The big guns started firing first.
Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Seminary, unleashed a broadside: “The only way to affirm women serving in the pastoral role is to reject the authority and sufficiency of biblical texts …”
Baptist Press published an article quoting the current president of the Southern Baptist Convention (J D Greear of North Carolina) and all four candidates vying for the office and facing an election in mid-June. The four, which includes Mohler, firmly rejected any notion that women can serve as pastors or preachers.
A former SBC president and my recent guest in The Meetinghouse James Merritt of Atlanta chimed in, noting “God’s clear word on a man only being a pastor, elder, overseer which is grounded in creation.”
What danger called forth this barrage of theological missiles?
One church way out on the West Coast dared to ordain three women who have been serving the church for a combined 70 years!
Not just any church—the largest and most influential Baptist congregation in the world: not in California, not in the United States, but in the world. Saddleback Community Church led by the famous Rick Warren. He is not only famous but also humble, warm, and kind, and creative, courageous, and strong.
I met Rick once, at a meeting of the Baptist World Alliance. “There’s Rick Warren,” a student said, pointing. She was the youth minister at the church where I was interim pastor, a church preparing to launch a study of Warren’s mega-selling book, The Purpose-Driven Church.
“Go introduce yourself,” I said to her, “and ask him if he will record a greeting to our church and a word of encouragement.” She did; and he did, appearing with me in a short, spontaneous video sending a personal word of inspiration to the good people of Midway Baptist Church.
It is hard to imagine anyone designating Rick Warren as the enemy, as a threat, as a target of such a sustained ecclesial attack. But check it out for yourself. The shells of spiritual assault are exploding all around him. Many innocent people, I suspect, are sure to be mangled in what we have come to call collateral damage.
Will the Southern Baptist Convention declare Saddleback Community Church “out of fellowship”? I suspect they will; and Rev. Warren will then sew on the badge of exclusion now being worn by other celebrities, such as the most influential black pastor Ralph West and the most influential woman Beth Moore.
Southern Baptists are trading their prominent personalities and preachers for what they consider faithfulness to God’s purposes in the world—keeping women quiet, keeping blacks at bay, keeping dissenters far, far away.
To defend this position, they lifted up the name of John A. Broadus (1827-1895). He was a revered pastor, professor and preacher in the Southern Baptist ranks; but he was also a slave-owner, a segregationist, and a staunch defender of what we now call the Lost Cause. He was one-time pastor of First Baptist Church of Richmond, Virginia, epicenter of the Confederacy.
He is quoted as saying: “If Baptists are going to abandon New Testament teachings for the sake of falling in with what they regard as a popular movement, the very reason for their existence has ceased” (1880).
The “popular movement” in question today is the movement to, as I posted on Facebook recently, “empower women, free women, support women, listen to women, elect women, follow women, respect women, honor women, equip women, protect women, include women, pay women, ordain women, hire women, promote women, read women, publish women, and believe women.”
Broadus was not much for “popular movements” in his own day, of course, like freeing, teaching, honoring, and respecting the black population that he wanted to keep separate and subjugated.
I am sure Al Mohler, when he injected this man and his racist legacy into the current debate over the dignity and potential of women, failed to see the heavy irony. Bestowing significance upon a man who resisted the movement of God in his own day in order to resist the movement of God in our own day is surely a miscalculation of the highest order.
Mohler and his minions might have been wiser to heed the counsel, not of the confederate sympathizer Broaddus but of the ancient Jewish sage Gamaliel who, when contemplating whether temple authorities should oppose the emerging Jesus movement, said: “Take care what you are planning to do to these men….If what they are planning and doing is from God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You may even find yourselves fighting against God!” (Acts of the Apostles 5:33-39)
It won’t be the last time Church leaders fight against God. For when God determines to free a people from any kind of bondage, not even the resistance of the Church can prevent God from completing the task. Sometimes the wider culture is more open to gospel work than the Church and its institutional leaders.
And for this, we give thanks.
(May 2021)
