Banning female pastors shows new levels of hypocrisy

Veteran reporters win awards; David Brooks delivers another must-read column

By Ken Tingley

New Orleans is still mostly a convention city.

My first visit to New Orleans was for a national sports editors convention in the 1990s. I’ve been to a couple more since then. The sprawling convention center along the Mississippi River can host several conventions at once and thousands of attendees.

This past week the Southern Baptist Convention was in town.

There was somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 in attendance.

That number startled me, especially considering the debauchery you often see on Bourbon Street. Consider that last year the Baptists met near Disneyland.

If you want to understand this story, you have to understand what the Southern Baptist Convention is all about. It is the largest Baptist organization in the world and its churches are evangelical in doctrine and practice with a strict Biblical interpretation.

It has become a major political force in the conservative movement in recent years and its support is often courted by presidential candidates. Mike Pompeo was here this past week.

The Southern Baptist Convention grants autonomy to local churches to a degree, but in recent years there has been controversy. Membership peaked at about 16 million in 2008, but is under 14 million today.

It should shrink further after this week.

The Southern Baptist Convention voted overwhelmingly to finalize the expulsion of two churches.

Their sin?

They had female pastors.

The Baptists voted to further expand the restrictions on women in church leadership, passing an amendment to their constitution that mandated, “only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.”

My first thought was: Wasn’t most scripture written by men?

There was a photo in the New York Times showed voters at the convention - almost exclusively men in the photo - holding up their voting cards in support of the amendment. The voice vote appeared to be close, but a individual ballot tally was rejected.

An ultra conservative wing of the Southern Baptist Convention had taken over. The fix was in. It appeared “The Handmaid’s Tale” had come to life right before our eyes.

But to understand the level of hypocrisy, you have to go back to last year.

In May 2022, after years of accusations, Guidepost Solutions - an outside consultant -  concluded an investigation into sexual abuse and assault claims going all the way back to 2000. In the 300-page report, it revealed leadership had mishandled abuse claims, belittled victims and their families and opposed efforts for reform.

Hallelujah! The Catholics weren’t the only ones with problems.

The report revealed an internal list of 703 people suspected of abuse.

“For almost two decades, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention to report child molesters and other abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church staff. They made phone calls, mailed letters, sent emails and appeared at meetings and held rallies only to be met, time and time again with resistance, stonewalling and even outright hostility,” the report said.

Afterward, the church published a 205-page list of hundreds of ministers and other church workers whom it described as being “credibly accused” of sexual abuse. Yet no action was ever taken against those accused to ensure they were no longer in positions of power. The list included at least one former president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

In response, the Southern Baptist Convention - after contentious debate - did approve two recommendations last year to create a group to study further changes to safeguard churchgoers and to create a website that tracks pastors and other church workers who have been “credibly accused” of sexual abuse.

To study further changes.

Two months after its June convention, the Department of Justice opened an investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention scandal.

So in response this year, the ultra conservative wing of Southern Baptist Convention announced to the world its solution.

It would condemn women being in leadership roles.

It seems like men were the bigger problem.

It didn’t take long before it became transparent that political forces were behind the movement. The New York Times quoted what it described as an evangelist Marine named Tim Lee as he addressed the women directly during the convention, saying they needed women working the churches.

“We just don’t need you to be the pastors of our churches,” Lee said.

Ouch!

I couldn’t help but wonder if taking away the right to vote was next.

In an interview with the New York Times, Caitlin Gerrald, a long-time Southern Baptist, found herself “profoundly discouraged” by what she heard. She said she walked out of a luncheon featuring an all-male panel discussion on the issue of women’s leadership.

She said it felt like “a personal attack.”

It was a personal attack.

It was a personal attack on every women who is a member.

The Southern Baptist Convention defended the expulsion of female pastors by saying it was worried about “liberal drift” in its churches. That is conservative code for rejecting LGBTQ initiatives, same-sex marriage and homosexuality. And women too, of course.

Seems to me, the ultra conservatives have “moral drift.”

The convention-goers could have gotten some perspective with a visit to the World War II museum just a half-mile from the convention center.

In telling the story of the war, the museum repeatedly emphasizes the role women played on the home front and on the front lines from “Rose the Riveter” in factories, nurses in war zones and a new Women’s Air Service  that trained female pilots to shuttle supplies behind the lines and in the states.

Also currently showing at the museum is an exhibit that celebrates the role Disney played during the war in marketing of war bonds and films to build morale, including one where Donald Duck takes out an airfield all by himself.

It also recounts how female animators were hired to replace the men lost to the war effort.

Women responded in times of war.

They became leaders.

And have been making a difference ever since.

Why would the Southern Baptist Convention want to take that away?

During the convention, the Conservative Baptist Network, founded in 2020, urged the Baptists to not only vote against women in church leadership, but to become more politically active by instituting poll watching and voter mobilization programs at their churches for local and national elections.

Apparently they don’t believe in the separation of church and state either.

Here is one other fact about the Southern Baptist Convention. It was created in 1845 after a spilt with northern Baptists over the issue of slavery.

You can guess which side it was on.

Publishers awards

Always great to see The Post-Star honored for its journalism. It has a long and great history in that regard.

It was especially satisfying this year as long-time contributors Greg Brownell, Maury Thompson and Gretta Hochsprung honored.

Maury was honored for his business reporting while Greg and Gretta were part of a three-person team to be honored with fire coverage in spot news reporting.

They all are just getting better.

A must-read from Brooks

David Brooks, the New York Times conservative columnist who spoke at Skidmore College earlier this year, has done it again with another great column called “I won’t let Donald Trump invade my brain.”

Brooks is a thoughtful guy who always is looking for the good in people. No matter how you fell about Trump, you might want to check this column out.