Why It Matters: The resignation comes because the denomination offers with strife inside its membership.

With greater than 13 million members, the S.B.C. is the nation’s largest Protestant denomination and serves as a bellwether for priorities amongst American evangelicals. The S.B.C. has been wracked by fierce divisions lately over politics, gender and race. Some conservatives within the denomination concern that it’s drifting towards liberalism, whereas others concern a takeover by a faction that values ideological purity over all.

At the S.B.C.’s annual assembly this summer season, delegates hotly debated women’s roles in church leadership. The denomination voted towards readmitting two church buildings that had appealed their expulsion for having girls pastors. Delegates additionally took steps to amend the denomination’s structure to strengthen the ban on girls as pastors, a transfer which will open up different a whole bunch of church buildings to investigation and expulsions.

The government committee, which has greater than 80 members, conducts enterprise for the denomination between its annual conferences. The chief government of the committee is taken into account extra highly effective in some ways than the denomination’s president, a extra high-profile however comparatively symbolic position.

Background: Mr. McLaurin is the newest chief to step down amid turmoil.

Mr. McLaurin was the primary Black chief of one of many denomination’s “entities,” a class that features mission organizations, seminaries, a publishing firm and a public coverage arm. His ascension whilst an interim chief was touted as a historic milestone for the 178-year-old denomination, which was based as a defender of slavery. (The denomination apologized for its stance on slavery within the Nineteen Nineties, and the variety of its ethnically numerous congregations has grown.)

Mr. McLaurin is the committee’s third chief in a row to step down in tumultuous circumstances. Ronnie Floyd, the earlier president, resigned over his objections to increasing the powers of investigators within the dealing with of sexual abuse claims within the denomination. Before that, Frank Page stepped down in 2018 over what the committee described on the time as a “morally inappropriate relationship.”

In a video circulated to Southern Baptists final week, Mr. McLaurin praised the work of the denomination’s pastors, academics and seminary professors. “It’s a great joy for me to be on this journey with you, as we lift high the name and the fame of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

What’s Next: The seek for a everlasting chief continues.

Mr. McLaurin’s resignation suggests the denomination’s political and bureaucratic turmoil is much from over. At a gathering in Dallas this spring, the manager committee rejected its personal search committee’s advice for the following chief, assembling a brand new search committee whose work is ongoing.

Mr. Robertson, the committee’s chair, mentioned in his assertion that the group would difficulty additional updates on its management search “in the near future.” The government committee’s subsequent assembly takes place in Nashville in September.