A Tennessee church doesn’t get to identify itself as Southern Baptist any longer because it called a woman to the pulpit.
Church Faces Ultimatum After Voting In Female Pastor
With a letter in the door this week, the Greater Tabernacle Church was kicked out of the county Baptist’s Association because their pastor was a woman. The vote Monday was 73 to 4: a no tolerance policy for a female pastor.
Those are the rules; I guess they had it coming.
The election of a female pastor, like allowing gays into membership, is a theological breach that invites disfellowship — and the SBC is very hard-nosed about running off folk who don’t toe the theological line the way decent, godly people ought. But when Pastor Bubba is discovered to be raping the congregation’s children, and the congregation rallies to his support? That’s a criminal matter and none of the SBC’s business. I ‘get’ the reasoning, but the result is perverse. Seriously: There is something wildly amiss with a club that condemns those who choose a female pastor, but says nothing whatever to a congregation that protects the man who rapes their own children.