Foreign interference is not just a theme in lobbying and politics at the national level, but also has occurred in the realm of Southern Baptist Politics. It is one thing for an American Nondenominational Baptist, Presbyterian, or even a Catholic to comment on SBC politics, but it is entirely different when the outsider is from an entirely different country. Within the American context, the SBC is the largest protestant denomination, so its affairs have a broader impact on American Protestantism, including its seminary graduates who do not always remain Southern Baptist pastors.
That is where egalitarian Anglican Michael Byrd chimes in from Down Under to attack the Al Mohler Amendment which seeks to disfellowship any churches that “affirm, appoint, or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor, elder, or overseer, such as preaching to the assembled congregation.” The language is stronger than the Mike Law Amendment. Byrd is akin to the Russell Moore of Australia and it is evident in how he pontificates on cultural issues.
He lists five reasons for his opposition to Al Mohler’s amendment.
(1) Out of all the issues facing the SBC, America, and the world, why is this one receiving so much oxygen? Barbarians are at the gates and the # 1 concern of parts of the SBC is to strip women of certain ministry titles.
He does not go into specifics on what the “barbarians” at the gate so happen to be. In the political sphere, it would literally be immigration into the West and Anglosphere, but liberals do not perceive that to be an existential threat. Maybe he means Christian Nationalism or Right Wing Christians, but those would be the watchers on the wall.
Historically, female ordination has been a nail in the coffin for every mainline denomination while leading to worse heresies like homosexual affirmation. Within the SBC, the problem is actually worse than it was during the Conservative Resurgence and is often obfuscated by the Senior Pastor-Associate Pastor Distinction or other semantic games to bypass the rules. He does not posit what the number one concern should be, only that it is not something he agrees with.
(2) The proposal assumes that pastor and patriarch are equivalents, which removes women from the pastoral ministries of their churches.
His argument is actually that the duties of a pastor are so broad that they apply to women.
There are assistant/associate pastors, youth pastors, worship pastors, family discipleship pastors, pastoral care leaders, pastors for those with special needs and disabilities, and many of these pastoral roles are filled by women.
It does not speak to the value of women in their ministries if a male youth leader is called “youth pastor,” while a female youth leader doing the very same job at the same church is called “youth minister.” Different titles for the same job imply not only inequality but a lessening of the role and a diminishing of its significance when performed by women.
There is a reasonable objection to the concept of a youth pastor being entirely nonexistent in Scripture. It also implies that a Youth Pastor is lesser on the totem pole than the other pastors. This is not an argument rooted in Scripture since the orthodox position is predicated both on the teachings of the Bible and ontological realities. Not every ministry deserves the title of pastor. Byrd is diluting what it means to be a pastor to promote his egalitarian subversion. He would proceed to compare ordination to being a mechanic to suggest that there is no difference between ministry and a secular occupation. This is a low view of ordination despite being a “high church” Anglican.
(3) No other complementarian churches and denominations are taking this position.
Whether that is Sydney Anglicans in Australia or the FIEC in the UK, none of them are making videos claiming that banning women from the title of “pastor” is among the greatest needs of our generation.
Fact Check: False. In 2024, the PCA amended their Book of Church Order (BCO) 7-3 to ban female officers in the church. Clearly, the PCA believes this to be a pressing issue, which it is given how between 5-10% of their churches are in violation of their professed standards. Churches that violate the BCO tend to cause other problems in the PCA like Irwyn Ince at Grace Mosaic in DC. Michael Byrd cannot even be bothered to do basic research on the issues.
(4) I think there is a lot of group psychology going on here.
One thing I’ve noticed about SBC life is that the upper echelons of leadership have a pathological fear of not being the most conservative person in the room. So leaders must constantly push further and deeper into increasingly restrictive positions on many topics in order to maintain the existence of a live threat and to demonstrate the legitimacy of their conservative bona fides. Sometimes, when I hear about SBC politics, I don’t know whether I’m reading about Mohler’s “conservative resurgence” or Mao’s “cultural revolution,” because the social dynamics of denounce and purge, then purge anyone who objects to the purging, are strikingly familiar.
