A proposal by the nation’s largest Protestant denomination to ban churches that have women pastors or let women preach on Sunday mornings passed overwhelmingly on Wednesday (June 10), marking the first step toward enshrining the ban in the Southern Baptist Convention’s constitution.
Almost three-quarters (74.6%) of local church delegates, known as messengers, voted in favor of the so-called Truth and Unity Amendment during a Wednesday morning session of the SBC’s annual meeting. A quarter (25.09%) voted against the measure.
Under the denomination’s rules, any change to its constitution must be approved by a two-thirds majority in two consecutive years. Two previous attempts to approve the ban had failed.
Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, has said the ban will keep the SBC from getting too liberal.
“There’s a great line that divides liberal and biblical evangelicalism, and you can see it on this very issue,” said Mohler, who wrote and proposed the amendment. “The trajectory of liberal denominations is clear.”
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Ahead of the SBC meeting, Baptist Women in Ministry, which provides support and resources for women in ministry, paid for a billboard to go up in Orlando — where the SBC gathering is being held — defending women who teach and preach the Bible.
“Women in ministry deserve affirmation, respect, and the opportunity to follow God’s call,” the group said in a statement after the vote’s results were made public. “We are heartbroken that they have been denied those fundamental freedoms in the process of this vote.”
The SBC’s statement of faith, known as the Baptist Faith and Message, has held since 2000 that only men can be pastors. However, until 2021, the SBC took no national action to expel churches with women pastors.
Then, a couple of social media posts changed everything.
First, Bible teacher Beth Moore, then a Southern Baptist, tweeted about speaking at a church on Mother’s Day in 2019, which set off an online firestorm over the issue of women preachers and pastors. Then, in 2021, Saddleback Church, one of the largest churches in the SBC, ordained several women on staff as pastors.
“Yesterday was a historic night for Saddleback Church in many ways!” read a post on the California megachurch’s Facebook page at the time.
In a press conference, Mohler said that social media has made it possible for Southern Baptists to know what is going on in local churches—especially churches that allow women to preach or have women pastors.
All of a sudden, he said, churches said, “Wait a minute.”
That led to a move in the SBC to expel churches like Saddleback and to change the denomination’s constitution to make clear that similar churches were no longer welcome.
“Saddleback has taken actions that place itself in direct conflict with the stated doctrines of the Southern Baptist Convention,” Mohler told Religion News Service in an interview at the time.
In 2023, Saddleback was expelled from the SBC. It’s one of 10 churches deemed out of “friendly cooperation” – an SBC term for removing churches — over the issue of women pastors, according to the report from the SBC’s credential committee.
Jonathan Sams, chair of the credentials committee, told SBC messengers that over the past seven years, 44 SBC churches were found to have women pastors on staff. Of those, 20 left on their own, while 10 were expelled. The committee gave no details about what happened to the other churches.
Earlier this year, a Texas church changed the titles of some women on staff from pastor to minister.
Some churches have claimed that the rule limiting the pastoral office to men only applied to a church’s senior leader and have given women staff the title of pastor. Other churches have also allowed women to preach during the Sunday services, something that proponents of the amendment say should not be allowed.
Willy Rice, a Florida pastor who won the SBC’s presidential election on Tuesday, blamed what he called “sloppy ecclesiology” and “cultural pragmatism” for misuse of the title “pastor.”
“We started handing out titles indiscriminately, and pastor, you’re a pastor, you’re a pastor, you’re a pastor,” he told a group of SBC pastors on Tuesday. “We lost the meaning of the word ‘pastor.’”
A similar amendment to ban women pastors was first passed by Southern Baptists in 2023 but failed to get a two-thirds majority in 2024. Last year in Dallas, a proposed amendment on the same issue also failed.
In Orlando, the messengers were eager to vote again. They lined up at microphones around the meeting hall, waiting to have their say about the amendment. Several pushed a button to alert outgoing SBC President Clint Pressley that they wanted to speak before the amendment was even up for debate.
