The letter in October got here as a shock to Linda Barnes Popham, who had been the pastor of Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., for 30 years, the primary lady to steer her congregation. She had served in ministry even longer, since she began as a pianist at age 16.

But now, she learn within the letter, officers of the Southern Baptist Convention had acquired a grievance about her church being led by a girl. The denomination was investigating, it stated.

She replied at size, itemizing her {qualifications} and her church’s interpretation of the Bible that affirmed her eligibility to steer. Church deacons, together with males, rallied to her protection.

Convention officers determined to expel her church anyway, alongside with four other congregations which have feminine pastors, together with probably the most outstanding within the nation, Saddleback.

“I never believed this would happen,” Ms. Barnes Popham stated of the transfer to expel her church, as she ready to enchantment the expulsion Tuesday afternoon earlier than hundreds of delegates on the annual S.B.C. conference in New Orleans. “Why would you want to silence the voices of the faithful churches? Why?”

However the delegates vote on her enchantment, the bigger message is evident: There is a motion within the Southern Baptist Convention, a denomination that’s typically a bellwether for evangelical America, to purge ladies from its management.

The proper wing of the Southern Baptists, the most important Protestant denomination in America, is now — like conservatives extra broadly — cracking down on what it sees as harmful liberal drift. Most folks within the denomination have lengthy believed that the workplace of head pastor ought to be reserved for males. But an ultraconservative faction with a loud on-line presence goes additional, urgent for ideological purity and arguing that feminine pastors are a precursor to acceptance of homosexuality and sexual immorality.

Some ultraconservatives at the moment are pushing for investigations and expulsions of the church buildings whose practices differ, like Fern Creek.

The struggle over the place of ladies within the church, lengthy contentious, has been escalating as American evangelicalism more and more fuses with Republican politics and a vocal ultraconservative minority pushes for energy.

The crackdown comes at a second when the nation is broadly re-examining ladies’s rights, a 12 months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. For the Southern Baptists, it additionally comes as victims’ advocates proceed to press the denomination to take motion following devastating experiences of sexual abuse of ladies and kids, and are met with resistance from some males within the group.

As the conference obtained underway Monday in New Orleans, Mike Law, a Virginia pastor, pushed for his proposed modification to the S.B.C. structure that will additional prohibit the position of ladies in management, by stating {that a} church may be Southern Baptist provided that it “does not affirm, appoint, or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind.”

More than 2,000 male pastors and professors signed a letter in help of the proposed modification earlier than the conference started. Church officers selected Monday to advance the proposal to a full ground vote this week, whilst they cautioned that they opposed it, arguing that it was pointless given the denomination’s present theological positions. The modification would have to be handed twice, in consecutive years, to enter impact.

Some Southern Baptists view feminine leaders as “as an early harbinger of a raft of other changes,” stated Joshua Abbotoy, whose church left the denomination final 12 months due to issues a couple of liberal drift. Mr. Abbotoy is the managing director of New Founding, a conservative group whose journal revealed an analysis over the weekend estimating that there have been greater than 1,800 feminine pastors serving in S.B.C. church buildings.

As Mr. Abbotoy sees it, letting go of the idea in some distinct roles for women and men calls into query whether or not “the human person is differentiated between two genders” in any respect, and results in broader questions on sexuality and gender.

Rick Warren, Saddleback’s founding pastor and the writer of one of many best-selling books of all time, has lengthy been a hero inside a practice that prioritizes church development and electrical preaching. But his church was ousted from the denomination in February as a result of he had named a husband and spouse as his successors.

Mr. Warren, who can be interesting his church’s elimination Tuesday, in latest weeks has mounted a protection not simply of his congregation however of his understanding of the Baptist id and evangelicalism extra broadly.

In an open letter addressed “to all Southern Baptists,” Mr. Warren emphasised the denomination’s historical past of rejecting the sort of formal creeds that bind many different traditions. “This is a vote to affirm the God-given freedom of every Baptist to interpret Scripture as a Baptist — by saying no to those who deny that freedom,” he wrote.

Historically, Southern Baptists have given precedence to the autonomy of particular person church buildings, and have seen their denomination as an affiliation quite than a hierarchical group.

Meredith Stone, the chief director of Baptist Women in Ministry, worries that appeals to church autonomy usually are not sufficient to forestall a fundamentalist takeover of the denomination just like the one which occurred through the Reagan administration.

“This was the argument we were making 40 years ago that was unsuccessful,” she stated.

Ms. Stone sees a sample within the denomination’s periodic retrenchments over ladies’s points. Her group was shaped in 1983 to help ladies in church management; the subsequent 12 months, the conference handed a resolution stating that girls could not serve in “pastoral functions.”

“It’s always something where women will gain and then right after, there’s a reaction from the convention,” she stated.

Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and an influential voice within the denomination, was on the committee that revised the Southern Baptist assertion of religion in 2000, including an express assertion that “the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”

“Doctrinal clarity was needed,” Dr. Mohler stated in an interview final week.

“It’s high on the list of contemporary concerns precisely because it’s one of the issues that has been a sign of creeping liberalism,” he stated, which he factors to as a cause different Protestant denominations have seen their numbers drop precipitously.

Membership in Southern Baptist Convention church buildings has been declining for greater than a decade, although with greater than 13 million members, it stays the most important Protestant denomination within the United States.

At a breakfast Tuesday morning, Mike Stone, a Georgia pastor operating for president of the S.B.C., drummed up help for Mr. Law’s proposed modification. “Is it redundant? Yes,” he stated. “But it is apparently necessary.”

On the tables on the breakfast had been snazzy voter guides, a sign that conservatives had been treating the conference like a political marketing campaign, urging delegates to vote towards Saddleback and Fern Creek.

It isn’t clear precisely what number of ladies are pastors within the denomination; estimates vary from dozens to almost 2,000 when a spread of pastoral positions aside from senior pastor are included.

At concern is the very definition of “pastor,” and whether or not a ban on feminine pastors ought to prolong to titles like “children’s pastor” or “women’s pastor,” which have lengthy been seen as acceptable roles for girls as a result of they don’t seem to be instructing or in authority over grownup males.

While the denomination as a complete is overwhelmingly white, Black ladies are closely represented as pastors among the many church buildings which have feminine head pastors.

In addition to Saddleback and Ms. Barnes Popham’s church, three different church buildings had been additionally expelled in February for having feminine pastors however selected to not enchantment the choice. Two of these are led by Black ladies; Minnie R. McGee Washington, the pastor of St. Timothy’s Christian Baptist Church in Baltimore, stated in a press release that she counted it “an honor and a privilege to have been ‘ousted’ from S.B.C.”

The expelled church buildings will proceed to function, however they’ll not be capable of determine themselves as affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention or take part in its applications.

None of it made any sense to Ms. Barnes Popham. Her congregation was dynamic and energetic when many different S.B.C. church buildings had been stagnant. The Fern Creek Baptists baptize folks. They share their house with a Congolese church and Filipino congregation. They are beginning an elementary college, and added showers for the homeless of their gymnasium, she stated.

On Monday night time, after Ms. Barnes Popham registered for the conference as a visitor to have the ability to deal with the denomination, a person approached her and her supporters with a handout urging delegates to vote to eject church buildings with feminine pastors.

“I’m one of those women pastors,” she advised him. “We could be great partners in the gospel.”

He disagreed. She was going a technique, and he was going one other, he stated.

She took his hand, addressed him by title and requested, “What are you going to do when we enter the gates of heaven together?”