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Check out Daniel Lombroso's film Hold the Line.
In a few weeks, Southern Baptist leaders from across the country will gather in Dallas for their annual conference. The events, which draw thousands of participants each year, offer a window into the issues that have sharply divided the nation’s largest evangelical denomination. In recent years, one of the most contentious debates has been the role of women in church government. Southern Baptists have repeatedly affirmed their theological opposition to women serving in pastoral positions. But some members have pushed to make that ban more comprehensive and formalize it in official denominational documents. The debate over women in ministry has been intense, touching on a variety of sensitive topics: how churches seek to reach people on their level rather than focus on biblical texts; changing ideas about gender roles in American life, including for women and transgender people; and the sense among conservatives that their understanding of the Bible is under legal and cultural attack.
The film was made with the support of the Pulitzer Center.
In 2023, New Yorker producers Daniel Lombroso and Devon Blackwell met with Tom Ascol, a pastor in Cape Coral, Florida, whose organization Founders Ministries claims to be driving what Ascol describes as a stricter adherence to biblical teachings in the Southern Baptist Convention and among local churches. “Violating something that the Bible teaches so plainly and so clearly will prompt churches to say, ‘Well, we fixed that. We can fix other things,’” Ascol said in a discussion of women pastors. “Somebody’s got to hold the line.” This year, Southern Baptist leaders voted to disfellowship several churches for allowing women to serve as pastors, including Saddleback, the California megachurch founded by renowned pastor Rick Warren. Ascol pointed out that the SBC is aging and in decline. “It's not very smart when you're losing half a million members a year by deliberately excluding people who want to fellowship with you,” he said. “We continue to be a shrinking Baptist convention.”
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Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, is the latest congregation to be disfellowshipped in 2023. Pastor Linda Barnes Popham told the New Yorker’s Eliza Griswold last year that her church has been thriving since leaving the SBC. Its membership has nearly doubled, and several young families have joined after hearing about Popham through news outlets. Meanwhile, the Southern Baptist Convention may again discuss women pastors in June. “There’s no question that the convention is in decline,” Askole Lombroso said. “We need a reformation. We need a revival. And it has to start in the house of God.”
Sourse: newyorker.com
