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ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Thousands of Southern Baptists overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to advance a formal ban on women pastors in the nation\u2019s largest Protestant denomination, sending a clear message that men alone should preach to these conservative evangelical congregations.<\/p>\n
The amendment would tighten existing restrictions in the Southern Baptist Convention, which already has a faith statement opposing women pastors.<\/p>\n
The vote at the annual meeting was 6,028 to 2,026 \u2014 a 3-to-1 margin \u2014 which easily exceeded the required two-thirds majority. It will require a similar two-thirds vote at next year\u2019s meeting to become part of the constitution.<\/p>\n
Its sponsor, Albert Mohler, characterized the amendment as addressing a defining issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an opportunity for Southern Baptists to speak in truth, in unity, in conviction,\u201d said Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. \u201cThere\u2019s a great line that divides liberal and biblical evangelicalism, and you can see it on this very issue. The trajectory of liberal denominations is clear.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was only brief debate \u2014 and none of it contained support for women pastors.<\/p>\n
The sole opposition came from South Carolina pastor Doug Mize. He said the measure wasn\u2019t necessary because the denomination already has a mechanism to expel churches with women in senior pastoral positions, and it\u2019s done so on multiple times.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we have already works,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Southern Baptist leaders cite biblical passages that limit pastors to men. Advocates for women\u2019s ministry cite biblical passages that proclaim men and women as equal under God and where women are called to proclaim the gospel.
\nSouthern Baptists can expel churches<\/p>\n
While the SBC can\u2019t tell its self-governing churches what to do, it does have the power to expel churches from convention membership, declaring them not in \u201cfriendly cooperation.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s already wide agreement within the denomination that its faith statement rejects the appointment of women as senior pastors who lead churches. Debate has persisted on where to draw the line regarding churches with women serving in assistant pastoral or preaching roles.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need constitutional clarity on this issue,\u201d Mohler said. He had a lead role in drafting the ban, which passed in 2000.<\/p>\n
The amendment\u2019s language requires the exclusion of any church that acts \u201cto affirm, appoint, or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor\/elder\/overseer, specifically preaching to the assembled congregation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s vote came on the last day of the convention\u2019s two-day annual meeting in Orlando, Florida. More than 11,000 delegates, known as messengers, were attending.
\nChurches were removed in recent years for having women pastors<\/p>\n
In the previous three annual meetings, a majority of representatives voted to amend the SBC constitution to ban churches with women in any pastoral role. But only in one of those years did the measure get the needed two-thirds supermajority, so the matter languished.<\/p>\n
The denomination has also expelled churches with women in senior pastoral roles, including the large Saddleback Church of California, on the grounds of an existing clause in the constitution barring churches whose \u201cfaith and practice\u201d was out of harmony with the denomination\u2019s.<\/p>\n
The SBC debate stands in stark contrast to the practices of numerous historic, more liberal Protestant denominations, which ordain women and have opened their highest offices to them. Practices vary widely in conservative, evangelical denominations \u2014 particularly in Pentecostal and charismatic circles, where prominent women pastors include Paula White-Cain, head of President Donald Trump\u2019s White House Faith Office.<\/p>\n
But other, more conservative Protestant groups do not ordain women as clergy. And the Catholic and Orthodox churches \u2014 the world\u2019s two largest Christian communions \u2014 ordain only men to the priesthood.<\/p>\n
The organization Baptist Women in Ministry, which works with female ministers in a variety of Baptist denominations, issued a statement lamenting the vote.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe express our solidarity with the women in ministry who have been harmed by this vote, the hateful rhetoric and propaganda leading up to the vote, and the damaging theology the vote represents,\u201d it said. \u201cWomen in ministry deserve affirmation, respect, and the opportunity to follow God\u2019s call. We are heartbroken that they have been denied those fundamental freedoms in the process of this vote.\u201d Later Wednesday, SBC messengers will also consider a nonbinding resolution with similar language opposing women pastors. It requires only a simple majority to pass. They will also vote on resolutions addressing a range of issues, from immigration to antisemitism.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, delegates elected Florida pastor Willy Rice to be its next president. He won 58% of the votes over South Carolina pastor Josh Powell.<\/p>\n Rice supported the amendment barring churches with women pastors, as did Powell and the SBC\u2019s departing president, Clint Pressley.<\/p>\n Rice, senior pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, drew support from advocacy groups such as the Center for Baptist Leadership, which have argued SBC leadership has gone \u201cwoke\u201d on issues ranging from race to gender to immigration.<\/p>\n The denomination is already staunchly conservative in areas such as its advocacy against abortion to its faith statement declaring the office of pastor is limited to men. But the main debates within the SBC in recent years have been over how far to move on the religious and political right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thousands of Southern Baptists overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to advance a formal ban on women pastors in the nation\u2019s largest Protestant denomination, sending a clear message that men alone should preach to these conservative evangelical congregations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":1514647,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1502,1447],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1514646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abc-heads","category-abc-national-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-12 17:26:46","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1514646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1514648,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514646\/revisions\/1514648"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1514647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1514646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1514646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1514646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSouthern Baptists pick new convention president<\/strong><\/p>\n