Blog

The Southern Baptist Convention exists for exactly two days out of every year. Strictly speaking, the SBC is not a denomination. It is an association, or convention, of autonomous churches that agree to cooperate missionally, rallying around a common faith as expressed in the Baptist Faith & Message 2000. The church I pastor, Corydon Baptist Church, willingly cooperates with the SBC. 

But less and less so over the last five years. 

After the now infamous pro-CRT Resolution 9 passed in 2019, many conservatives in the SBC, like myself and the church I shepherd, began attending these annual conventions. To vote against the progressive and/or liberal elites and their agenda. We want our Convention back! And the last five years have been used by God to expose the true progressive, left-leaning beliefs and agenda of men like Pastors J.D. Greear and Ed Litton. And the last five years of annual conventions have seen ups and downs for conservatives. That’s the be expected in a meeting of over 10,000 SBC messengers. 

Get 10,000 evangelicals in a room together from any denomination and there are bound to be both significant agreements and disagreements. I think sometimes we SBCers forget that the issues we are debating and battling over exist within every single local church and denomination. Because our culture is awash in wickedness. The satanic agenda of our secular, godless society is inescapable. Every church is, or at least ought to be, preaching the gospel and holding out the biblical light in the face of the darkness of a pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ, anti-marriage, anti-family, anti-authority culture. It’s the air we breathe. Our children are bombarded by godlessness at every conceivable turn. No church and no denomination are exempt from having to put on God’s armor and stand against the wiles of the devil. Some denominations, such as the PC-USA, Episcopalian, UCC, and UMC have caved to the culture. And rightly, yet sadly, they have collapsed and ceased to be true churches or true Christian denominations. Thankfully, by God’s grace, the SBC isn’t there . . . yet. 

But this year’s convention showed we still have much work to do to hold the line of biblical truth. Here’s a summary from my own personal perspective, on a few issues that were noteworthy: 

VIBE

Because the SBC is the largest Protestant “denomination” in the world, everything we do at these conventions is under scrutiny. By all Christendom, as well as much of the secular press. What I want to say here is that unless you were in the room in Indy, hold all the critiques you might hear and headlines you might read with a grain of salt. I was in the room. Have been for the last five years in a row. It’s impossible to explain, but the overall “vibe” of the convention has been shifting. Nearly every single messenger I met this year talked and behaved like a conservative, Spirit-regenerated, Bible-loving believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. If any true liberals were present, they are few and far between and keep a very low profile! While I do not mind being labeled as “very conservative,” it is worth noting that the overall vibe of the SBC is conservative. Even so-called “liberals” in our convention would still be considered conservative by many other standards. This doesn’t mean we should rest on a laurels, nor does it mean we should ignore any actual leftward drift (and there definitely has been in the last decade), but I think if we true conservatives just stay at this, God will grant us the victory eventually. It seems the tide is turning in several good ways. But, that’s just my perspective. I might be wrong.

MOTIONS  

Messengers to the SBC are given several opportunities to make motions from the floor. While the vast majority of these prove uninteresting to me, and some even tedious or nit-picky, there were a few that caught my attention this year. First, for several years in a row, motions have been made seeking more financial transparency from our SBC entities, especially NAMB. Many of us are still waiting for that transparency to become reality. And the lack of it is at least one major reason why many churches, like the one I pastor, have ceased giving to the Cooperative Program (the primary SBC funding mechanism), and now designate our giving to those entities we still trust. 

Second, a motion to abolish the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) was made by Pastor Tom Ascol this year. A similar motion has been made for at least the last two years, I think. The ERLC has been a disaster for many years, especially under the former leadership of Russell Moore. Their refusal to support genuine abortion abolition laws, or laws to criminalize abortion, is one of the main reasons churches like ours want rid of it. The ERLC has also hinted at things like gun control support in recent years, and played a critical role in suppressing the manifesto of the Nashville mass-murderer who attacked a Christian school last year. A forthcoming book by Megan Basham, titled Shepherds for Sale, is sure to be an eye-opener as to just how corrupt our ERLC may have become. So stay tuned! At any rate, the vote to abolish this year failed. But from my vantage point in the back of the convention hall, it looked like a full 40% voted to abolish the ERLC. That percentage has steadily grown over the last three years. So, we must keep up the fight! 

Third, a messenger made a motion to stop saying the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. This is something the convention does during a time set aside to honor our military and first-responder SBC chaplains. I can only hope this motion dies 1,000 deaths in committee! What a pathetic display that Marxism and Critical-Hate-America Theory is alive and well at least somewhere in the SBC. How has it become fashionable to think one cannot be a Christian and also love America? As a former Marine Captain, I made an oath to support and defend our Constitutuion from all enemies. That oath in no way ever did or ever will override my ultimate allegiance to King Jesus. Saying the Pledge of Allegiance is not sinful, unbiblical, or unchristian. This motion was a slap in the face of every military servicemember who has ever or will ever serve. Ironically, the messenger who made this motion is free to do so only because of those in uniform willing to die for American ideals!  

