Think of this as food porn, a “glamorized visual presentation of cooking or eating.” No need to get triggered. It takes no genius to point out the most obvious and relevant point about the SBC’s recent forays into doctrinal purity and the sanitizing of the denomination as it relates to women serving in churches.
What is presented as a return to doctrinal fidelity and New Testament ecclesiology is actually complementarian porn, the reality on the ground being far removed from the idealized presentations we hear represented by proponents.
I have a distaste for even using the term “complementarianism” because it is a made-up word that has never been defined. It serves to give a sophisticated cant to SBCers who don’t like the harsher alternatives like misogyny/sexism/chauvinism or patriarchy.
There is broad agreement on having men as senior pastors and we have lived with that for decades. We’ve had churches with women pastors and clergy staff members as a part of the SBC for decades. The aging Conservative Resurgence crowd never went after these churches with the relish of their younger, more astringent, brusque, and calloused colleagues. These are now left to shepherd a dying denomination (pick most any metric and prove this) into the mid-21st century. Dying denomination? “Let’s hasten the process” seems to be the approach.
The more liberal churches that actually have women senior pastors are extremely few and those that do are on the periphery of the SBC, mainly through giving a little money to SBC causes. The internet gives the rabid brothers the power to ferret these out for special action. You might recall the church recently excluded whose woman pastor said they hadn’t been a part of the SBC for years. Go figure.
Then there is the business of the sub-pastors. In my adult life, most years of which I have been involved in SBC churches as pastor, staff, volunteer staff, and as a volunteer there has been a trend initiated by churches who call all staff “pastor” of some kind. Nothing changed but the vocabulary but that is sufficient to trigger the zealots into a hunger and thirst for a more pure and pristine denomination, one without any woman who schedules the nursery and does a lot of diaper changing being called a “pastor,” regardless of the modifier: preschool pastor, children’s pastor, student pastor (student pastors change diapers, metaphorically; ask one). How many student ‘pastors’ are elders or overseers, or even pastors in a meaningful way? What does a worship pastor pastor anyway. A congregation of musical notes? What does an administrative pastor pastor? Bill paying and paid clerical staff? Where are these in the New Testament?
Baptist ecclesiology is the weak sister of doctrine and even weaker in appearance in affluent, capitalist America.
The previous amendment not passed, now dead as a sledgehammer, presented the concept as one of biblical fidelity. Nope. It was simple vocabulary policing. If the new amendment eventually passes there will be not only more of the same but endless subsequent measures that aim to seek and destroy women in positions not labeled “pastor” but who exhibit functions that are disapproved for women by the zealots. If a woman speaks on Sunday is it preaching and therefore pastoring. If a woman baptizes is it the usurpation of a pastoral function? It will never end.
Earlier estimates of improper staff job titles went over 1000 churches, meaning the road is long to the supposed biblical fidelity and purity. There can be no purity by dribs and drabs. It has to be wholesale, not retail.
Make note that the celebrated sex abuse database has exactly zero names on it after all these years of task forces, legal bills, independent studies. That we manage to target two or three churches a year for women pastors and recently managed to find one tiny congregation to exclude for sex abuse is what is obscene.
Previous actions included anonymous reporting of churches, targeting women with pictures and screen grabs from church websites, and harassment of women. The actions of the minority zealots will overwhelm the staid and somber brethren who claim to just want biblical fidelity.
A good argument could be made for the EC getting out of the exclusion business altogether. Let the indignant brothers bring action at each convention and let autonomous local churches make their staff title decisions.
For now, it’s just complementarian porn.
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Image: dreamcat115 from Tokyo, Japan
