"Other Potential Prohibitions": Honest Questions to SBC Delegates
I love visiting the US, especially North Carolina, a lovely place. I could seriously live there (albeit under a slightly different presidential administration).
I have amazing doctoral students, former and current, who are Southern Baptists, doing great work. I learn from them and love them!
I get my students to read SBC scholars like Tom Schreiner, Jim Hamilton, Peter Gentry, and Stephen Wellum.
And did I mention Chik-Fil-A … best chicken sandwich this side of the new creation!
My point is that I don’t think of myself as prejudiced towards SBC people.
So please indulge me with a few comments as I ask questions to my SBC friends going to their big convention in Florida, where Al Mohler has a motion to amend their constitution to the following.
[Each congregation] Does not act to affirm, appoint, or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor/elder/overseer, such as/specifically preaching to the assembled congregation.
The original motion said “such as,” which sounded like it was merely one of many possible prohibitions, so Mohler has suggested a change to “specifically” to ensure that the prohibition has a particular focus only on women as preaching to an assembled congregation as pastor.
Look, personally, I do not believe in ANY prohibition on women in Christian service, but I accept that the SBC does, and it is between God, their conscience, and whatever constitution they have. Also, I think this change of wording from “such as” to “specifically” ameliorates the amendment somewhat.
However, some people want to maintain the original wording with “such as” precisely because they want a broader suite of prohibitions even beyond the pastorate.
Also, Denny Burke, President of CBMW, has tried to defend the change from “such as” to “specifically” by arguing, in effect, that they are the same thing.
“Specifically” does not mean that I only gave him one prohibition. It means I’m specifying the one he’s breaking. It doesn’t mean that there weren’t other prohibitions or that they can’t be broken.
Likewise in the amendment, “specifically” specifies one particular function of the office without denying that there are other functions. Or to put it another way, it specifies one prohibition without denying that there are other prohibitions.
To be fair, Denny goes on to claim that “specifically” does not mean that the office of pastor is limited to preaching, nor does he want to say that “function” can be interpreted too broadly, but he is comfortable with more prohibitions … or what I call the extra patriarchum.
So here are my questions for Denny, CBMW, TGC-USA, and the SBC delegates.
(1) What are these “other potential prohibitions”?
Women can’t be preachers, podcasters, piano teachers, or president? Women can’t be deacons, wear jeans, vote, go to college, pray in public worship, sing in public worship, or report domestic abuse to the police?
Is there a definitive list somewhere we could see?
(2) Are there any prohibitions that should be prohibited?
This amendment would disfellowship or censure (or whatever term) a church with a female youth pastor, but would the SBC censure a church that does not let women pray in public worship, or teaches that women should not vote?
It sounds like all prohibitions are permissible, but there is no interest in protecting women from needless and unfair prohibitions.
It sounds like patriarchs can follow their conscience in how prohibitive they want to be, but everybody else’s conscience and congregation is constrained in how they free they are to enable women in Christian service.
Big limits on what SBC churches can let women do!
But no limits on what SBC churches can prohibit women from doing!
Is that fair to SBC women?
(3) Is there some kind of award for who makes the most prohibitions against women?
Is there like a golden statue of Paige Patterson that gets handed out every year to the guy who restricts more women from doing more things? Cause if there was, I wouldn’t be surprised.
(4) Finally, where is that famous Southern chivalry?
Where are the men who put themselves between the SBC women and the Christian Patriarchs and say, “I have spoken to my sisters and we are disinclined to acquiesce to your amendment as we have determined that it is a needless infraction against the God-given liberty of our women and ruinous to the independence of our Baptist congregation, both of which we esteem so highly, that they may only be surrendered if they are prised from our cold dead hands.”
To my SBC friends, I’m Anglican, Australian, egalitarian, so take what I say with a pinch of salt if you like. But I just ask you to consider: Why is it open slather on prohibitions, but no motion says, “Leave her be!”?
If you want to be complementarian, fine, I get it; but if your primary interest is prohibiting women from service rather than protecting women and empowering women, then it is just a pernicious patriarchy with a vague Christian gloss.
Otherwise, read what another Aussie - Dani Treweek, a Sydney Anglican complementarian - has to say about it.
