The List: Policing Women’s Pastoral Titles and the Failure of Racial Reconciliation in the SBC

Abstract

This article analyzes recent controversies around gender in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) by examining an online list of women pastors from 112 SBC churches created in 2023 by supporters of an amendment to restrict “any kind” of pastor to qualified men. Using interviews with listed women and primary sources posted to church websites in the form of statements of beliefs, staff pages, church newsletters, church council minutes, and pastors’ blogs, this study examines the identity of these women and how they and their churches responded to being publicly identified. It also analyzes the making of this list in the context of denominational history and contemporaneous crises. This study argues that while the proposed amendment largely borrowed language, recycled tactics, and reiterated themes from previous changes to the SBC Faith and Message, divergent responses to the list revealed the persistence of racial divisions in the denomination. Most striking is the absence of any direct response to the list or the proposed amendment by listed Black churches, indicating the complicated and contingent relationship between these churches and the denomination. The absence of engagement also subtlety signals the underlying failure by 2024 of a racial reconciliation movement championed by SBC leaders throughout the previous three decades.

Keywords

• Southern Baptist
• women
• gender
• pastor
• race
• racial reconciliation