RESOLUTIONS

Over the last five years, I have come to view these as not nearly as important as I once thought. They basically provide fodder for news headlines. They’re not binding in any way on anyone within the SBC. And they usually touch on hot-button issues and generate debate on the convention floor. Often this makes it lively. Other times it makes it drudgery. And while I can always nit-pick these resolutions (for example, I didn’t vote for the Resolution on Just War b/c I do not personally support conscientious objectors), by-and-large they were all fairly decent. Headlines will tell you the SBC voted to ban IVF, or made a Resolution to do so. It’s not true. The Resolution was well done, even though I personally think it should have more adequately addressed ethical issues swirling around embryo adoption. Nevertheless, this Resolution at least gets us thinking more biblically about this critical issue. 

You can read all the Resolutions that passed here: https://thebaptistpaper.org/messengers-to-2024-sbc-annual-meeting-adopt-8-resolutions/

LAW AMENDMENT

No sense beating around the bush, the failure of this amendment to pass was a massive disappointment. This amendment would have codified in the SBC Constitution that no church with women pastors of any kind would be considered in friendly cooperation with the SBC. It had to pass two years in a row. Last year, in New Orleans, it passed with something like an 85% vote. But the progressives had a year to marshal just enough opposition to prevent it from getting the requisite 2/3 (66%) required this year. It received almost 62% this year. Still a strong majority, but missed passing by perhaps 500 votes. 

What are we to make of this? It is particularly confusing because earlier the same convention voted by a 92% margin to disfellowship FBC Alexandria, VA for employing women pastors. And last year we disfellowshipped the mammoth Saddleback Church of Rick Warren fame, despite Warren trying to make us all feel like we had somehow misinterpreted our Bibles on this issue! So, the SBC has shown it has the resolve to stand firm against the tide of feminism when it comes to this matter. So, how in the world did this convention fail to pass the Law Amendment? 

I have no perfect answers. I was as befuddled as all my biblically faithful brothers and sisters who thought this would pass with flying colors. But, I also know that the progressives were slick. Their arguments in recent months against the Law Amendment were not based on biblical texts and feminist interpretation. The SBC has already proven emphatically we’re not buying those faulty interpretations that try to muddy waters God has made clear (1 Tim 2:11-15 is crystal clear). So, progressive elites such as J.D. Greear, Ed Litton, Vance Pittman (NAMB) and Jeff Iorg (the new President of the SBC Executive Committee), based their arguments upon:

• Emotionalism – passing this amendment would offend our sisters on the mission field, so they said. But wait, didn’t those missionaries already have to agree to the BFM2000?  
• Pragmatism – passing this amendment will alienate women in our churches. Does Bible doctrine alienate women? Not if they’re inerrantists!
• Race – many black and Hispanic churches in the SBC have women pastors and this amendment passing will cause us to be branded as “racist.” Pathetic argument. CRT lives. The Bible’s commandments care not what the melanin level is among those professing faith in Christ. We should want biblical churches in the SBC. Period. 
• This amendment is a “secondary doctrinal” issue and takes our focus off the Great Commission. Biblical manhood and womanhood and gender roles are not secondary issues. They are creation order issues that influence everything else in human society (Gen 1:26-28). This is why Paul roots the office of pastor reserved for men only in creation (1 Tim 2:11-15). Ask the UMC what compromise on this issue leads to 50 years down the line. The Great Commission, last time I checked, requires us to make disciples by “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt 28:18-20, emphasis added).
• Parliamentary – We already have mechanisms in place to disfellowship churches with women pastors and have proven for three years straight we will readily use those mechanisms as needed. This was perhaps the most prevalent and persuasive argument against the Law Amendment. And while it is true, it neglects to mention that given that there are over 1,000 SBC churches with women pastors, it will take us several generations to root them all out one-by-one. But by golly, if that’s what it takes, God give us, and our children and grandchildren the biblical guts to stay the course!

No doubt, many solid conservative churches will leave the SBC over the failure of the Law Amendment. The thought is not far from my own mind, to be brutally honest. The manipulative tactics of those opposed to this amendment are disturbing. Pragmatism seems to rule the day with many prominent SBC leaders. But not all. Many, like Drs. Albert Mohler and Mark Dever (9Marks), and many other prominent and unknown SBC pastors alike, stood strong for biblical fidelity in recent years. The newly elected SBC President, Pastor Clint Pressley, supported the Law Amendment. And in the end, 62% voted for the Biblical position. If only a few more churches, like mine, had sent their full slate of messengers, we would have won the day. Personally, I invited others in our church both privately and publicly to please come to Indy with us to vote on this critical issue. But we fielded only 6 of the 12 messengers we were allotted. I can’t help wonder how many other smaller conservative churches did likewise? (Little wonder motions are made every year to allow remote voting via online technology.) 

Bible-loving, Christ-exalting people in pews all across the SBC will likely belly-ache in weeks ahead. They may even pressure their pastors to exit the SBC. To just give up the most critical ship in the evangelical world (our SBC seminaries educate 1 of 4 seminary students across the world and we fund 3,000 global missionaries). But, if those members did not care enough to take a few days off and go to Indy and vote, they might humbly, prayerfully consider just trusting their pastors to keep leading their churches faithfully for the glory of God in the Gospel of Christ. 

We SBC pastors need your prayers. Please, dear flock, pray for us.

by Keith McWhorter