Women Pastors Aren't Welcome amidst the Southern Baptists

 

Rev. Linda Barnes Popham 

 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of uncleanness.  So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Matthew 23:27-28 NRSVue

Women are second class Christians and God says so in the bible. There may be a bit of cynical reductionism on my part in making this provocative statement but this is a basic tenet of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. Recently the Southern Baptists turfed five congregations for the sin of ordaining women, calling them pastors, and (sit down please) allowing them to PREACH. 

One of those congregations has a woman pastor, Rev. Linda Barnes Popham, who has served for 30 years while another, Saddleback, is one of the largest in the country. You may have heard about Rick Warren, founder and now pastor emeritus of Saddleback, who wrote the wildly popular book, The Purpose Driven Life. Over the years Warren came to believe that the exegesis of New Testament passages about the role of women in the church was faulty and male-serving. There is now at least one woman pastor at Saddleback who preaches and others given the designation of pastor. 

The decision was appealed, but the denomination doubled down at a recent gathering, effectively ending the association with these congregations. Please note that this is the denomination which covered up sexual abuse by at least 700 males pastors over the years, even though many of them had been criminally charged. They only "came clean" after investigative journalist uncovered a secret list of offenders. Does this smack of creepy male entitlement? It does to me. 

This is also the denomination which drove out Beth Moore, a star teaching figure until she openly criticized what she felt was the hypocrital support of the misogynist, lying  Donald Trump. 

Recently another huge Southern Baptist congregation called Elevation (more than 20,000 worshippers a Sunday) has decided to leave because they too have a woman preacher on staff. Saddleback and Elevation were leaders in newly baptized converts in a denomination which is shrinking in size.

 Rev. Popham's congregation has decided unaminously to retain her as their pastor 

Perhaps more attention should be paid to the "woe passages" Jesus' teaching about the perils of self-righteous religious teachers who look okay on the outside but are rotten on the inside.