All posts tagged: SBC

How women pastors became public enemy No. 1 in the SBC

How women pastors became public enemy No. 1 in the SBC

Published by Sam Flores

ORLANDO, Fla. (RNS) — In the first summer of this century, more than 11,000 Southern Baptists gathered in Florida to update their convention’s statement of faith by limiting the office of pastor to men only. But that 2000 limit was not binding on local churches. Instead, it applied only to the denomination’s seminaries and mission boards. “We don’t have the right, the authority or the power to limit anybody,” the Rev. Adrian Rogers, a famed Baptist preacher who chaired the committee that revamped the Baptist Faith and Message, told reporters at the time. “We would resist that.” Al Mohler, head of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, agreed. “We would never presume to tell another church whom they may call as a pastor or tell another person whether or not they may serve as pastor,” Mohler, who also had served on the committee, told Baptist Press, an official SBC publication, in 2000. “We’re not trying to force our beliefs on someone else.” Some churches left the SBC and joined groups such as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which …

Willy Rice, Florida pastor and abuse crisis skeptic, elected SBC president

Willy Rice, Florida pastor and abuse crisis skeptic, elected SBC president

Published by Sam Flores

ORLANDO, Fla. (RNS) — A Florida pastor who has argued that the nation’s largest Protestant denomination has become too woke and liberal was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention on Tuesday (June 9). Willy Rice, senior pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, Florida, received 5,217 votes — 57% of the votes cast. His opponent, Josh Powell, lead pastor of Taylors First Baptist Church in South Carolina, received 3,821 votes, or 42%. Rice’s election is a triumph for critics who claim that the denomination has lost its way in recent years. He has alleged that the SBC’s sexual abuse crisis was more hoax than reality and said that the denomination’s leaders had followed the culture more than the Bible. The two candidates were similar. Both are conservative. Both are in favor of a ban on churches with women pastors. Both are fans of missionary work and are lifelong Southern Baptists. Both claimed that concerns that the SBC had a sexual abuse crisis were overblown. But they offered disparate views of the state of the convention …

SBC tries to move on from abuse crisis, will debate women pastors and immigration

SBC tries to move on from abuse crisis, will debate women pastors and immigration

Published by Sam Flores

ORLANDO, Florida (RNS) — Over the past decade, members of the Southern Baptist Convention have touted the denomination’s diversity, sought to keep sexual abusers away from churches and passed statements advocating for immigration reform and a path to legal status for those in the country without authorization. Now, for a vocal group of Southern Baptists, diversity is seen as too woke for the Bible. The two candidates running for SBC president say the SBC does not have an abuse crisis, with one claiming the sexual abuse crisis was a “snipe hunt” that led Baptists astray. And the more than 11,000 local church delegates, known as messengers, gathering at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida, this week will debate a resolution that claims compassion should not get in the way of deportation. They will also consider a call to ban churches with women pastors and churches that allow women to preach in Sunday services. Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, plans to introduce what he calls a “Truth and …

How the devil was disguised in the SBC and Paul Pressler’s Conservative Resurgence

How the devil was disguised in the SBC and Paul Pressler’s Conservative Resurgence

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — There’s a brilliant scene in the film “The Devil Wears Prada” in which a villainous high fashion editor berates her new, plainly dressed assistant for thinking she is above the dictates of the fashion world when the fact is that even the discount items she buys have trickled down from the upper echelons of a ruthless and rabid fashion industry. In the movies, the devil may wear Prada, but in the Southern Baptist Convention, the devil came cloaked in its so-called Conservative Resurgence. The Conservative Resurgence within America’s largest Protestant denomination was co-engineered by the late Paul Presser — a Texas judge and a mover and shaker in the Republican Party and the SBC — along with former SBC seminary and convention president Paige Patterson. Armed with evidence that liberals were invading the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the two organized fellow conservatives to fight back, seizing control of the SBC in a decades-long denominational civil war. Now, a new and exhaustive report by Robert Downen at Texas Monthly details the horrific, lengthy history …

Beth Moore on life after the SBC — and why she never could quit Jesus

Beth Moore on life after the SBC — and why she never could quit Jesus

Published by Sam Flores

HOUSTON (RNS) — For Beth Moore, leaving the Southern Baptist Convention was like falling off a cliff and not knowing if anyone would catch her. At times, she’d walk through the woods near her Texas home and have some pretty candid conversations with Jesus. “I would say to him over and over, I hope you know where we’re going,” she told Religion News Service in a recent interview. “I hope you know where we’re going, because I don’t have a clue where we’re going, and I don’t know where I’ll ever belong again.” It’s been five years since Moore, bestselling author and Bible teacher, left the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, a church that had been her refuge while growing up in a troubled home and that gave her a life she loved. Since then, Moore has found a new church home as an Anglican, rebuilt her ministry, written a memoir, recovered from spinal surgery and kept doing what she’s always done — helping women learn how to dig deep in the Bible. But last month, …

