Since 1997, 13 men have served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention. But during that time, only one person has held another important position for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination: Recording Secretary John Yeats. However, that will change in June.
Ed Litton, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, announced Tuesday he will break with tradition and not seek a second term in the top convention role.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee has offered a public apology and a confidential monetary settlement to sexual abuse survivor Jennifer Lyell, who was mischaracterized by the denomination’s in-house news service when she decided to go public with her story in March 2019.
The tone of the midwinter Nashville gathering was in stark contrast to that of recent Executive Committee meetings, which were marked by sharp divides over issues such as race and politics and how to proceed with an investigation into the ways Baptist leaders have responded
Tennessee pastor Willie McLaurin has been named interim president and CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee, becoming the first African American to lead one of the denomination’s ministry entities in its more than 175-year history.
For some in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the senior pastor must be a man, but staff and other pastoral roles can be filled by women. For others, pastoral duties, especially preaching, are limited to men, and women are only allowed to teach the Bible
In episode 26 of Dangerous Dogma, Nancy Ammerman, professor emerita of sociology of religion at Boston University, talks about Southern Baptist conflicts, fundamentalism, sociology of religion, and her new book Studying Lived Religion.
In recent weeks, state Baptist groups in North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Florida, and California have set up committees or task forces to address sexual abuse. Attempts to set up similar responses failed in Mississippi and Missouri.
Lawyers for Georgia pastor Mike Stone filed a complaint Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee accusing former Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore of defamation, false light invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Since 2018, the Southern Baptist Convention has lost a series of high-profile leaders whose tenures ended due to controversy or misconduct. The latest to depart is Ronnie Floyd, a former megachurch pastor who resigned as president of the SBC’s Nashville-based Executive Committee in mid-October.