowshipped for having women pastors.
An expected debate ahead of this week’s annual meeting, FBC Alexandria published information from an SBC committee review into the church’s stances on women in ministry. That committee, called the SBC Credentials Committee, formally recommended the church’s ouster during the Tuesday afternoon business session.
“We take no joy in this recommendation,” said Jonathan Sams, chair of the SBC Credentials Committee. Sams explained the recommendations is primarily based on the committee’s findings that FBC Alexandria holds to an egalitarian view of women in church leadership instead of a complementarian one, which the SBC’s doctrinal statement holds to. Complementarianism refers to a belief that men and women have certain assigned roles.
FBC Alexandria senior pastor Robert Stephens didn’t deny the egalitarianism charge but said it shouldn’t get in the way of a nearly 180-year relationship between the church and the denomination.
“First Baptist Alexandria stands before you as a testament that we can maintain a fruitful partnership with churches that take a different stance on women in ministry,” said Stephens on the floor of the convention. Stephens said FBC Alexandria has ordained three women since 1980.
Messengers voted to disfellowship FBC Alexandria with 91% of voting messengers in favor of the ouster, or 6,700-plus votes.
Related:What state-level ousters of SBC churches say about the national debate about women pastors
Abuse reform group calls out obstacles on way out
In its final report to the convention after two years of work, leaders of a temporary abuse reform task force called out fellow Southern Baptists for creating obstacles that hindered the task force’s success.
“Our report basically reflects the fact we took this work as far as we were allowed,” said North Carolina pastor Josh Wester, chair of the SBC Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force, from the platform on Tuesday. “The reality of our system is that any task force is going to be relatively at the mercy of the various apparatus that makes up the SBC.”
Wester was responding to a question from Keith Meyer, a messenger from Maryland, who asked a question from the floor about the obstacles the abuse reform task force faced. “To be honest, what you have given us today is not the completion of everything we have asked us for,” Meyer said.
Meyer’s sentiment is shared by many, including among abuse survivors and advocates for reform who attended the SBC annual meeting this year, that the abuse reform task force’s completed work fell far short of the group’s original mandate from the 2022 SBC annual meeting.
The abuse reform task force was a temporary group that the convention renewed last year but expired after presenting its report on Tuesday afternoon. Wester said during the task force’s presentation the group is on the brink of officially launching a database of abusive ministers with the first 100 names of those convicted in a criminal trial or found liable in a civil case.
The database, called Ministry Check, was expected to be online already and far more extensive, just one example of many of the task force’s shortcomings. As a testament to the myriad challenges, former and current members of the task force incorporated a nonprofit to manage the database because the SBC’s insurance liability “left no other way,” Wester said Tuesday.
Wester also noted challenges with the task force’s ability to receive funding from Send Relief, a collective funding initiative in the SBC that took on the responsibility of funding for abuse reform work two years ago. But Wester said it was far more troublesome to securing those funds.
“The problem that we faced is grappling with the fact that the Southern Baptist Convention…had no meaningful plan to help its churches prevent or respond to sexual abuse,” Wester said in his presentation to the full convention. The convention adopted the abuse reform task force’s recommendations, forwarding on most long-term abuse needs to other SBC channels.
Pence addresses abortion, but avoids Christian nationalism and Trump conviction
Before a room of 400-plus Southern Baptists, former Vice President Mike Pence backed policy ideas that appeal to many religious conservatives but stopped short of explicitly denouncing a far-right religious movement rising amid former President Donald Trump’s candidacy for president in November.
"There’s also a very healthy debate within my party about whether we’re going to stay on the course…traditional moral values, a right to life, an affirmation of religious liberty or whether we’re going to start to move in a different direction," Pence said during a luncheon organized by the SBC’s public policy arm, the Nashville-based Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
Pence warned against a "different direction" and spoke to the importance of the GOP emphasizing certain traditional policy positions such as fiscal conservatism and defense spending. Many in the room nodded and murmured in agreement with Pence's analysis.
During a panel moderated by Brent Leatherwood, the commission's president, Pence focused on victories for the anti-abortion movement and condemning President Joe Biden.
But he avoided commenting on Trump’s candidacy or the former president’s recent guilty verdict in a Manhattan hush money trial, which other leading Southern Baptist voices have criticized.
On Monday, Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, doubled down on his criticism of Trump’s conviction in an address to a crowd of 750-plus mostly Southern Baptists during an event organized by the Danbury Institute.
