ABOVE: Towne View Baptist Church, photo via the church’s Facebook page.
Divisions over race, politics, gender and LGBTQ issues are roiling America’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention.
The agenda at this week’s executive committee included items reflecting those divisions, which ultimately resulted in four churches being ousted, two for LGBTQ inclusion. One was a a church in Kennesaw, Georgia, which the SBC said “accepted LGBTQ people into its congregation, contravening Southern Baptist doctrine.”
Jim Conrad, the pastor of Towne View Baptist Church in Kennesaw, said ahead of time that he was at peace with the likelihood that his church will be “disfellowshipped” by the executive committee during its meeting. But Conrad saw broader challenges for the SBC as its stances on various sensitive issues are questioned from inside and outside.
“The problem the SBC is facing right now is this: In order to work with them, you’ve got to be in lockstep agreement with them on every point. Nine out of 10 won’t get you by,” Conrad said. “That’s just a shame. They’re going to limit themselves in terms of who’s able to work them.”
Some of the most volatile topics facing the SBC aren’t on the executive committee agenda but have fueled passionate blog posts and social media exchanges in recent weeks. Among the issues:
- Some Black pastors have left the SBC and others are voicing their dismay over pronouncements by the SBC’s six seminary presidents, all of them white, restricting how the subject of systemic racism can be taught at their schools.
- Several prominent SBC conservatives, citing church doctrine that bars women from being pastors, have questioned why the denomination’s North American Mission Board has supported a few churches where women hold titles such as children’s pastor and teaching pastor. The board says it seeks to persuade such churches to change those titles.
- The leadership continues to draw criticism from victims of church-related sexual abuse over promises made in 2019 to combat that problem. Activists say inquiries related to sex abuse should be handled by independent experts, not by the SBC’s credentials committee.
Conrad expected his church to be ousted based on a letter he received Feb. 8 from the credentials committee asserting that Towne View Baptist “is not in friendly cooperation” with the SBC. Towne View began welcoming LGBTQ worshippers in Oct. 2019 after a same-sex couple with three adopted children asked Conrad if they could attend, a decision he defends as the right thing to do.
“The alternative would have been to say, `We’re probably not ready for this,’ but I couldn’t do that,” said Conrad, pastor there since 1994.
Conrad has the option of appealing an expulsion, but he’s making plans to affiliate at least temporarily with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which allows its churches to set their own policies regarding LGBTQ inclusion.
Conrad says about 30% of his congregation, which now numbers about 125, left his church over the issue, forcing some budget cutbacks, including a pay cut for Conrad.
The pastor addressed the SBC’s decision Feb. 23 via social media. “We have been informed this afternoon that the Executive Committee has declared that Towne View Baptist Church is ‘no longer a church in friendly cooperation’- effectively dismissing us as a member church of the Southern Baptist Convention,” he wrote. Read his response in full below:
For more information about the church, visit their website.
