Southern Baptists, Anglicans, the Law Amendment and Conquest’s Second Law

An important choice at this summer’s Southern Baptist Convention

Any organization not explicitly right-wing will eventually become left-wing.

My overview earlier this week of how churches can evade the above Conquest’s Second Law and why that is needful was admittedly broad. 

So today I want to focus a bit. First, a church that wants to remain faithful has to be willing to be small or at least smaller.  For faithful orthodoxy is odious in today’s West. If you are doggedly faithful, you will lose or repel people.

I would go so far as to say that if your church has not in recent years lost any people because you are stubborn about being faithful, then you probably aren’t being all that faithful.  Jesus had people walk away but your church hasn’t?  Guess who is doing things wrong.

Second, faithful orthodoxy on issues relating to sex and gender are today particularly likely to repel people — the people you actually want to repel for the health of your church.  (I know that sounds awful, but you want converts and cohorts, not infiltrators and underminers.)  For orthodoxy on these issues has become “right-wing” thanks to the Leftward lurch in the Overton Window.  The ordination of women is one of those issues.

I will say that disallowing the ordination of women to clerical status does not guarantee your church will remain faithful.  The Church of Rome comes foremost to mind on that.  And there is at least one continuing Anglican jurisdiction I’d rather not name that would not even consider ordaining women, yet is dodgey on universalism among other matters.  But not ordaining women does make a church less attractive to Lib Churchers and Woke Churchers as well as potential joiners unwilling to jettison their feminism.  We see this in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) in which dioceses that do not ordain women have much less problems with wokeness and the like than dioceses that do ordain women.

Chiefly for this reason, I am heartened by this open letter, the Augustine Appeal.  If you are ACNA clergy, I encourage you to sign it, even if progress on this issue will be slow and difficult given ACNA’s structure.  (And here is a more up to date list of signers. It’s quite long, which I am glad to see!)

The Southern Baptist Convention has an important decision to make this summer in the area of women’s ordination.  (Yes, comparing ordained ministry in Anglican and Baptist churches is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, but continuing…)  Last summer, the Convention did two votes in the right direction.  They in effect told woman-ordaining regime evangelical Rick Warren and his Saddleback Church to begone, which immediately improved the SBC. Yes, I said it . . .  and wrote on that and other congregations leaving the SBC and ACNA last year.

The Convention also voted for the Law Amendment to their Constitution. But, since it is a constitutional amendment, it has to be approved by 2/3s vote in two conventions.  So there will be another vote this summer.  And is it important!  I will let Baptists explain it:

A two-thirds vote in Indianapolis would add a sixth element to Article III (which lists the qualifications for a church to send messengers to participate in the yearly business meeting) to further define that “only men” may serve “as any kind of pastor or elder” in a congregation that affiliates with the Southern Baptist Convention.

This constitutional initiative was launched in 2022 by Mike Law, who is the pastor of Arlington Baptist Church, Arlington, Virginia. He said he was moved to act after the SBC Credentials Committee delayed a decision about disfellowshipping Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, for having ordained three female staff members as pastors in 2021.

The Baptist Faith & Message 2000 states, “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.” However, the committee said it could not act in 2022 “until clarity is provided regarding the use of the title ‘pastor’ for staff positions with different responsibility and authority than that of the lead pastor.”

Law said he offered his motion to amend the Constitution to provide that clarity.

First Baptist Jacksonville, which supports the Law Amendment, has more commentary on it.  As FBJ notes, “this debate is not about running good churches out of the convention who are confused about who a pastor is. This amendment is not targeting churches who ignorantly and innocently give the title of pastor to a woman. The same section of the Constitution, which would forbid churches with female pastors, also forbids racism, homosexuality, and sexual abuse. The Credentials Committee, which investigates constitutional violations like these, has the authority to engage erring churches and give them an opportunity to repent. This same engagement and opportunity would be possible on the issue of female pastors.”

That said, the more liberal SBC churches that insist on ordaining women would almost certainly leave or be made to leave the SBC if the Law Amendment were passed and enforced.   That would reduce the pressure from within on the SBC to capitulate and conform to worldly acceptable opinion.  Or, to put it in terms of Conquest’s Law, the SBC would become more staunchly orthodox — “right-wing” if you will — and thereby less likely to be subverted towards becoming “left-wing.”

If the Law Amendment fails, it is hard to see if the result would be the status quo or discouraged anti-WO people leaving.  But even the status quo would probably not be good as the SBC is already coming under pressure to accommodate Critical Theory and the like.  See Resolution 9 of the 2019 Convention.

In all this, I welcome comments from Southern Baptist readers.  I fully realize this Anglican might be missing something other than getting dunked.

Now, of course, this summer’s Southern Baptist Convention should do the right thing because it’s the right thing, not merely to please or displease this or that group. Nor should any church downplay the importance of women in any number of ministries.  (Oddly, the pro-WO crowd sometimes does that while I have never seen those opposed do so.)

At the same time, Jesus did say we should judge teachers and teaching by their fruits. (Matt. 7:16ff.) And the overall fruit of women’s ordination has not been good.  Just ask orthodox in or once in The Episcopal Church and the Church of England.  Just ask orthodox in ACNA as they observe a mix of dioceses that are sound with some that are not so sound.  Us Anglicans have been there and done that.  This Anglican hopes our Southern Baptist brethren don’t go there.