The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) isn’t feminist yet, but it’s getting there fast. Indeed, many pastors of the SBC’s largest (i.e., most powerful and influential) churches, along with many of its denominational[1] leaders, have their feet firmly on the gas pedal. Some of them know what they are doing, and they’re doing it with all their crafty might. Others are more like Mr. Magoo, heedless of the destructive course they are taking, which runs counter to the warp and woof of the world God made and the Word he has given us. If Italian historian Carlo Cipolla was right, the latter type of leader often proves more harmful than the former.[2] In any case, the devil is happy to use both.
Many readers of Christ Over All, I am sure, already grasp something of the problem I am speaking about. To the rest, who think me insane for claiming that the SBC is becoming a feminist wasteland, I say with the apostle Paul, “I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness” (2 Cor. 11:1).
One Sacred Effeminacy
A few years ago First Things published an article that said the sky is blue, and much pearl-clutching ensued.[3] Some took issue with a reputable journal running a piece by an anonymous author. Others disliked said author’s use of “the longhouse” metaphor, which had become something of a meme among the “online right.” Yet I suspect most of the dustup simply stemmed from the fact that the author was not only willing to say that the emperor has no clothes, but that the emperor is actually an empress.
In essence, the author argues that much of the West’s present insanity is owing to “the remarkable overcorrection of the last two generations toward social norms centering feminine needs and feminine methods for controlling, directing, and modeling behavior.”[4] This explains the longhouse metaphor, wherein “Den Mothers” historically reigned with velvet fist.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, of course, but we have that in spades: women now hold more managerial and professional positions[5] than men, earn more degrees[6] at every level of education, and dominate human resources departments[7] in the workforce. Together these factors “determine workplace behavioral norms [and] have an outsized influence on professional culture, which itself has an outsized influence on American culture more generally.”[8]
Think, for example, of irrational HR policies, like mandating “personal pronouns,”[9] prescribing “microaggression” lists,[10] and deploying DEI training involving “unconscious bias” workshops.[11] There is a clear connection at work here: the demonstrated tendency[12] of women, in the aggregate, to be more “agreeable” than men has created workplaces that favor cooperation, the maintenance of social harmony, and the display of empathy—even toxic empathy—to the detriment of other virtues needed to hold progressive forces at bay.[13]
Similarly, consider the growing trend among female undergraduates to privilege safety and inclusion over free speech and debate.[14] This turns campuses into incubatory echo chambers instead of a marketplace for ideas. As Jonathan Haidt (who has written on this extensively[15]) recently said in an interview,
Boys and men enjoy direct status competition and confrontation, so the central drama of male-culture disciplines is ‘Hey, Jones says his theory is better than Smith’s; let’s all gather around and watch them fight it out, in a colloquium or in dueling journal articles.’ In fact, I’d say that many of the norms and institutions of the Anglo-American university were originally designed to harness male [competition] and turn it into scholarly progress.[16]
Or again, recall the disastrous response to the COVID pandemic a few years ago, with all of its iatrogenic effects in many areas of society.[17] It is vital to note that men had a lower assessment of the virus’s danger,[18] while women were 50% more likely to embrace “protective measures”[19] (e.g., wearing masks, getting the jab, and enforcing social distancing). This tracks with data showing higher rates of “neuroticism” in women, referring to the tendency to experience negative emotions (e.g., anxiety, depression, etc.) in response to perceived threats.[20]
Now consider an arena like courts of law. As recently as 2006, women comprised fewer than 5% of all law school students. In 2016, law schools (like every other kind of school) had become majority female. In her recent article for Compact magazine, Helen Andrews makes a troubling connection between the way Title IX courts operate and the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings of 2018. She notes, “The masculine position was that, if Christine Blasey Ford can’t provide any concrete evidence that she and Kavanaugh were ever in the same room together, her accusations of rape cannot be allowed to ruin his life.” But, says Andrews, “The feminine position was that [Ford’s] self-evident emotional response was itself a kind of credibility that the Senate committee must respect.”[21] This should concern everyone who believes a defendant is “innocent until proven guilty” and especially all people who have read Deuteronomy 19:21 (“Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”).