Pressley finally warned messengers to let the meeting get on with the business. “Then from there, we’ll open it up for a free-for-all,” Pressley told messengers.
After a brief debate, one of the messengers called for the question, a parliamentary procedure to force a vote. The other messengers agreed and the vote went on.
In other business, messengers approved a $186 million budget for 2026-2027, of which more than half (51%) will go to the SBC’s international mission board. That budget requires cuts from the SBC’s seminaries and other agencies, including $600,000 from the SBC’s Executive Committee.
The most spirited debate came during a discussion of future sites for the SBC meeting, with a number of messengers objecting to planned future meetings in Anaheim, California, which is far from most SBC churches. Abel Galvan, a bivocational pastor from La Palma, California, defended the proposed meetings on the West Coast, which were eventually approved.
“I just want to invite you to come back to California. I know it looks like a mess, but there are many of us who love Jesus there,” he told messengers.
Bob Smietana is a national reporter for Religion News Service.
23 Responses
It is unsurprising that the denomination that was created to be able to continue enslaving people is now justifying continuing to use the free labor of women without compensation or consideration to their calling.
it’s gross, but it’s not surprising.
I’m female too but I reject female pastors since early church did not have them. The ‘ phoebe is a deaconess argument’ is not a good one . Catholics have had priests who represent maleness of Christ. they had female nuns and mothers . Some Catholic female saints are considered doctors of the church. Furthermore having female pastors is worsening the gender identity confusion even more and I think the drive for female pastors is due to feminism ( especially militia y feminism) which is now causing harm to males who are now considering transgendering to women.
The early church were led by church fathers who were male .
This is why I left for Catholic Church.
Mary’s intercessiry prayer helped me see baptists are falling into errors. Don’t fall for lies of feminism
Anglicans have debacle bishops and it never happened in early church.
The Gnostic heretics had female priests too .
This is, of course, fine. The SBC should do as it sees fit.
And more and more churches will disassociate with the SBC. As someone who has worked at SBC churches for many many years and volunteered extensively for many years after that, most modern people my age (40s and younger) don’t even know what the SBC IS let alone what it DOES.
When the SBC continues to craft its identity as being an institution that fails and harms women, as part of its mission, it will only further ruin its brand.
May justice be done! The Lord will vindicate. This is not what Jesus intended, He is just and fair and the word of God has many women Prophets.
All of this is nonsense it is the doctrine of men Not The Kingdom of God.. I release The Judgment of God against those who are discriminating in Jesus name.
You have no power to “release The Judgment of God” against anyone. Only God has power to release His own righteous judgment as He sees fit. “All of this is nonsense” on the part of those who attempt to defy the clear teaching of scripture laid out by Paul, the Apostle to the church, the body of Christ, in 1 Timothy 2:11. This is “what Jesus intended” according to scripture. Those who defy scripture, preferring instead to uphold the “doctrine of men” (weak men who do not have the spiritual strength to abide by God’s designed role for women) will be judged by God according to His holy word, as, too, will women who blatantly disregard the word of God. Sadly, women do not wish to be submissive to their God-given role, God will not be mocked.
According to what is being taught in church that Paul is to be taught/followed by the Gentiles (not Jesus), and according to Paul’s writings, this should not be an issue:
1 Corinthians 14:34-35
“Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.”
Timothy 2:11-12
“Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”
Two things to address: 1) Bobby…you did not do your homework. The rules were suspended prior to the vote, meaning there will not be another vote on this issue next year. It is done.
2) Miss Jen…Free labor of women? Really? What free labor would that be? The Bible is clear that pastors train the congregation to do the work of the ministry. It’s called “serving Jesus”, male or female. calling: God does not call anyone to do what He prohibits in His word. The problem is that liberal people have a very low view of scripture.
I urge the SBC (who voted against a woman preaching the gospel from a pulpit – which saved many men, including myself) to show me the passage in the bible that points out the punishment God will reap on her, for daring to preach and convert men to Christ.
