Southern Baptists are poised to vote at their annual meeting Tuesday and Wednesday on whether to crack down on women in pastoral leadership roles and whether to condemn the use of in vitro fertilization tested or not, establishing a referendum on the role of women in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination and in American society.
With nearly 13 million church members across the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention has long been a highlight of American evangelicalism. Its reliably conservative membership makes it a powerful political force and its debates have attracted widespread interest from outside scholars and politicians this year . The denomination has experienced similar turmoil over politics and priorities that divided the conservative movement more broadly after the 2016 presidential election of Donald J. Trump.
Ryan Helfenbein, executive director of a think tank at Liberty University, told attendees at a meeting: “I hope everyone in this room will vote not just in November but vote tomorrow because of what is at stake in the Southern Baptist Convention.” noon Monday in Indianapolis near where the annual meeting takes place.
Mr. Trump recorded a brief message for “highly respected people” gathered for a lunch hosted by the Danbury Institute, a new conservative Christian advocacy group with ties to the Southern Baptists.
“You can’t vote for Democrats,” Mr. Trump said in the video message that some attendees waited two hours to hear. “They are against religion, especially they are against your religion.” He assured them that under a second Trump presidency, “you will have a comeback like almost no other group will.”
The delegates, known as “messengers,” included male pastors from more than 45,000 Southern Baptist churches across the country as well as many church and staff members, including women.
The group is expected to vote Wednesday on whether to amend its constitution to require Southern Baptist churches to “have only men as any type of pastor or elder.” Who qualifies according to the Bible? The group’s statement of faith banned female pastors, and in recent years, messengers have expelled several churches over the issue, including Saddleback Church in California, which was once one of the largest and most prominent congregations. The amendment would strengthen enforcement and eliminate the ability of individual Baptist churches to make their own leadership decisions, a defining feature of Baptist life.
“We understand this is a cultural battle line,” said William Wolfe, executive director of the Baptist Leadership Center, a new advocacy group founded out of concerns that the denomination is shifting to the left. become big”. “If we can’t hold the line here, then five years from now we won’t be able to hold the line, and you and I will be talking about whether homosexuality should be affirmed in our churches or not.”
Mr. Wolfe, 35, said he considers passing the Law Amendment a top priority for his organization. The group will co-host a lunch for about 800 attendees on Tuesday with the theme “SBC at the Crossroads.”
The messenger is also ready to vote Are you opposed to in vitro fertilization?as anti-abortion activists seek to advance their gains after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. The resolution, introduced by an ethicist and Southern Baptist seminary president, calls on those Baptist “reaffirms the unconditional value and right to life of every person, including those in infancy, and to use only reproductive technologies consistent with that affirmation.”
This will be the first time the sect has asked its members to confront the issue in this form. The vast majority of delegates oppose abortion, but fertility treatments are widely used by Protestants. Although in vitro fertilization often results in the destruction of unused embryos, many Southern Baptists consider fertility treatments to be fundamentally different from abortion because the goal is to create out new life. Some pastors expressed concern about the prospect of returning to their home churches and reported that they had voted to condemn the progeny of their congregants.
Former Vice President Mike Pence will speak Tuesday at an event hosted by the denomination’s policy body, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Other items on the Baptist agenda include the election of a new president and resolutions, including one discouraging the use of multiple non-disclosure agreements and another affirming support for Israel and condemnation of “anti-Israel and pro-Hamas activities” on college campuses and beyond. A task force addressing sexual abuse at Southern Baptist institutions also will present its final report Tuesday afternoon.
