Messengers from across the country will soon gather in Indianapolis to conduct the business of the Southern Baptist Convention. As in recent times, they may consider the precise relationship between the association and its member churches—an issue of unique significance to Baptists who’ve historically valued local church independence.
This week, they might be asked to take final motion on an amendment that will alter the SBC structure’s understanding of a cooperating church from one which “closely identifies with” the complementarian stance of the Baptist Faith and Message (BFM) to at least one that “affirms, appoints, or employs only men as any sort of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.”
The proposal got here within the wake of last 12 months’s disfellowship of Saddleback Church after it installed three women as staff pastors (which an awesome majority of messengers understood to be in conflict with the BFM).
Despite this swift and certain response, proponents imagine the Law Amendment, named after its creator, Mike Law, is essential to further unify practice. Others worry that such reforms move the convention toward a type of “subscriptionism,” which might use bureaucracy to implement norms on individual churches, putting the SBC at odds with historic polity.
But the priority for Baptist identity highlights one other, often ignored, aspect of the talk: Historically, Baptist confessions were a type of public witness.
The earliest Baptist confessions emerged in Seventeenth-century Reformation England, a time of tremendous social, political, and non secular instability. Unlike their Presbyterian and Anglican counterparts, which established and enforced denominational teaching, Baptist public statements had an apologetic, even irenic, quality to them, telling outsiders who Baptists claimed to be.
This was essential within the early days because Baptist practices of believer’s baptism and church autonomy meant that they were often confused with more radical sects, including continental Anabaptists who refused to pay taxes, enter the military, or accept the legitimacy of civil rulers.
In fact, when representatives from seven London congregations gathered to craft what would turn into the London Baptist Confession, they met to “disclaime as notoriously unfaithful” charges of disorder and the “clearing of the reality we professe, that it might be at libertie.”
And it worked.
Historian William Lumpkin, once professor of church history at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote that “Outside the Baptist fellowship the Confession was received with unequaled surprise. People generally were amazed on the moderation and sanity of its articles.”
In this manner, early Baptist confessions were used to present Baptist belief as reasonable and nonthreatening. The first editions of the London Confession were dedicated to Parliament as a solution to petition for greater religious tolerance, and, based on Lumpkin, subsequent revisions had Parliament’s reception as a primary focus, reworking the language in response to contemporary critics.
This backdrop also explains why early Baptists explicitly committed to submitting to civil authorities and living justly with their neighbors, even to the purpose of accepting the results of civil disobedience; or within the words of the London Confession, “not accounting our good, lands … and our own lives dear.” As Christians had for hundreds of years before them, early Baptists understood persecution and martyrdom as a type of witness.
Recognizing witness—not simply organizational cooperation or resource distribution—as a significant reason for Baptist affiliation also clarified grounds for disaffiliation. Confessions weren’t creedal documents but cooperative ones that allowed congregations to lean into the security of shared communion for the sake of public witness. Should a person or church walk in a way that will distort the gospel they professed, other members had a right, and maybe even an obligation, to withdraw from them.
Current debates within the SBC recognize this tension, but, for probably the most part, they have a tendency to focus internally, framing questions as a matter of associational conformity with little to no attention given to the message being sent to outsiders. But when considered through the lens of public witness, questions that look like similar quickly show themselves to be very different.
For example, when a member church covers up sexual abuse or retains a sexual predator in leadership, they turn into a transparent and obvious threat to the SBC’s shared testimony, not to say a threat to the security of surrounding society. As such, associated congregations must decisively and actively disfellowship from that church to preserve their very own public witness and commitment to the common good.
But how you can handle more internal disagreements, comparable to open table Communion (which many SBC churches practice despite the BFM) or women’s exact roles in local congregations, is less clear. While the SBC is unapologetically complementarian, because the disaffiliation from Saddleback Church testifies, the applying of those principles varies from member congregation to congregation.
Because of the assumption in local church autonomy, each defines the character and extent of pastoral ministry barely in another way. Unlike other traditions, the SBC doesn’t have a shared process for ordination or a definition of pastor, at the same time as it attempts to control that very office.
Unfortunately, the Law Amendment does nothing to make clear whether pastor refers back to the function, office, or title, relying as an alternative on the sweeping statement “a pastor or elder of any kind.” When asked, proponents counter that “Southern Baptists know what a pastor is and who needs to be a pastor,” which unfortunately amounts to “we comprehend it once we see it.”
One strange results of this lack of clarity has been the creation of an inventory of churches with women who hold staff positions under the title of “pastor,” whatever the work they really do throughout the congregation. A congregation with a girl named as a worship or children’s pastor will not be distinguished from one with a girl who holds elder authority as a senior pastor (which might run counter to the BFM’s complementarian stance).
To be clear, Baptist confessional history unquestionably affirms doctrinal alignment as essential for close association and cooperation. Early Baptists grouped themselves along soteriological convictions, and current Baptists must wrestle with similar boundaries. At the identical time, nonetheless, messengers must consider whether the high level of scrutiny on women on this moment signals a disproportionate level of concern.
Unlike their Baptist forebears, the SBC currently maintains a “big tent” approach to some doctrines and practices, comparable to soteriology (Calvinist versus Arminian), leadership structure (plurality of elders versus senior pastor with a deacon board), and worship (contemporary versus traditional). What does it say to outsiders that SBC member churches are free to disagree about these issues, but a girl being named a children’s pastor is a bridge too far?
More concerningly, the Law Amendment can be situated in Article III.1, which specifically names uncooperative churches as those that “affirm, approve, or endorse homosexual behavior,” mishandle sexual abuse, and discriminate on the premise of ethnicity.
Since June 2019 when the SBC Credentials Committee was reshaped to raised reply to such churches, it has advisable the disaffiliation from 18 churches, including 6 for mishandling sex abuse and 6 for ordaining women as senior pastors. To outsiders, the numbers could suggest an odd parity between how the SBC views women in leadership and the way they view predatory pastors.
As the nation’s largest Protestant association, the SBC may not feel the identical need as its marginalized ancestors to preserve their public witness. Even so, its size and influence signifies that it must concern itself with how the Law Amendment might be perceived by outsiders.
Protecting public witness doesn’t mean shifting doctrine or changing convictions about what Scripture teaches. However, it does mean weighing the wisdom and prudence of emphasizing minor differences, at the same time as the SBC continues to be under public scrutiny for its treatment of girls.
Like its early Baptist forebears, the SBC has taken an unpopular stand based on conviction and conscience. But the SBC would do well to also consider what their ancestors understood about public witness. Baptist confessions don’t exist simply to watch those contained in the community but to speak something to those outside it.
If the Law Amendment passes, it risks sending a message—not about what the SBC believes in regards to the gospel or biblical fidelity—but that monitoring local churches to maintain women in check is foundational to their identity.
Hannah Anderson is the creator of Humble Roots and Heaven and Nature Sing. She is pursuing an MDiv at Duke Divinity School with a spotlight in theology and art.
