It's rooted in the unorthodox, distorted theology and doctrine that emerges from the combination of nineteenth century fundamentalism with the distorted interpretation of the sixty-six books of the Protestant Bible subjected to the doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy. It is complicated further by the push of Evangelical conservatives into right wing politics as a result of the pressures that come from white Christian nationalism creeping into the churches.
There's a power vacuum among Southern Baptists now, more than forty years after a movement tagged as the "Conservative Resurgence" was launched in 1979 with the dual purpose of bringing the denomination into full support of right wing Republican politics, using the theological and doctrinal claim that it was sliding down the "slippery slope" of liberalism, requiring restoration of the belief in the sixty-six books of the Protestant Bible as inerrant, and infallible, the sole authority for the faith and practice of the church.
The two men who used their personal connections, power and influence to orchestrate the political activity in order to bring about this resurgence, Dr. Paige Patterson, then president of broken down Criswell College, a fundamentalist school operated by First Baptist Church of Dallas, where the power-broker pastor W. A. Criswell still occupied the pulpit, and Paul Pressler, a Texas Appeals Court Justice and Republican Party community organizer and operative, revered among Southern Baptists as the "architects" of this movement, are both out of the picture, disgraced by their own involvement in the sexual abuse scandal that the denomination's leadership can't seem to resolve.
Patterson was involved in the negligent mishandling of abuse and rape accusations at both Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina and at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, under his presidency at both schools. He was ultimately dismissed from Southwestern for this reason, and not for his gross mismanagement of the seminary, leading to an almost 70% decline in enrollment and financial resources. Pressler passed away two years ago, after charges of sexually abusing young men in the churches where he served as a youth pastor and Sunday school teacher, and in association with his law firm. You can click this link to Baptist News Global to read about all of that scandal.
Will Persistence Pay Off?
This is the third time an attempt to amend the constitution with this specific requirement has been attempted. The first time it was introduced, by Virginia pastor Mike Law, is was approved, but it failed to get the two thirds vote it needed at the subsequent convention. The following year, a Texas pastor, Juan Sanchez, introduced it again, but it failed to get the required two thirds vote to be brought back the following year. So this year, Dr. Al Mohler, noted Southern Baptist pontificator, commenter, influencer and President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, made the recommendation to place the amendment in the constitution.
Mohler's motion to amend the constitution passed 6,028 to 2,026, just under a three to one vote. It should be noted that 11,692 messengers were registered for the convention which means that when this vote, billed as the most important thing the convention was doing this year, was taken, 3,638 messengers did not cast a ballot. However, under the SBC's parliamentary rules, non-voters do not count in the total. Having almost a third of the messengers not vote on an issue isn't all that unusual at an SBC meeting, especially not in Orlando, where this denomination has now met four times since boycotting Disney.
Complimentarianism, the name given by conservatives to the ideology which claims that the Apostle Paul laid down authoritative comments restricting women from preaching or serving as a pastor, the "episkopos", bishop or elder as the Greek term in I Timothy 3 would suggest, runs very strong among Southern Baptists. That is due largely to the anti-educational bias that infected the formation of hundreds of Baptist churches along the western frontier, and in the south, due to a lack of educated, seminary trained pastors and leaders mostly as the result of the Second Great Awakening, a movement that produced as many cults as it did new Christians, by the way.
There is also a whole lot of what I can generally call "Southern American culture" that is part of this errant theological perspective, stemming from the same kind of faulty, literalist, "word for word, verse by verse" interpretation of the Bible that convinced Southern Baptists to separate from the Triennial Convention in 1845, in full support of the belief that the black man was inferior to the white man, and that this belief was an unassailable truth, in the words of Andrew Stephens. That same literalist, fundamentalist approach, treating every verse separately as its own command and nugget of truth is exactly what has produced complimentarianism.
Baptist churches, unlike most of the other branches of Christianity that have developed over the 2000 year history of the church, are independent and autonomous. Each one is a local body, with no formal or ecclesiastical connection to any hierarchy, so a church is the highest level of authority when it comes to interpreting and applying scripture, the church determines its own leadership, including who will serve as its pastor, and ordination of ministers is determined by the leadership and congregation of the local church alone. When the churches in the Southern states formed their own denomination in 1845, they separated not only from cooperation with other Baptists, but also from the colleges, universities and seminaries where ministers were educated.
