Crisis in the Southern Baptist Convention: On Saddleback's Ordination of Women

Why Female Ordination Threatens to Divide America's Largest Protestant Denomination 

by Lee Enochs 

"I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen" (Martin Luther in his Reply to the Diet of Worms, April 18, 1521)

As a conservative political writer I do not generally focus on the latest news facing American Evangelicalism, but from time to time, I feel obliged to address certain doctrinal and church related issues pertaining to Christianity in America that have national implications, especially if it effects my own denomination--the Southern Baptist Convention.

I have been a Southern Baptist all of my life (ever since I prayed to receive Christ as a young boy after hearing the Gospel at a Southern Baptist Church).

My Southern Baptist and Evangelical Christian faith is very important and precious to me. I am a devout believer in Jesus Christ, who I believe to be the Son of God who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the dead to give eternal life to all who sincerely turn from their sins and place their faith in Him. I also adhere to without exception and most certainly without apology, to the Southern Baptist Convention's official doctrinal statement, The Baptist Faith and Message (2000).

I am also a two-time graduate of Southern Baptist affiliated seminaries, having received my undergraduate degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas and my Master's of Theology degree from Gateway Seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention in Southern California. 

Tucked between these two "Southern Baptist degrees," I earned an additional master's degree (M.Div.) from Princeton Theological Seminary where I saw first-hand the seductive and destructive power of theological liberalism in an up-close and personal way.

While I was a student at Princeton Theological Seminary, critical race theory and every conceivable heresy was taught in many of my classes and I found theological liberalism to be bankrupt theologically and spiritually and such theological liberalism could be summed upped in H. Richard Niebuhr's famous statement on it, "A God without wrath, brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations without a Cross."

Regarding this current theological controversy in my own denomination, as a Southern Baptist and long-time resident of Southern California, I must say I was alarmed but not surprised by the news coming out of California's largest Southern Baptist Church.

In an event that received massive media attention,  this past Thursday, Saddleback Church, a Southern Baptist megachurch located in Lake Forest, California, located in prosperous Southern Orange, County, California ordained three women.

Please see this Christian Post article on this ordination event: https://www.christianpost.com/news/saddleback-church-ordains-first-female-pastors.html

As a Southern Baptist and as a long-time resident of Orange County, California this concerns me greatly and I am afraid that if this goes unaddressed by the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention and Saddleback in not removed from its affiliation with Southern Baptists, this could contribute to further division within the SBC as a whole.

The Baptist Faith and Message is very clear on the subject of female ordination. Article 6 in this document says, "While men and women are gifted for service, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture." Please see: https://bfm.sbc.net/bfm2000/#vi-the-church

This is a very difficult subject for me to address since as an alumnus of Princeton Theological Seminary which vigorously advocates the ordination of women and strongly opposes and punishes those who do not support female ordination, I know many of my professors and fellow alumni connected to Princeton Seminary will strongly disagree with me on this subject.

After much prayer and study of the Bible, I have come to hold to Complementarianism, the theological view within Christianity that maintains that men and women have different but "complementary" roles and responsibilities in marriage, family life and the within church leadership. While I believe women are absolutely equal in every respect to men, I believe the Bible, which I maintain to be the inerrant, inspired, and infallible Word of Almighty God, teaches that there are certain gender-specific roles and offices in God's church that preclude women such as being a pastor in the church of Jesus Christ.

I take seriously the Apostle's Paul's prohibition of women to the office of pastor in the Church.  As a person that strongly believes in the inspiration and authority of Scripture, I am bound by my conscience and the Word of God to obey such passages of Scripture as 1 Timothy 2:11-14 which says, "Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor."

While I respect Saddleback Church and its pastor Rick Warren very much (he is fellow alumnus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary), I disagree with their decision to ordain these three women last Thursday.

I had the opportunity to visit Saddleback Church several years ago for a Christian concert and was blessed by the performances there and I do not have any desire to disparage the ministry there but, I believe Saddleback Church's ordination of women needs to be addressed by the Southern Baptist Convention immediately. 

As a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, I know all too well what theological liberalism can do to destroy a theological institution and an entire denomination (PCUSA). 

Unless Southern Baptists address issues such as the ordination of women, our denomination will most certainly become irrevocably divided between conservatives who want to maintain traditional theological views and practices and more progressive individuals who want things like the ordination of women to occur throughout the denomination. 

Dr. Al Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has written an excellent post on this issue. I highly recommend that you read this: https://albertmohler.com/2021/05/10/women-pastors-women-preachers-and-the-looming-test-of-the-southern-baptist-convention

"But these have been written that you might believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that by believing you might have life in His name" (John 20:30).

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Lee Enochs is a life-long Southern Baptist and a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Gateway Seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is also the author of A Biblical Defense of Capitalism, and The Case for Rand Paul.