They have a long way to go, but the Southern Baptists have finally begun to take their professed faith seriously and clean their house.
The letter in October came as a shock to Linda Barnes Popham, who had been the pastor of Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., for 30 years, the first woman to lead her congregation. She had served in ministry even longer, since she started as a pianist at age 16.
But now, she read in the letter, officials of the Southern Baptist Convention had received a complaint about her church being led by a woman. The denomination was investigating, it said.
She replied at length, listing her qualifications and her church’s interpretation of the Bible that affirmed her eligibility to lead. Church deacons, including men, rallied to her defense.
Convention officials decided to expel her church anyway, along with four other congregations that have female pastors, including one of the most prominent in the country, Saddleback Church, based in Southern California.
“I never believed this would happen,” Ms. Barnes Popham said of the move to expel her church, as she prepared to appeal the expulsion on Tuesday afternoon before thousands of delegates at the annual S.B.C. convention in New Orleans. “Why would you want to silence the voices of the faithful churches? Why?”
However the delegates vote on her appeal, the larger message is clear: There is a movement in the Southern Baptist Convention, a denomination that is often a bellwether for evangelical America, to purge women from its leadership.
The right wing of the Southern Baptists, the largest Protestant denomination in America, is now — like conservatives more broadly — cracking down on what it sees as dangerous liberal drift.
UPDATE: Members of the Southern Baptist Convention upheld the decision of the Executive Committee to boot Fern Creek Baptist Church from the organization, on a 9,700-806 vote.
It’s about time. The answer to the woman’s question is very straightforward. “Why would you want to silence the voices of the faithful churches?” Because no Christian church led by a woman is faithful. Those voices are satanic.
If women want to start their own equalitarian Goddess-centered pagan religion, they currently have the right to do so in most countries throughout the West. What they don’t have the right to do, what they will never have the right to do no matter what the law asserts, is to elevate their own sensibilities above the Bible or violate the tenets of the Christian faith and still call themselves “Christian”.
These false female pastors should be grateful. If events proceed the way history suggests they will, within 50 years they won’t just be expelled, they’ll be burned at the stake.