When you put all this together,[22] Helen Andrews’s thesis in the aforementioned article seems like a foregone conclusion: “Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition.”[23] Critically, as Andrews reminds us, “The problem is not that women are less talented than men … The problem is that female modes of interaction are not well suited to accomplishing the goals of many major institutions.”[24]
Perhaps that is one reason why the Lord wanted Israel to be led by kings and priests and the church to be led by pastors/elders/overseers, who must be men.[25] Specifically, the Lord who made us male and female designed the feminine tendency toward agreeableness to manifest in acceptance, inclusion, and cooperation, all of which well-suited to moms nurturing healthy homes (Titus 2:5). Yet those same tendencies are dangerously destructive for an office charged to “hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught” (Titus 1:9a). That is to say, the feminine tendency toward agreeableness naturally inclines women to be empathetic toward those with grievances against “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) instead of “rebuk[ing] those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9b).[26]
Allow me to point out here what all sensible people already understand: the feminine tendencies and traits I have been describing are not intrinsically problematic. Indeed, these tendencies and traits are seen to such a high degree throughout Scripture that we ought to conclude that the Lord himself is the one who blessed women in these ways. The problem, in other words, isn’t the feminine tendency toward agreeableness or even neuroticism. As Abigail Dodds has written, these enable women to be the vital “helpers” God designed them to be (Gen. 2:18).[27] Rather, the problem is when traits and tendencies tailor-made for one arena are thrust into others they are less suited for.
G. K. Chesterton saw this (as he saw so many things) a hundred years before our cultural moment fully came into its own. “When a religious scheme is shattered,” Chesterton warns, “it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.”[28] (I would that the maximalist empathy crowd had read more Chesterton!)
To sum all this up: if earlier ages were marked by “the flight from woman,”[29] ours is an age marked by the dominance of woman.[30] That is to say, social norms in every sphere of western society have come to be shaped by characteristically feminine goals, concerns, and relational dynamics without the balancing force of characteristically masculine ways of being.[31] And this is destroying everything from the workplace to schools to politics to churches, even the confessionally conservative SBC.
The Cooperative Longhouse
One would think that a denomination like the SBC would be resistant to the trends I have been describing, but one would be wrong.
The reasons why one might (wrongly) suspect the SBC to be resistant to the feminist creep are twofold. First, the SBC’s statement of faith (The Baptist Faith and Message, or the BF&M), rightly recognizes that the church has only two scriptural offices, namely, (1) “pastor/elder/overseer” and (2) “deacon.” It also rightly recognizes that “the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men.”[32] Second, though the SBC has a shockingly high number of churches who transgress this clear statement of faith at that point, the overwhelming majority of pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention are men, as are the majority of its highest-level employees and committee members.
How, then, could anyone argue (as I am) that the SBC is well on its way to witnessing the same deleterious effects observed in other areas of society when women rule?It’s because many of the men who fill these positions are being steered by all the wrong people in all the wrong directions, and, in turn, they are steering the SBC itself towards a precipitous demise.[33]
Consider, for example, the infamous failure of Peter in Galatia, when Paul “opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned” (Gal. 2:11). Drawing on the insights of Edwin Friedman, Joe Rigney explains how this passage illustrates one of Satan’s favorite schemes.[34] Recall that for some time Peter enjoyed table fellowship with Gentile believers without any reservations (Gal. 2:12a). But when “certain men came from James… [Peter] drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party” (Gal. 2:12b). Tragically, the rest of the Jewish believers followed suit and “acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray” (Gal. 2:13).
Rigney observes, “[N]ote how the pressure works. It begins far away, with zealous unbelieving Jews. The pressure then moves in, running from the Troublers to James through his messengers to Peter, and then from Peter to the rest of Jews and Barnabas. This is frequently how pressure works in Christian communities.”[35]
In view of this, consider how an unashamed affirmation of God’s design for the sexes—and all that this entails—sounds to a world that believes the feminist lie of sexual interchangeability.[36] Someone who holds to the biblical view of the sexes sounds to them like a regressive, patriarchal, bronze age Neanderthal who is most definitely “on the wrong side of history.” What is more, such ideas are not only perceived to be wrong but harmful. Of course, a mature Christian does not much care about what the world thinks, for he knows that pagan minds are full of futility and pagans hearts are firmly calloused (Eph. 4:17–19).
