Last month, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) passed an amendment that would bar cooperating churches from having women in the pastorate as is commanded in Scripture. The amendment was passed overwhelmingly by the messengers with more than 2/3 of the vote in favor. The amendment will need to be re-affirmed at the 2024 annual meeting in order to take effect. And there are many, like former Southern Baptist Convention president, JD Greear, who are campaigning against it.

As I previously wrote, many messengers who voted in favor of the amendment were only doing so to appease the vocal conservative extreme minority. The vast majority of these messengers did not realize what the consequences of voting for such a biblical amendment would be, and thought that by sacrificing a few unpopular churches, like Saddleback, they could simply keep the conservatives quiet.

Yet, as was revealed yesterday in another post, the consequences of passing this amendment collide with another of the SBC messengers’ pet ideologies—the “racial reconciliation” movement. This movement, which was popularized by former ERLC head, Russell Moore, has essentially taught white Southern Baptists that they are guilty of racism by the very virtue of their skin color, and that their only escape is constant penance in the form of “anti-racism.” Yet, a move such as passing an anti-woman pastor amendment in the SBC is now causing a coalition of over 4 thousand black churches to play the race card. This coalition, according to a letter written to SBC president, Bart Barber, accuses the amendment of having a disproportionate effect on black churches in the SBC, because many of these churches have women pastors.

And for this reason, JD Greear is calling on Southern Baptists to reject the ratification of this amendment next year.

In a blog post, Greear compares the passage of this amendment, which is named the Mike Law Amendment, to Nancy Pelosi’s push to pass Obamacare. Asserting that this amendment would have the same kind of “unintended consequences” that the passage of Obamacare had, Greear writes:

While supportive of the desire to affirm complementarianism, I want to suggest that this amendment is not the way to do that, and that it will have deleterious effects far beyond what most Southern Baptists intend, as evidenced by this open letter by our National African American Fellowship, who are pleading with us to slow down and consider the implications of what we’re doing.

But Greear’s reasoning is unscrupulous and lacking in any biblical grounding. Essentially, Greear doesn’t want Southern Baptists to ratify the amendment because there are a disproportionate amount of black churches that have women pastors, and that just wouldn’t be fair to them. Therefore, Greear suggests that instead of holding these churches accountable to biblical ecclesiology and principles, that Southern Baptists should instead compromise and sit around and waste time with more dialogue.

He writes:

I do oppose this amendment because it binds the hands of the Credentials Committee from differentiating between those churches who have committed (to use Al Mohler’s words) a “grievous error” (in this case, rejecting complementarianism) and those who I believe simply have a nomenclature problem. Since the Conservative Resurgence, we have sought to be united on primary things (e.g. salvation by faith alone, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the inerrancy of the Bible, etc.) and secondary things also (e.g. complementarianism, believer’s baptism, regenerate church membership, etc.). This amendment, however, makes conformity on a tertiary thing (right nomenclature of an office) a standard for fellowship.

Let’s break down what Greear is saying here. Previously, in his blog, he admitted that the role of pastor is limited to men and that complementarianism should be the standard. However, his argument is that Southern Baptists should differentiate between churches that truly have women pastors and churches that only call women pastors, but really aren’t. In other words, some churches are simply calling women pastors who aren’t really pastors, and we should ignore those churches, especially since most of these churches are black. And being labeled a “racist” because of their complementarianism should be off the table.

Greear’s reasoning is so far beyond comprehensible reasoning that it should be completely ignored and written off—as are most things Greear says. Yet, his argument will be highly influential and many messengers will fall for it. Instead of insisting that cooperating churches change and align themselves with biblical teaching, Greear wants the SBC to compromise on the issue, put it on the back burner, and largely ignore it.