Prediction markets forum set to debut at SBC Summit Americas

Prediction markets forum set to debut at SBC Summit Americas

Published by skeptic

Prediction markets will take center stage at this summer’s SBC Summit Americas, as the fast-growing industry continues to spark debate across the U.S. gambling and financial industries. The Prediction Markets Forum is scheduled for June 11 and will run as part of the conference’s Breakout Stage lineup. The forum will bring together sportsbook executives, legal experts, analysts, and academics to unpack how these markets are evolving and what their rise could mean for traditional sports betting. Patrick Everson, a longtime sports betting analyst and contributor to FOX Sports, will chair the four-session program. The agenda centers on discussions of how sportsbooks are experimenting with event contracts, as well as the mounting regulatory and integrity concerns that have followed the sector’s rapid expansion. Prediction markets surge into public view Prediction markets entered the mainstream spotlight during the 2024 U.S. presidential election cycle, when trading on political event contracts took off in popularity. The surge in activity during that period drew attention from major betting operators and regulators alike, pushing the products into broader public and political …

Former SBC president Steve Gaines dies at 68

Former SBC president Steve Gaines dies at 68

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Steve Gaines, a Tennessee megachurch pastor who served as Southern Baptist Convention president from 2016 to 2018, died Friday (March 20), his former congregation announced. He was 68. “It’s with a heavy heart that we share with you the passing of our beloved Pastor Emeritus, Dr. Steve Gaines,” Bellevue Baptist Church said in a post on its Facebook page. After a two-year long battle with cancer, Bro. Steve stepped into eternity earlier this afternoon, and he is now fully healed in the presence of the Lord.”  Gaines led Memphis-area church, one of the SBC’s largest congregations, for 19 years. He stepped down as the congregation’s pastor in 2024, 10 months after being diagnosed with kidney cancer. Gaines was born December 31, 1957 in Corinth, Mississippi, and grew up in Dyersburg, Tennessee, according to Baptist Press, an official SBC publication. He earned degrees at Union University and  Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and pastored churches in Tennessee and Texas while in school. He was elected president of the SBC in 2016, during a period of …

Beth Moore to end Living Proof events in 2027

Beth Moore to end Living Proof events in 2027

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Bible teacher and bestselling author Beth Moore announced Thursday (March 5) that her ministry will stop holding large-scale Living Proof events in 2027. The decision to end Living Proof Ministries events, which feature Moore’s Bible teaching and worship music, will coincide with her 70th birthday. She plans to continue speaking and writing but will no longer host events. “Though it may sound like retirement, unless the Lord wills it, it’s meant to actually delay retirement, making the best use of my remaining energies in the last chapter of ministry,” Moore, the founder of Living Proof Ministries in Houston, said in a video announcement. For decades, Moore taught at stadiums and megachurches and sold millions of Bible studies and books, in a remarkable career that started when she began teaching a Bible study at a church in Houston. One of her studies, “A Woman’s Heart: God’s Dwelling Place,” wound up in the hands of an editor at Lifeway, the Southern Baptist Convention publishing arm, which led to a publishing deal that lasted for decades and …

Wiley Drake, pastor who championed 1990s SBC Disney boycott, has died

Wiley Drake, pastor who championed 1990s SBC Disney boycott, has died

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Wiley Drake, a California pastor who rallied Southern Baptists to boycott Disney in the 1990s, has died. Drake, 82, died on Jan. 27. The Southern Baptist Convention announced his death on Tuesday (Feb. 10). A longtime pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, California — not far from Disneyland — was a self-styled “champion of the little guy,” known for his outspoken opinions at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meetings. His enthusiasm for speaking at meetings as a church delegate, known as a messenger, and for having his say about the direction of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination was an example of what makes the convention work, said former SBC President Bart Barber.  “Wiley Drake rightly believed that any simple, faithful messenger could go to the microphone at the Southern Baptist Convention and do something that made an eternal difference,” Barber, a Texas pastor, told RNS. “In a nonhierarchical family of churches like the Southern Baptist Convention, that confidence, exemplified by Wiley Drake, makes everything run.” Born Nov. 23, 1943, in …