The institute is led those in an opposition conservative faction that have sought to pull the SBC further to the right. The same event on Monday featured a prerecorded video message from Trump.
Monday’s event reflected a rising sentiment among conservative Christians that America was founded as a Christian nation, an idea often associated with the Christian nationalism movement.
In fact, Pence’s remarks about his time serving in the Trump administration were mostly noncombatant.
For example, he highlighted the administration’s appointment of three U.S. Supreme Court Justices who helped “send Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history,” Pence said during Tuesday’s luncheon.
SBC President Bart Barber emphasizes generosity in final address
For his last word of encouragement to Southern Baptists, SBC President Bart Barber admonished the convention to embrace a spirit of generosity.
“If our experience of the local church is growing the right kind of heart in our chest, it’s going to be second nature for us to do the right thing here,” Barber, a Texas pastor, said in his address to the convention early into its annual meeting. “Your church and my church would be healthier when we can get the people to see their mission as building people up and growing people.”
Division within the SBC has harmed the denomination’s reputation before the secular world, Barber said. “People we push out the door and shut it behind them will no longer be influenced by us at all.”
Barber concludes his second and final term as the denomination’s highest-ranking elected official at the end of the Indianapolis gathering, the business of which he presides over.
Originally elected at the 2022 SBC annual meeting, Barber has earned the fondness of many Southern Baptists for his folksy charm and his stature as a pastor of a small church. In the past couple years, Barber has led the convention during a time of deep conflict and confusion over abuse reform and the debate over the status of women pastors.
Barber was featured in a "60 Minutes" segment and was the first SBC president to attend the largest gathering of Christian Native Americans following the convention’s adoption of a resolution on the history of federal Indian boarding schools.
Barber spoke to the more than 10,600 registered messengers and nearly 3,000 registered guests about the convention’s health and longevity.
“We can face all these challenges together if our churches are healthy,” Barber said. “Take the baton. You, the Southern Baptist Convention keeps on going.”
Barber’s message sought to combat a broader narrative of “the great dechurching” and anxiety over declining church membership. He also emphasized the importance of cooperation, a major theme of this year’s annual meeting due to the Law Amendment. Barber appointed the 20-member SBC Cooperation Group, which studied the denomination’s standards for affiliating with churches and is scheduled to present a report later Tuesday.
Six candidates are vying to be the next SBC president, the election for which is scheduled on Tuesday evening. At least one runoff is all but guaranteed.
Barber profile:Bart Barber defied the Conservative Resurgence. How it is now shaping his SBC leadership.
Solidarity for women in ministry ahead of vote on constitution
If the Southern Baptist Convention enshrines a ban on women pastors, it will be one many Southern Baptists will celebrate. But on Monday night, it was a source of mournfulness during a virtual prayer vigil.
“There’s a lot to grieve, there’s a lot to be angry about,” speaker Jule Tai said in opening the vigil. “It’s a call to protest and it’s a call to demonstration.”
Organized by Baptist Women in Ministry, a nonprofit with partners across various Baptist denominations, the event aimed to acknowledge the current strife in the SBC and past division. Baptist Women in Ministry staff are also planning a demonstration outside the Indianapolis Convention Center as an act of solidarity with Southern Baptist women in ministry.
Related:How the Southern Baptist Convention turned 180 degrees on women in leadership in six years
The present battle in the SBC over women pastors echoes a conflict in the 1980s, which is depicted in a new documentary produced by Baptist Women in Ministry called “Midwives of a Movement.” Some of the women featured in the documentary, which released publicly on Monday, attended the vigil.
“We swallowed our grief when we were told we weren’t ready to lead,” said Angie Hong, co-founder of Kinship Commons, a liturgy company that helped organize the worship for the prayer vigil. “We swallowed our grief when we were told we were too emotional, we were too angry, we were too provocative, we were too much.”
“These untruths and these lies have hurt us,” Hong said. “These lies have wounded us, made us question ourselves and worse, made us question the God who created us in God’s image.”
In the past couple years, the SBC has disfellowshipped six churches in which women serve as pastors. A couple of those churches — such as Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville and Immanuel Baptist Church in Paducah, Kentucky — long cooperated with the SBC and held to beliefs that aligned with most Southern Baptists' conservative ideals.
Another church might be facing a similar battle this week. First Baptist Church of Alexandriaannounced it will be the targetof an ouster attempt from the floor of the SBC annual meeting because the church employs a woman pastor for children and women.
Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on social media @liamsadams.