But suppose a sufficient number Christians care far too much about what the world thinks of us. I’m speaking about the sort of Christians who read the command to “love thy neighbor” as if Christ had said, “Make sure your neighbors feel loved on their terms.”[37] They may hold (loosely) to a biblical view of the sexes, but they don’t want anyone talking about it all that loudly. For it is a source of embarrassment to them, an aspect of the Bible they secretly wish would go away. This is how the pressure mounts, just as it did in Galatia. And the next thing you know, “The world is watching us” becomes the unofficial slogan of the SBC.[38]
Those in positions of authority feel the pressure acutely, for they have a choice to make: either they double down on God’s Word (the opinions of the world be damned) and tell the faithful to brace for impact, or they look for a way to lessen the pressure, if not to appease the world, at least to ease the discomfort of Christians who are mortified by what the world thinks of us. Tragically, far too many leaders in the SBC have opted for the latter course.
Making Pseudo-Pastors Out of High-Capacity Women
Take, for example, former LifeWay CEO Ben Mandrell’s remarks last year on a podcast by LifeWay Women.[39] Not only did Mandrell claim that God’s design for men and women is irrelevant to the roles assigned to each, he openly applauded the defeat of the Law Amendment,[40] he distorted a plain reading of the Baptist Faith & Message’s teaching on the pastoral office, and he employed the same arguments made by egalitarians to defend his own positions.[41] I should also add that Mandrell’s argument primarily consisted of personal stories and emotional appeals instead of arguments based on scriptural texts. (Make of that what you will.)
In that podcast Mandrell urges his listeners to “get away from nomenclature” and stop debating whether women can be “pastors.” Instead, he wants churches to appoint women to pastor-like positions, without the title if need be, where they are (and I quote) “making the decisions” as they help “dream up what the future of the church is.”[42]
Yet the Lord has already determined what the future of the church should be, and (spoiler alert) it looks like what we see in the pages of Scripture. What is more, Mandrell is doing exactly what D. A. Carson warned against in a lecture I heard from him many years ago.[43] Carson predicted that future liberals within evangelicalism would not openly deny our confessions but would affirm them while undermining them by changing the meaning and/or the logical implications of the words they claim to affirm.[44] On top of all this, Mandrell’s strategy is doomed to fail. For if women are appointed to function like pastors/elders/overseers, it’s never long before they ask, “Why am I not allowed to be a pastor? I am already acting like one.” Finally, this whole course of action will simply recreate the same problems we are seeing in the world right now within the walls of every church who ignores God’s design and follows Mandrell’s advice.
A few months after that little dustup, Baptist News Global reported that Mandrell was stepping down from his position. Alas, it was not because the faithful within the SBC rose up to challenge his erroneous thinking, but because “Mandrell was frustrated with the way the trustees had underappreciated—and apparently failed to adequately compensate—his wife.”[45] Never mind that there is no precedent in Southern Baptist history for the wife of an entity’s head to be compensated for the work her husband is paid to do. And never mind that Mandrell’s total compensation exceeded $500,000 per year[46]—more than the salary of the President of the United States.[47]
The even bigger concern here is why he stepped down and what this tells us about the tractory of the SBC. In the August 4, 2025 episode of their (then) LifeWay-sponsored podcast, The Glass House, Mandrell’s wife, Lynley, explained that her husband stepped down because her “personality . . . wasn’t needed,” that there were “some rooms” where she “wasn’t wanted,” and that her “giftings” were underutilized because they were not “the right fit.”[48] In other words, Mandrell stepped down because his wife wanted to—how did he put it?—be the one “making the decisions” and “dream[ing] up what the future of the church is.”
These grievances were so significant that Baptist News Global reports the couple considered a formal separation in their marriage during Mandrell’s tenure at LifeWay.[49] And that’s the tell, as they say in poker.[50] That’s the key detail that explains Mandrell’s abuse of Scripture and the Baptist Faith & Message on the LifeWay Women podcast. Subjected to great pressure (like Peter in Galatia), Mandrell chose to cave instead of leading his wife to rejoice in her calling à la Genesis 2:18, 1 Corinthians 11:3–16, 1 Corinthians 14:34–35, Ephesians 5:22–33, 1 Timothy 2:11–15, 1 Timothy 5:9–16, Titus 2:4–5, and 1 Peter 3:1–7 (among others). And now, ironically, he’s pastoring Bellevue Baptist[51]—the former church of Adrian Rogers, one of the main leaders of the SBC Conservative Resurgence.