I'll say it here, because it's true. It's not possible to understand the Christian gospel revealed by God through Jesus, if all that's available is a King James Bible and a man with a 6th grade education who has been taught to read, and interprets it literally, verse by verse. It's a disadvantage to start Bible study without even a basic understanding that verses and chapters are reference points and not the outline of the original text.
The Bible is Not Equally "Inspired"
The statements of faith adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention over the course of its history reflect influence and change when it comes to specific theological issues. In the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message, under the section which defines the denomination's belief regarding the sixty-six books of the Protestant Bible, the last line very clearly states, "The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ."
While much of that paragraph states beliefs that have been determined by common agreement, this last statement is the key to any hope of achieving an accurate interpretation of the Bible, if such is actually possible from a 2000 plus year old text that has been undeniably filtered by, influenced by and altered by culture. Christians ultimately concluded that Jesus Christ was both fully human, and fully divine, the incarnate word in the flesh, a direct and thorough revelation of the nature of God himself. This doctrine, called the Supremacy of Christ, establishes the words and the life work of Jesus as the Christian gospel. So everything else must be interpreted through the filter of that belief, and all of the implications involved.
So it's not possible to consider the works of the Apostles, or the Prophets, or any other Biblical authors as being equally inspired and equally authoritative with the words of Jesus, even if we're at the point of acknowledging that what we read in our modern English translations is a relatively accurate rendering of the original manuscripts in ancient Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic.
Much of the basis of the Christian nationalism we see among Evangelical conservatives is based on Old Testament theocracy, and the old covenant which God made with Israel, through patriarchal heritage. However, if Christians believe that Jesus is the criterion by which all scripture is to be interpreted, he makes a comprehensive statement in the Sermon on the Mount which puts the perspective of the Old Covenant in its place. He declares an end to it, in Matthew 5:17.
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish, but to fulfill."
And how did Jesus fulfill both of these things?
He did not establish a theocratic kingdom with himself as the political and spiritual head. He separated the spiritual kingdom from the literal kingdom, giving the spiritual kingdom a much different identity and purpose. Declaring the old covenant, and the prophets, fulfilled, Jesus taught a salvation that involves acceptance of his sacrifice on the cross as the penalty for violating the law, to which obedience once represented the same kind of salvation. And he established a spiritual kingdom, the Christian Church, which transcends the political authority of a theocratic state, and repreents an accessible kingdom made up of those who are spiritually redeemed from sin.
The Christian gospel is simple, not complicated. It is founded on the principles and values taught by Jesus. If you want a quick and easy to understand look at exactly what that involves, the gospel writer Matthew recorded what is known as the "Sermon on the Mount" in Chapters 5, 6 and 7, starting off with the Beatitudes. I've actually been a member of two churches which understood this as the foundation of Christian faith and practiced, and which actually worked because there wasn't some kind of ulterior motive to control or to use faith as a means of wielding some kind of power.
I'll Cut to the Chase
Constructing theological systems like complimentarianism, and then putting it up against egalitarianism, is an attempt to gain power for the purpose of control. It's simply fallling for the third temptation of Jesus, when he was offered rule of the world in exchange for his loyalty. Many of the older Southern Baptist congregations hold on to some of the last vestiges of antebellum Southern culture, remnant social order of the old Confederacy, and, seeing what they label as "militant feminism" as a threat to that culture, they've tried to package it as satanic evil influence, and use the churches they control to fight against it.
Jesus, however, wasn't concerned with the social order. He was concerned with revealing the nature and character of God to humankind. That concern is characterized when he asked a young lawyer to look at the law, which he fulfilled, and tell him what it said.
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength," responded the lawyer, "and love your neighbor as you love yourself."
"You have answered correctly, Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live." [Luke 10:27-28, NIV]
And without a debate on complimentarianism, or on the purpose of the law, that was it.
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