A moderate president was elected Tuesday on the second round of votes, repudiating two right-winger candidates Mike Stone and Al Mohler. In a blogpost 11 years ago, Al sputtered against my 2010 article in Sojourners, "The Persistence of Patriarchy."
Ed Litton, the new president, has expressed support for Black Lives Matter and for critical race theory, the analysis that all US institutions (educational, religious, economic, governmental) have a long history of racism that needs to be changed. He supports acceptance of women as pastors. Alas, he is not pro-LGBTQA.
Well, the vote is "one small step... "
Losing prominent SBC women like Beth Moore and losing some black churches has hurt the denomination and caused much interest in this year's convention. Attendance was 19,000, twice as much as in 2019.
In March, Beth Moore, a prominent white evangelical teacher and author (no relation to Russell Moore), said in an interview that she could “no longer identify with Southern Baptists.” --Great summary by Ruth Graham in the LA Times today.
Meanwhile, Dr. Beth Allison Barr at Baylor University in Texas is waging a war on SBC misogyny with her book The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. Buy it and pass along to a Baptist friend.
Another book that influenced the vote is Kristen Kobes Du Mez's Jesus and John Wayne. It traces how evangelicals moved from apolitical to supporting Ronald Reagan to supporting Trump, all the while cherry-picking and misusing the Bible. She teaches at Calvin University in Michigan. Buy her book and pass it along--it just came out in paperback.
Kristen also published a book on Katharine Bushnell (1855-1946), The New Gospel for Women: Katharine Bushnell and the Challenge of Christian Feminism. Bushnell was a late 19th C. to early 20th C. feminist, Bible scholar, and medical doctor. She investigated the use of prostitutes by British troops in India.
Pastor Nancy Hastings Sehested is another SBC woman fighting for the right to preach and pastor a church. Prior to 2000, she pastored a church, but when right-wingers took control of the convention, she was forced to give up her church. She became chaplain at a maximum-security prison and also spoke to Christian Feminism Today.
Now she serves as co-pastor of Circle of Mercy Congregation in Asheville, North Carolina.
Two important articles by her:
"News Alert: God speaks through donkeys, burning bushes, rocks--and women ministers" in Baptist News Global, 2017.
"By What Authority?" in Sojourners, 2017.
Continuing concern about the SBC's sexual abuse problem also influenced the vote. See this opinion piece in the Washington Post by David Von Drehle on how the SBC's theology about women has resulted in sexual abuse.
Most notably, Russell Moore spoke out against SBC mishandling of sexual abuse and left the SBC by accepting a call to pastor a large Baptist church that is not part of the convention.
In February he resigned from his post as president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC with a scathing letter that surfaced in March.
See "The Scandal Rocking the Evangelical World" by Peter Wehner in The Atlantic, June 7, for more on Russell Moore and the impact of his letter.
Pray that the SBC folks will soon:
- restore women to receiving ordination, preaching, and pastoring churches.
- take firm action against sexual abuse by pastors and leaders of the SBC.
- listen to younger members who accept faithful same-sex marriage as approved by God.
And be sure to praise God for these people putting the brakes on the denomination's race to the right in the last thirty years. It's the largest Protestant denomination in the US with 10% of all American Protestants.
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