I am SBC'ed Out.....

Round up of the week for me

How I coped with watching the SBC 2023 livestream—making chocolate creme brûlée for me and my husband. He enjoyed it a lot more than my recap of the convention.

Honestly, I hoped the SBC 2023 would be different.

I hoped the messengers wouldn’t approve the Mike Law Amendment. For those of you who are out of the know (bless you!), Mike Law is the pastor in Arlington Baptist Church in Arlington, Virginia, who recommended an amendment to the SBC constitution in 2022 that would consider churches with female pastors of any kind ‘not in friendly cooperation’ with the SBC. He followed up this amendment with an open letter titled “A Call To Keep Our Unity” to the SBC Executive Committee requesting an amendment of the 6th item under Article III of the Constitution, adding the phrase to the clarification of what churches are in “friendly cooperation” with the SBC include those that do “not affirm, appoint, or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind.” He asked SBC pastors and seminary professors to sign, accumulating 2235 signatures to date. He also compiled the ‘hit-list’ on churches with female pastors.

But they did.

I was hoping the messengers would not affirm the Executive Committee’s decision to declare Saddleback and Fern Creek Baptist Church as not in friendly cooperation over their appointment of female pastors. Again, for those of you not in the know, the SBC Executive Committee voted to declare 5 churches not in friendly cooperation with the SBC over the matter of employing female pastors. Two of those churches appealed—Saddleback (Rick Warren) and Fern Creek (Linda Barnes Popham). Warren and Popham each had 3 minutes to appeal to the messengers to overturn the ruling of the executive committee and reaffirm them as in friendly cooperation with the SBC. Again, I was hoping the messengers would not affirm the decision to disfellowship these churches.

But they did.

By a landslide vote.

In short, the SBC fulfilled my worst fears about what could happen—including seeming to lose energy for sexual abuse reform (although they did vote to continue the work of the task force).

I’m pretty exhausted.

Especially since I wasn’t just watching the livestream.

Last week I talked with Michelle Boorstein at The Washington Post about Rick Warren’s about-face on women in ministry (which also features my Baylor colleague Barry Hankins).

I also talked with Francis X. Rocca at The Wall Street Journal for his story on the aftermath of the 2023 convention vote on the Law amendment (my dad was impressed with my quote).

I also got invited, along with my Baylor History colleague Barry Hankins, to be interviewed live by the daily news show Faith Nation on the Christian Broadcasting Network (16:30 mark). Barry declined and left me to face the camera.

Perhaps the most significant work I did, though, was writing an op-ed for MSNBC, which was a really incredible experience.

Oh, also, I interviewed with Katelyn Beaty (look for her substack next week) and with Mary Harris on Slate’s Daily News podcast What Next (you can look for it next week—I think Monday?).

And this doesn’t even include my speaking at the Evangelical Free Churches of Canada Theology Conference last week (which was an amazing experience) and spending four days in the SBC archives. Y’all, it was really hard listening to the SBC 2023 convention knowing what I know from their own archives. I’m working on a potential news story from some of what I found, so stay tuned for that too.

All in all, I’m ready to stop talking about the SBC.

My husband is ready for me to stop talking about it too.