Al Mohler has always been a whether vein in the SBC, going wherever the wind blows. If anything, the SBC was trending liberal for a few years and has continuously elected liberals as their presidents. These liberals might disfellowship churches with female lead “pastors” but are tolerant if a woman is ordained but under a man’s authority. They also fabricated a sexual abuse scandal which costs the denomination millions while tarnishing their own reputation. Mao did not win because of “denounce and purge” but because the Nationalist bore the brunt of the Japanese invasion and ultimately laid the foundation for the rural communists to take over. By the end of the war, they had a better army and fresh weapons caches, giving them the upper hand to starve millions. The pendulum swinging in the SBC is not tantamount to some cultural revolution.
(5) To be cynical, this amendment does not really have anything to do with Baptist polity about the independence of each congregation to call and address its ministers however it so chooses.
He is going to try and suggests that having a pastoral standard compromises the autonomy of the local church.
In fact, some 25 years ago, Al Mohler was quoted as saying:
“We would never presume to tell another church whom they may call as a pastor or tell another person whether or not they may serve as pastor.”
-R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY, and a member of the BFM study committee.
Make of that what you will, but theological duplicity seems to be the pathway to SBC supremacy.
This is a lame attempt to argue that Mohler is being a hypocrite because the BFM is clear that “the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.” The Mohler Amendment strictly enforces the faith statement as it is written into the SBC constitution. To even be in friendly cooperation, a Baptist Church is supposed to affirm either the BFM 2000 or a similar Baptist faith statement. It also should be noted that the SBC has disfellowshipped churches over legitimate sex scandals, but hardly would Byrd call that a usurpation of the local church autonomy.
The proposed amendment looks like a move designed specifically to associate male-ness with power and women with submission to male power.
Michael Byrd might not like this, but this is what the bible teaches. St. Paul teaches this in 1 Corinthians 11, Ephesians 5, and in 1 Timothy 2. God’s begins his rebuke of Adam by citing his inversion of male hierarchy, which inherently means that patriarchy was instituted at Creation, not a product of the Fall, which egalitarianism requires to be true.
Otherwise, I do inadvertedly get drawn into the pain of women in the SBC, not by looking for it, it just happens.
Listen up, I routinely get emails from SBC women – often studying at SBC seminaries – telling me of the heartbreak they feel when they are constantly devalued, put in a corner, or told to shut up. It’s sad because these women love the churches they were raised in, where they have family and friends. But they tell me that they feel like they are treated with suspicion and are more maligned than valued. Then, they ask me for general advice about what to do, or pose questions about life and ministry in the Anglican world.
Sometimes I get one email every six months, sometimes I get four emails a month, but they arrive with alarming consistency as the best and brightest of SBC women write to me (for some reason!) and tell me that they feel driven out simply for the crime of being gifted – what I call, “Beth Moore Syndrome.”
Byrd proceeds to guilt-trip people with anecdotes to suggests that denying women’s ordination is denying their humanity and inclusion in the church. There is a wide chasm between what actually happened and what they claim in these emails.
Coincidentally, Byrd is promoting the upcoming book, God’s Yes to Women, which seeks to reinterpret 1 Timothy 2 to permit female ordination, and so happens to have a forward by Aimee Byrd, the Beth Moore of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
Conclusion
Michael Byrd is not really arguing that this amendment usurps church autonomy, but that rejection of egalitarianism inhibits the Church’s ability to fulfill the Great Commission. There are other clips of Byrd lamenting that all the commentaries are written by men and how he wants to be more inclusive of female perspectives. This is standpoint epistemology, that the church needs these diverse perspectives when history dictates otherwise. The Council of Nicaea did not require female perspectives, nor did the Westminster Divines, nor did any other historic confession or creed. The Church has never required female perspectives to properly understand the Scriptures or determine doctrine, and it remains unnecessary in 2026.
There is no upside to women’s ordination when it is an affront to a Holy God. Lame counterarguments against Al Mohler hardly change that reality.
