Baptists

At their annual meeting in New Orleans this week, Southern Baptists doubled down on their crusade against female clergy. “Messengers” (delegates) of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination ratified the expulsion of two congregations — one of them Saddleback Church in Lake Forest — for condoning the ordination of women. The venue was significant. In New Orleans in March 1967, Paul Pressler, a Texas judge, and a seminary student named Paige Patterson met at Café du Monde and, according to durable legend, strategized…

Last week the Southern Baptist Convention ousted Saddleback Church, one of its largest and highest-profile member churches, from its ranks. The reason? Because the Orange County megachurch has ordained three women as associate pastors and named Stacie Wood, wife of the church’s senior pastor, Andy Wood, a teaching pastor. The SBC added a ban on female pastors to its statement of core beliefs, the Faith and Message doctrine, in 2000, but the decision to remove Saddleback, a rare success story in a time of declining church…

Two years ago, an Orange County megachurch took a stand that pitted it against conservative members of its denomination. It ordained three women as pastors. Now, the Southern Baptist Convention has ousted Saddleback Church, its second-largest congregation. The Lake Forest-based evangelical church, founded by popular pastor and author Rick Warren, is one of the largest churches in the United States. It was among five congregations found not to be “in friendly cooperation” with the convention because they “have a female…