Southern Baptists Formally Make Pastorship a Boy’s Club Only

I’m not really religious in a formal sense, but if there’s one thing I’ve been assured about the Almighty by the nation’s largest Protestant Christian denomination, it’s that 50% of the human race has absolutely no business preaching His word. The Southern Baptist Convention can boast roughly 12.3 million followers, which makes it the largest single Protestant group in the U.S., although it’s spent the last two decades in steady decline of membership. Perhaps that has a little something to do with the church’s canonized contempt for the idea that a woman could have a religious calling of her own? Famously rigid and conservative in its application of antiquated gender norms, the Southern Baptist Convention not only doesn’t abide by the idea of a female pastor, it actively expels otherwise independent Baptist churches from its convention if they dare to think otherwise. This week, at an annual meeting bringing together representatives from roughly 11,000 U.S. Southern Baptist churches, it voted en masse to officially codify in its constitution what had already been its sexist lodestone: The idea that a woman can never be a pastor, and that the word of God is exclusively a man’s domain.

This vote (6,028 to 2,026) actually required a two-thirds majority to pass, and will need another two-thirds at next year’s meeting to officially become part of the SBC’s constitution, but it represents something the most dogmatic, fundamentalist wing of the church has been working at for decades. For the last three years, a similar attempt at an amendment specifically to formally bar women pastors had failed to advance. But now, in the era of the second Trump administration, the outwardly misogynist wing is more emboldened than ever.

The Southern Baptist Church, which was founded to furnish a theological justification for slavery and the abuse of slaves by their masters, has now overwhelmingly voted to advance a formal ban on women pastors. This is the church that provides the backdrop for The Handmaid's Tale. cnn.it/3S3Ar4O

[image or embed]

— Scott Horton (@robertscotthorton.bsky.social) 12:49 AM · Jun 11, 2026

The church, naturally, draws on the infallibility of the Bible as its official rationale for why women are not welcome as faith leaders. The passage typically cited is Timothy 2:12, often quoted in the King James Version translation: “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.” And … well yeah! There’s really no misinterpreting that, is there? Much as more moderate members of the church would like to reconcile their more liberal or egalitarian beliefs with the faith, the most fundamental thing to be confronted is that at its heart, we’re talking about a deeply regressive set of writings, compiled from passages written exclusively by men almost two millennia ago, and expecting that source to inform how to live in an egalitarian society is inherently absurd. The Southern Baptist Convention is merely preserving–conserving, if you will–the traditional misogyny of the age that spawned it.

That said, even in an organization that split in 1845 from other Baptist churches because it was so strongly in favor of slavery–and then didn’t apologize for that until 150 years later–you might be surprised to know that the Southern Baptist Church was actually rather more liberal, or at least less militant, back in mid-century America than it is today. By the mid-1980s, in fact, there were at least 250 ordained women leading congregations within the Southern Baptist Church, forming a vocal undercurrent that challenged the traditional view of a woman’s place as outside the church leadership. In 1984, however, the Convention first began to specifically crack down on the practice of women in ordained positions, by targeting the membership of those churches that disobeyed its edicts. Each individual Southern Baptist church may technically be independent, but those that don’t tow the Convention line can be punished anyway, up to “disfellowship,” which boots them out of the formal organization.

That’s precisely what happened in 2023, when the Southern Baptist Convention banished Saddleback Church, a massive California megachurch that had up to that point been the second-largest congregation in the entire denomination, all because the church refused to reject its own female pastor. At the same time, the Convention also banished Kentucky’s Fern Creek Baptist of Louisville, which had been led by a woman pastor for three decades. Appeals from both churches to rejoin the fold were rejected at the aforementioned Southern Baptist Convention annual meetings. Such expulsions have become an increasingly common sight within the church, and this week’s vote would codify that this kind of expulsion is not only proper but the required response of the Convention to any church that dares to choose a woman as its pastor.

But this is no doubt to be expected, when you’re choosing the most Trump-y pastors among you to represent the entire church, which the SBC also managed to do this week. Conceding power to the farthest right-wing faction within the denomination, delegates elected Florida (of course) pastor Willy Rice as the next denomination president. Rice had drawn the support of Trump-adjacent groups such as the Center for Baptist Leadership, which argues that the denomination’s leadership has been tainted by “woke” ideology, while Rice himself has called for an addition to the Baptist Faith and Message (the denomination’s statement of faith and principles) to specifically “declare gender to be biologically determined and unchangeable.” He’s even spoken out against the church’s attempts to reform its handling of sexual abuse within the church, essentially saying that the entire effort was fake and just an attempt to make SBC look bad. From Rice’s own writing on the subject:

I now believe the sex abuse reform movement had gone off the tracks almost from the start. What I experienced led me to the conclusion that this wasn’t about stopping the sexual abuse of children; it was about much more. There was an agenda, almost from the start, that had more to do with stopping the nation’s largest group of conservative Christians and forcing a directional change than serving our churches and protecting the innocent. We unwisely platformed people who had weaponized their victimization.

What a guy, right? Compared to his “we shouldn’t protect children from sexual predators” stance, “we shouldn’t have women as pastors” seems almost progressive.

Since 2000, over 380 Southern Baptist leaders have been convicted of sex crimes involving more than 700 victims—all while SBC leaders covered for abusers and silenced survivors.

But women preaching and pastoring is the real problem? What a joke.

[image or embed]

— Mickey Kuhns (@mickeykuhns.bsky.social) 12:00 PM · Jun 11, 2026

It is sad to think, obviously, that more than 40 years ago, women pastors within the SBC appeared to be turning a corner in the organization, breaking down barriers and forging a new future for the largest Protestant Christian denomination in America, only for that future to be fouled by the resurgence of a strain of misogyny that is far more ancient. A vote like the one this week has naturally drawn the condemnation of organizations such as Baptist Women in Ministry, which works with female ministers in various Baptist denominations (including more progressive ones), but at some point one has to wonder if it is worthwhile attempting to bring reform to organizations that triumphantly celebrate their own regression.

“We express our solidarity with the women in ministry who have been harmed by this vote, the hateful rhetoric and propaganda leading up to the vote, and the damaging theology the vote represents,” said a statement from BWIM. “Women in ministry deserve affirmation, respect, and the opportunity to follow God’s call. We are heartbroken that they have been denied those fundamental freedoms in the process of this vote.”