The Southern Baptist Convention has voted to enforce a doctrine for male-only pastors, rejecting an impassioned appeal from the Rev. Rick Warren to reinstate his megachurch, which an SBC governing panel expelled in February for employing a female “teaching pastor.”
Delegates at the SBC annual business meeting in New Orleans on Tuesday voted 9,437 to 1,212 to expel Saddleback Church, after Mr. Warren had pleaded for the reinstatement of the congregation he founded in Southern California.
The delegates also rejected appeals from two smaller churches that the SBC’s Executive Committee expelled in February: a congregation in Louisville, Kentucky, where a woman is pastor; and a church in Vero Beach, Florida, contesting charges of sexual abuse by a pastor who has resigned.
The results of the Tuesday votes were announced Wednesday morning on the concluding day of the SBC’s two-day annual meeting of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, whose statement of faith asserts that only qualified men can serve as pastors.
The Rev. Bart Barber, who was reelected Tuesday as president of the 13.3 million-member denomination, warned delegates not to cheer the vote results.
“We don’t throw divorce parties,” Mr. Barber said. “Whatever the results are, behave like Christians.”
Speaking to reporters following the vote, Mr. Warren said he anticipated defeat.
“We made this effort knowing we weren’t going to win,” said Mr. Warren, author of the best-selling book “The Purpose Driven Life.”
Mr. Warren, a fourth-generation Baptist preacher, said the vote marks a break with decades of SBC practice that allowed congregations to dissent on various points of doctrine and remain in “friendly cooperation” — the term Baptists use for denominational affiliation.
He said he believes the expulsion of Saddleback is the tip of a reactionary iceberg.
“This is going to be an inquisition, and it will probably go on for 10 years,” he said. “And we will be the ‘Shrinking Baptist Convention.’”
Addressing the delegates before Tuesday’s vote, Mr. Warren said: “For 178 years, the SBC has been a blend of at least a dozen different tribes of Baptists. If you think every Baptist thinks like you, you’re mistaken. But we share a mutual commitment to the inerrancy and infallibility of God’s Word, and to the Great Commission of Jesus.”
The Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, responded to Mr. Warren’s appeal by citing the history of the doctrinal statement limiting the pastoral role to men.
“In the year 2000, the words ‘the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture’ was inserted because 30 years ago this issue threatened to tear this denomination apart,” Mr. Mohler said. “The definition of ‘friendly cooperation’ came down to the fact that it was an issue that would endanger the cooperative cohesion and faithfulness of the church, of the Southern Baptist Convention.”
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.