The Southern Baptist Convention rejected a controversial ban on women pastors in the country’s largest Protestant Christian denomination in a monumental vote on Wednesday, allowing women to remain the heads of Baptist churches, ending a two-year battle stemming from the interpretation of the Bible.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s vote ends a two-year dispute over allowing women pastors, ... [+]
The vote on Wednesday reverses a June 2023 preliminary decision to bar women from presiding over Southern Baptist churches and specified a church could only be considered Southern Baptist if it “affirms, appoints, or employs only men as any kind of pastor or elder.”
That first vote, taken last year in New Orleans, required a second vote at the convention’s June 2024 meeting, according to the church.
The second vote on Wednesday required a two-thirds majority to pass, coming just short with over 61% of voters at the convention supporting the ban, and just over 38% rejecting it.
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Baptist Women in Ministry, an organization that promotes women in Baptist leadership roles, said it was “grateful to the churches and messengers” who supported the “message that women have equal value to God,” though it lamented the matter came to a vote in the first place. In a Wednesday statement, the group said the fact that a majority of convention voters supported the ban showed “that women in ministry are still devalued,” adding that the group is “grieved” the vote took place.
This is a developing story and will be updated.