4 years running, Southern Baptists weigh tightening ban on churches with
women pastors
[June 06, 2026]
By PETER SMITH
When Southern Baptists gather Tuesday in Florida for their annual
meeting, they'll debate for the fourth year in a row whether to formally
ban churches with a woman serving in any role resembling that of pastor
— not just the top job.
One thing they are unlikely to debate is the politics of many Southern
Baptists, the vanguard of broader white conservative evangelical support
for President Donald Trump.
Officials for the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest
Protestant denomination, say more than 11,000 church representatives
have preregistered for the two-day meeting in Orlando.
Revisiting a ban on churches with women pastors
In the previous three annual meetings, a majority of representatives
voted to amend the SBC constitution to ban churches with women in any
pastoral role. But the measures failed to get a two-thirds supermajority
in two consecutive years that is required to pass an amendment.
The denomination’s statement of belief, the Baptist Faith and Message,
declares that the office of pastor is limited to men. While nonbinding
on churches, this has prompted the SBC to expel some churches with women
in leading pastoral roles. Now the focus is those who preach or serve in
subordinate pastoral roles.
This year, an amendment proposed by Albert Mohler, president of The
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, would exclude any church that
acts “to affirm, appoint, or endorse a woman serving in the office or
function of a pastor/elder/overseer, specifically preaching to the
assembled congregation.”
Mohler noted the debate has consumed too much time and attention.
“Clarity in the constitution would settle that,” he said.
The outgoing SBC president, Clint Pressley, supports the amendment, as
do both candidates running to succeed him.
Another nonbinding resolution with similar language will be considered.
It requires only a simple majority to pass.
As an association of independent congregations, the SBC can’t tell them
what to do. But it can expel any church deemed not to be in “friendly
cooperation.” The convention has ousted churches in recent years that
appointed women to top pastoral positions or asserted the right to do
so. But the status of churches with female assistant pastors is still
debated.
On his own podcast, Mohler recently said it would even be a “problem”
for a church podcast to include a woman answering questions about that
week’s sermon.
Array of issues queued up for debate
That view drew pushback online, including from prominent Bible teacher
Beth Moore, who left the SBC after she faced criticism for advocating
for victims of sexual abuse and criticizing evangelical support for
Trump despite such things as his crude sexual boasts.
“How in heaven’s name a woman discussing a sermon on a podcast could be
objectionable to some is beyond me and what I believe to be beyond
scripture,” she posted on X.
She added later: “Which has been the greater problem: women trying to
become your senior pastors or pastors misusing or abusing women?”
Amy Sims, associate pastor of preschool and children at Sugarland
Baptist Church in Sugarland, Texas, described a now-yearly contrast of
preparing for vacation Bible school just as Southern Baptists are
debating women's ministry.
“I preach. I teach. I disciple children and families,” she wrote on the
independent site Baptist News Global. “I walk with parents through
crises. I visit hospitals. I help lead people to faith in Christ. I
perform baptisms. ... I serve now at a church that is beautifully
supportive of my work and calling as a woman and pastor.”
Every June, Sims added, "there are those who seem determined to remind
me they do not believe God could have called me to do the very work I am
doing.”
Even as the convention's membership shrinks, the annual meeting serves
as a bellwether for religious and political trends among evangelicals.
And as is typical, the biggest attention will be on whether the
already-conservative SBC decides to move further rightward.
The upcoming meeting follows the release of internal statistics showing
a continuation of a nearly two-decade-long decline in membership. It’s
down to 12.3 million, the lowest since 1973.
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Messengers attending the Southern Baptist Convention participate in
worship during the 2025 SBC Annual Meeting, June 10, 2025, in
Dallas. (AP Photo/Richard W. Rodriguez, File)
Southern Baptists have, however, seen a bump in baptisms. They
consider this a key spiritual vital sign because it measures
conversions, though the increase is not enough to stem the overall
decline.
Southern Baptists will consider other policy statements. One
proposed resolution calls for humane treatment of immigrants and
rejecting nativistic and dehumanizing rhetoric while also affirming
the government's responsibility for immigration enforcement.
Another denounces antisemitic violence and conspiracy theories,
notably those arising since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on
Israel. At the same time, the resolution affirms Southern Baptists'
hope for Jews' conversion to Christianity.
In 1996, an SBC resolution called for the evangelization of Jews,
prompting major Jewish leaders to call it a setback for interfaith
relations.
Baptists' long ties to conservative politics
Beyond denominational politics, the majority-white SBC is a core
part of the wider, predominately white evangelical constituency that
has coalesced behind Trump. Prominent Southern Baptists say they see
little change in that.
They like Trump’s official policy recognizing only two, biologically
determined genders, though they worry about his administration’s
moderation on abortion. Baptist leaders have largely supported his
war against Iran, but were quick to move on from Trump’s posting in
April of a social media meme they deemed to be blasphemous.
Trump won the support of about 8 in 10 white evangelical Christian
voters in 2020 and 2024, according to AP VoteCast, a large voter
survey.
About two-thirds of white born-again Protestants approved of Trump’s
overall performance in April, compared to about one-third of U.S.
adults overall. That’s according to survey findings from The
Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Mohler said evangelicals were widely appalled at the Trump
social-media meme depicting himself as a healing savior.
“You had the vast majority of evangelicals saying this is
fundamentally wrong,” Mohler said. But that's “within the context of
the fact that overwhelmingly evangelicals supported President Trump
as president."
Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of the large First Baptist Church in
Dallas and a longtime Trump supporter, said he appreciated that the
president “had enough sensitivity to remove” the meme after the
backlash.
Emphasizing that he was speaking for himself and not his church or
the SBC, Jeffress added that he supported Trump's creation of a
Religious Liberty Commission, where Jeffress testified about what he
contended was unfair scrutiny of his church by the IRS.
Jeffress also supported Trump's decision to go to war against Iran,
saying a president has “not only the right but the God-given duty to
protect our nation.”
Mohler agreed, but sought to temper expectations. He said he
supported past wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but now realizes that
some of their objectives, such as nation-building, were not
realistic. A just war needs “limited and honest aims,” he said.
Dwight McKissic, senior pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in
Arlington, Texas, has criticized fellow Southern Baptist leaders for
both their political slant and their gender focus.
The Black pastor posted on X that the SBC and its theologians have
been wrong about issues ranging from slavery and segregation to the
mistreatment of sexual-abuse survivors.
“And now they expect us to just blindly trust them on gender
theology and women in ministry issues?" McKissic wrote.
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