The “Truth and Unity Amendment” sayest the SBC’s formerly smartest person, Al Mohler. The truth and unity concerns females in the SBC serving as pastors, overseers, and elders or exhibiting any of the functions of a pastor or an overseer or an elder or preaching to the assembled church or using any other job title such as minister, associate/assistant, shepherd etc. depressingly etc etc.
This is the most laughable, cynical, and absurd title applied to any of these recent similar efforts concerning women who serve in SBC churches. The last attempt was by a guy who said he wasn’t qualified to make the amendment proposal. He made it anyway. The first attempt was by a wild eyed zealot who only grudgingly allowed that women serving as preschool ministers or the like were his sisters in Christ (though living in disobedience). This attempt is by the SBC’s leading intellectual: “Truth and Unity” he says.
So, then. We have the relevant terms defined: function, preaching, assembled church, etc.? Uh, no. I presume leaders are smart enough NOT to try and define function of a pastor lest Lottie Moon or Bertha Smith be invoked; lest the woman who inadvertently steps behind a pulpit and makes an announcement that all casserole dishes left in the church kitchen will be donated to the thrift store if not picked up.
I give the rabid Texans credit in their state to making an attempt at this. No church can be affiliated with their convention who does not:
…affirm[s] the office, function, ordination and title of pastor/elder/overseer to be limited to men as qualified by Scripture. Title shall include any equivalents of the words pastor/elder/overseer, and preaching to the assembled congregation shall be an exclusive function of pastor/elder/overseer or biblically qualified men.
Some PhD check the BFM on ordination. Let me know if it slipped in while the leadership was on sabbatical. Let the DMins, we can flood the market with those lightly qualified brethren, get the thesaurus of misogyny out and check the “equivalents” for the triple slashed monstrosity (hint: “pastor/elder/overseer” is just the beginning). We have a dying denomination but living governing documents. Not sure that is worth half a hallelujah.
Make a note here: The SBC and Executive Committee completely gave up on measures passed concerning clergy sex abuse. Messengers overwhelmingly voted to do things that have not been done and never will be done. We would like now to turn our attention to women in another context: women who serve our churches faithfully, selflessly, sacrificially but who might be called within their local congregation a preschool pastor, minister, or other term deemed unacceptable to those in the faculty lounge whose salaries we will never know, whose expense accounts are unaccountable.
No one should be surprised by now.
I only served three congregations as pastor. Among the three there had been probably a hundred pastors. None were females. Yet, not one of them would be eligible for affiliation with the SBC.
Perhaps success with this amendment attempt is just what Southern Baptists need to conclude that the denomination should be left to the few zealots and purists who will fight for the declining assets. Let the local church decide. That would be truly FTC.
