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A man prays during the general meeting of the Executive Committee at the annual gathering of the Southern Baptist Convention Monday in Nashville, Tennessee Mark Humphrey/Associated Press hide caption
Toggle caption Mark Humphrey/Associated Press
A man prays during the general meeting of the Executive Committee at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual gathering on Monday in Nashville, Tenn.
Mark Humphrey/AFP
Southern Baptists gather this week in Nashville, Tennessee, for an annual meeting that could be a watershed as believers vie over a host of contentious issues that some fear will drive a wedge in the largest Protestant denomination in the United States.
Tuesday marks the first full day of the event in which voting members of the Southern Baptist Convention can address high-profile issues including racial discrimination, gender inequality and sexual assault.
The organization is one of the most politically influential country. She has always sided with conservative causes, and leading evangelicals at the convention enthusiastically supported former President Donald Trump.
This week, voting members of the Southern Baptist Convention will choose a new leader — a decision that could either signal a continuation of the status quo or pave the way for a more conservative ideological shift.
Ronnie Floyd (center), president and CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, speaks Monday at the denomination’s annual meeting in Nashville. Mark Humphrey/AP Hide Caption
Toggle caption Mark Humphrey/Associated Press
Ronnie Floyd (center), president and CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, speaks Monday at the denomination’s annual meeting in Nashville.
Mark Humphrey/AFP
The spotlight was already on the SBC leaders as they entered this week’s conference. Last week, Russell Moore, the former chair of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Freedom Committee, released secret messages and recordings of internal SBC meetings that critics said showed that the cult’s top leaders were slow-moving reforms that would address sexual abuse. Moore separated from the church.
In 2018, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the main institution of the denomination, released a report on the role racism played in leadership and how support for slavery helped shape the denomination in its early days.
Attempt to address sexual assault has been blocked
SBC announced last week that it had appointed Guidepost Solutions, an independent investigation and risk management firm, to review the group’s handling of internal abuse cases.
However, during an SBC executive committee meeting on Monday, leaders rejected a request from Jared Wellman, a Texas priest, to adjust its agenda to consider expanding a third-party investigation into the leadership’s handling of sexual assault allegations.
The Wellman Amendment required the SBC to appoint an independent task force to receive the full report from Guidepost and pass on its findings to the entire agreement.
Jared Wellman, a pastor at Tate Springs Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, on Monday distributed copies of his motion calling for an independent commission to lead an investigation into the denomination’s handling of sexual assault cases. Mark Humphrey/AP Hide Caption
Toggle caption Mark Humphrey/Associated Press
Jared Wellman, a pastor at Tate Springs Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, on Monday distributed copies of his motion calling for an independent commission to lead an investigation into the denomination’s handling of sexual assault cases.
Mark Humphrey/AFP
Joe Knott, secretary of the Executive Committee, argued that such a move would violate Baptist policy by handing “essentially unlimited power” to an outside party, according to the Baptist Press. Nott also said the proposal wouldn’t stop sexual assault.
The case reportedly did not go away, and critics of the move expressed outrage at the inaction of the Executive Committee. On social media, a group of people who said they had experienced sexual abuse within the sect shared an open letter to leadership calling for change.
There is a heated debate about the critical race theory
The majority of Southern Baptist members remain white, and they are less diverse than American Protestants in general, according to the Pew Research Center.
When the Executive Committee voted in the leadership election on Monday, Roland Slade, the committee’s first black chairperson, was re-elected to a second one-year term without opposition.
Critics say little else about caste reflects diversity.
Dwight Makisch, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, spoke with the morning edition of NPR last week about his concern about recent efforts within the SBC to ban the teaching of critical race theory in its seminaries.
In a controversial move last year, the Southern Baptist Council of Presidents of Theology asserted in a statement that while seminaries condemn “racism in any form,” they agree to “confirm critical race theory and intersectionality and any version of critical theory is inconsistent with Baptist faith and mission.” .
The statement caused a backlash among some black priests, causing many of them to leave.
Women struggle to find a place in leadership
The SBC forbids women from becoming priests, although some congregations have arranged for them.
The Executive Committee requested a vote on an amendment to form a task force “of gender and ethnic background to examine biblical authority and biblical feasibility for women serving or not serving as chairperson of the SBC.”
The SBC Report Book of this year’s convention—which contains reports from SBC entities and recommendations from the Executive Committee—recommends no changes to his statement of faith, known as Faith and Baptist Mission, regarding the role of women.
“My optimism is very low that SBC will act on the issue of women preaching, teaching or leading,” Beth Alison Barr, a professor of history at Baylor University, told the Morning Edition last week.
SBC’s political goals remain conservative
According to the report writers, the organization will continue to lobby for its conservative political stances, praising SBC’s recent efforts to join “cases against the abortion industry that attempted to use the pandemic as an excuse for its horrific agenda.”
The ERLC also confirmed that it plans to “continue to work tirelessly to defund Planned Parenthood.”
“We will do this to protect American taxpayer dollars from the nation’s largest abortion provider,” according to an ERLC statement in the book of reports.
The ERLC said it opposes the Equality Act — which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity in public accommodations, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, and the jury system. The bill was recently approved in the House of Representatives but faces an uncertain future in the US Senate.
The ERLC has also voiced its opposition to the Equity for All Act, a bill introduced in 2019 that its proponents say aims to outlaw discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation or gender identity while providing certain benefits and exemptions to religious service providers.
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