Voddie Baucham, one of the leaders of the Conservative Baptist Network within the Southern Baptist Convention, says he was asked to accept the nomination of Southern Baptist President but that he isn’t sure if he is technically eligible. Rumors have been swirling online about Baucham’s possible run for president as current president, Ed Litton—who has been embroiled in a plagiarism scandal for the past year—announced he would not be seeking re-election.

Baucham, who wrote the anti-social justice book Fault Lines and remains a staunch conservative in the midst of liberal drift in the Southern Baptist Convention by the mainstream circuit of denominational elitists, is a favorite among conservative Baptist leaders like Tom Buck and Tom Ascol.

The only candidate who has officially been announced as a nominee is Willy Rice, pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, FL. Rice, a charismatic sympathizer, headed the Southern Baptist Convention’s pastor’s conference in 2015 where he invited Ben Carson, a Seventh-Day Adventist, to preach. Amid backlash, he ultimately canceled Carson.

Other videos have surfaced calling into question Rice’s biblical principles as he preached a sermon at the annual meeting in 2021 defending Beth Moore and taking a jab at John MacArthur who urged Moore to end her rebellion against God and “go home.” Rice also hosted a panel series on “racial reconciliation” where he and the panelists discussed racial issues through the lens of Critical Race Theory and advanced social justice ideas.

Rice also makes the claim that he is against Critical Race Theory but that he believes in systemic racism—an oxymoronic claim.

Baucham has demonstrated that he has little patience for the perversion of the gospel in any form, particularly in the forms facing Southern Baptists today. Among them are social justice, feminism, and sexual immorality.

Speaking to the Christian Post, Baucham says he considers himself an “outsider” when it comes to the elite swamp that currently controls the denomination.

“I have indeed been asked to accept a nomination for SBC President. While I am honored to have been asked, I am not sure I am eligible,” Baucham said in a statement according to the Christian Post. “There are questions about the way church membership is considered for missionaries (SBC Article II and Article VIII).”

Article II, which states “It is the purpose of the Convention to provide a general organization for Baptists in the United States and its territories for the promotion of Christian missions at home and abroad…” may be the article in question as Voddie Baucham, a member in good standing of a Southern Baptist Church in the United States, currently serves as a missionary in Africa.

“My sending church (the church I planted) has always practiced regenerate, resident church membership. Unfortunately, this is not common practice in many SBC churches. As such, we have always believed that missionaries sent to the field needed to join local churches in order to be shepherded properly,” Baucham told the Christian Post.

“Unfortunately, since the SBC is an American entity, that means missionaries who leave the USA must either practice non-resident membership (which I am convinced is unbiblical), or join a local church and be ‘technically’ outside the SBC while being counted as SBC missionaries,” Baucham continued.

Depending on how these articles are interpreted, Baucham may not be eligible for the nomination of Southern Baptist president even though he is still technically a member of his sending church, the church he himself planted, which is a Southern Baptist Church.

We know that those currently in the running for president of the SBC do not want Baucham to run as he would clearly put the breaks on the leftist drift in the denomination.