Standing With the Apostle Paul: SBC is in the News Once Again on Issues of Gender

The Southern Baptist Convention is back in the news, and once again its courageous stand on gender issues is at the heart of the controversy.

Two years ago, Southern Baptists made headlines when they added an article on the Family to their confessional document, the Baptist Faith and Message Statement (BFM). Amazingly, the controversy erupted because of the section that called on wives to submit graciously to the servant leadership of their husbands-an exhortation that could have come directly from the mouth of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter five. But in this day of compromise on issues once taken for granted in the Church, their actions are courageous.

At last year's convention, Paige Patterson, president of the SBC, appointed a committee to review the BFM Statement and bring any changes as recommendations to the June 2000 meeting. The document was originally adopted in 1925 and revised in 1963, with the article on the Family added in 1998.

The committee, chaired by Dr. Adrian Rogers, Pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, released its BFM review report on May 18, in which several important revisions were recommended. This report, along with its recommendations, was adopted on June 14 at the SBC's annual meeting in Orlando, Florida.

But why revise a document that has worked so well for so long? According to Rogers, the revisions were made in several areas because "each generation faces the responsibility of speaking to the issues of its day, and facing the challenges of its own climate." Some of the key doctrines that were introduced or made even more explicit in the new statement include the complete truthfulness and trustworthiness of the Bible; God's omnipotence, omniscience, and His exhaustive foreknowledge; the substitutionary nature of the atonement of Jesus Christ; the fact that there is no Savior but Jesus and salvation is found only through faith in Him; and that all races possess full dignity in God's sight.

But most of the controversy was reserved for the addition of a sentence to Article VI on the Church. "While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."

It is not hard to see why this statement would raise the ire of the secular media and the liberal religious press, both of whom are uncritically enamored with the idol of egalitarianism. But most Baptists applauded the work of the committee.

"The committee's report does not announce any new beliefs," noted Michael Whitehead, interim president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. "It just clarifies what most Baptists have always believed the Bible teaches. It is the culture that has changed, not the Bible, and not most Baptists. [It] is not news that God has assigned roles in the home and in the Church. This principle is not a cultural relic but the divine order. Most Baptists are pretty squeamish about tinkering with the words of God."

Tinkering with the words of God-that is the key issue according to Richard Land, a member of the revision committee and president of the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. He told the Religious News Service that those who disagree with the BFM Statement on the role of women in the church are simply disagreeing with Scripture. "Their disagreement is with the apostle Paul, not with us," Land said.

R. Albert Mohler, also a member of the committee and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, agrees. He told the New York Times, "It is those who ordain and call women as pastors who have to explain why they would move in a direction opposed to Scripture."

Rogers was asked if he was concerned that the SBC would split over the gender issue. "No, not even a splinter," he replied. "The proof of that is that out of 42,000 some odd Baptist churches . . . less than 1/10 of one percent have a female for pastor-somewhere between 50 and 70 in the entire convention. That would not portend any kind of a split at all."

Land was concerned that the statement not be misunderstood. Both men and women are equal before God, and both are called to ministry. "We are not in any way, shape, or form saying that women are inferior to men." The statement simply articulates that the office of pastor is only open to qualified men.

The authority of the BFM Statement is not always understood by non-Baptists. While individual Southern Baptist churches may accept or reject the statement, SBC agencies, institutions and seminaries will expect that their employees embrace the BFM Statement without reservation.

Thus, the BFM Statement serves as a way for Southern Baptists to stand together under the authority of God's Word. We in CBMW believe that this courageous stand will bear fruit for generations to come.