Acts 2:17 “
And it shall be in the last days, saith God, I will pour forth of my Spirit upon all people: And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, And your young men shall see visions, And your old men shall dream dreams:”
Apparently the SBC believes Daugheters can prophesy… they just need to keep it to themselves.
It’s not surprising that they would want to keep the gospel from being preached. The SBC finds the gospel inconvenient because it interferes with their true agenda. It is mainly a political organization now, with a religious veneer.
The church coöpted by Johnny Hunt, Paul Pressler, Paige Patterson and Al Mohler has voted. Undoubtedly, with such spiritually gifted leadership, the Holy Spirit has spoken!
The prohibition is based on 1 Timothy 3:2, Titus 1:6, 1 Timothy 2:2, which specifically state that the pastor/elder of a church assembly is to be the husband of one wife. It’s the job of everyone who says they call Jesus the Lord to actually treat his word (which is itself the power of God: see John 1:1) as something the believer submits to, be the believer man or woman. See: 1 Corinthians 11:3 that the head of every male/man is Christ. A believer who rebels against the word of God is in rebellion against God himself. All scripture is given to us to educate and correct those who seek to put their politics and culture above God, 2 Timothy 3:16.
Exactly! It is plainly stated in scripture. It shouldn’t even be an issue. It shouldn’t even have to be discussed. But women think themselves wiser than God’s ordained structure for His creation and refuse to submit, and some weak men allow them their rebellious way. Paul, God’s appointed Apostle to the Gentiles, by the will of God set forth the structure for the church, the body of Christ, by which to operate and DID NOT ordain women to be in the role of Pastor. Women defiantly wish to usurp the role God designated for men.
I agree, this why I became Catholic. I was concerned about the trend of female pastors and Jesus gave me a dream he is against it.
I see two separate dimensions to this issue. The first is theological liberalism’s tendency to accommodate the bible’s authority to modernity. I suspect many in the SBC rightly push back on this tendency in good faith. The second issue, for those who embrace the bible’s authority, is discerning the scope and intention of passages not central to the gospel itself. Christian faith, by its very nature, is submissive and obedient in response to God’s word for both men and women. The question is, which may sound strange, is Paul making a judgement call (aka wisdom) in his directives, or is he declaring “thus sayeth the Lord”? He does make such distinctions in other passages, so the question isn’t out of bounds. If he’s prohibiting women leaders because it is unwise in a patriarchal society, that is a different animal than God being displeased by them. I believe a coherent case can be made for the former, while acknowledging that getting there through theological liberalism has been a significant problem in mainline Protestantism.
The biblical command to monogamy in this passage is not a command to patriarchy.
Put another way, limiting a male pastor to one wife is not the same as limiting the pastorate to males.
I am all for a return to Biblical Womanhood. Let’s start with Judges 4:17-22. If these Neanderthals can’t handle a Biblical Woman at her Judges 4:17-22, they don’t deserve her at her Proverbs 31.
How about they first worry about taking care of all the men who have no right to be pastors based on Scripture, then they can worry about women.
Sorry I mean to say that Anglicans are now have a female bishop and many have left to Catholic Church
I left Baptist and became Catholic due to this issue. I looked into church history and all church leaders were male . I understand the phoebe argument but priests were to administer Eucharist which is missing in Baptist churches.
Also take into consideration the pagan Greek and Roman religions had female priestesses. The early church did not have female priestesses. It was exact opposite of Roman pagan culture. The church was counter cultural .
I am female by the way and the Eucharist is why I am Catholic .
The feminism has gone too far and I think it is making men thinking of transitioning to women. I think Baptist female pastors is worsening gender identity politics not make it better.
Early church did not have female priests. Their pagan counterparts however had female priestesses.
I left Baptist due to them ordaining debacle pastors.
There was no clergy/laity heirachy in the NT church either. No church offices. The word for “office “ is not in the Greek . The gifts for the church were functions not offices as in worldly civil government. Rule ,submit , obey are not in the Greek in Heb 13:7 and 13:17. King James wanted to translate church heiracny into the scriptures. But it is not the translation. So why doesn’t the SBC set that straight first. Before taking on the woman question.