Let me stress here that this article is not about Ben Mandrell, for he is far from alone in this regard. Indeed, others have gone even further than Mandrell is openly calling for women to serve as pastors. Consider Russ Barksdale, a Baptist pastor and member of the SBC’s Executive Committee—arguably the most powerful committee in SBC life. He wrote an article for The Baptist Review explaining why he planned to vote against the Law-Sanchez Amendment, urging others to do the same.[52] In brief, he argues that a woman can serve as a pastor but not an elder. There are two significant problems with this. First, the distinction is artificial, as the New Testament uses these terms (along with the term “overseer”) synonymously.[53] Second, as I noted previously, The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 rightly recognizes and explicitly affirms the biblical usage of these terms to refer to the same ecclesial office.[54] In other words, Barksdale is violating both the Scriptures and the SBC’s statement of faith as a member of the executive committee.
In addition to these examples, I have friends who work in various Baptist organizations at state and national levels, and I can count on one hand the number of these friends who haven’t told me stories about internal staff meetings and conversations behind closed doors pushing the same basic agenda. The repeated refrain is invariably some form of, “We’ve got to find a way to give women a seat at the table.” Yet I didn’t have to hear that from insiders to already know that it’s true. I heard this for myself when I served on the SBC’s nominating committee in 2020 and 2021. I was explicitly told to focus on nominating women for positions of national leadership in the SBC.[55]
For any who may wonder what is problematic about this, consider the tortured logic of the situation.[56] Southern Baptists are bound (or should be bound) by a statement of faith that explicitly says God restricted the office pastor/elder/overseer to qualified men. Yet the leaders in the highest levels of the denomination are actively pushing for women, who cannot be pastors (according to the Bible and the Baptist Faith and Message, which follows it on this point), to serve in positions of significant influence that often far exceed that of any local pastor.[57] In essence, SBC leaders are seeking to appoint people whom God prohibited from serving as pastors to be guardians of institutions whose input and judgments will shape the course of seminary training, church planting, and missionary activity around the world. This way madness lies.
The Trickle-down Effect
The SBC has often been portrayed as a grassroots organization. This is partly due to its ecclesiology and partly to how its members banded together to retake the SBC’s key positions of leadership, turning the denomination away from the precipice of liberalism. But we are fooling ourselves if we think that ideas always flow from the bottom up. On the contrary, sociologists like James Davison Hunter have shown that culture-shaping ideas tend to flow from the top down.[58] This is not really a new observation. Puritan Richard Baxter observed the same: “All churches either rise or fall as the [pastoral] ministry doth rise or fall, (not in riches and worldly grandeur) but in knowledge, zeal and ability for their work.”[59]
Leaders in the SBC—both those with and those without formal positions—have a similar shaping effect today. From Credentials Committee members who fail to disfellowship churches that brazenly appoint women as pastors[60] to popular authors (e.g., Jen Wilkin) who promote virtually the same vision as Mandrell,[61] the highest-profile figures in the SBC are steering the denomination toward a collision course with both the design of God and the clear directives of his Word.
If you have spent any time in an SBC church lately, you already know the signs of the times. People express dismay when a woman is not invited to preach on Mothers Day. The pastors of the church, who hold special accountability before God for the souls entrusted to his care (Heb. 13:7, 17) would not be welcome to speak at a women’s event in their own church. Churches increasingly appoint women to extra-biblical offices, like that of “shepherdess,” as a way to have women function as pastors without explicitly running afoul of The Baptist Faith and Message.
Conclusion
In view of all this, Southern Baptists have a critical choice before them. Either we can conclude that the Lord is not wise (contra Rom. 16:27), by acting as if he handed down rules without good reasons for doing so,[62] or we can conclude that there is wisdom behind God’s rules for the sexes—reasons that include the way he made us, down to the tendencies and traits I have highlighted throughout this article.[63] I pray we choose the latter while we still have a choice.
To do so involves two courses of action. First, every pastor in every church needs to grow a backbone when it comes to the teaching of God about men and women. Soft hearts and sharp minds will not avail us if we lack strong spines with the courage to teach what we know is right. As the author of Hebrews warns, “those who shrink back… are destroyed” (Heb. 10:39). Sadly, what J. C. Ryle said of his own time is also true in ours: “We have hundreds of ‘jelly-fish’ clergyman, who seem not to have a single bone in their body of divinity.”[64] Such men are content to preach what the modern world is pleased to tolerate: sermons on kindness, winsomeness, compassion, neighbor-love, forgiveness, and so on. But they are loath to preach precisely those truths that the devil is undermining in the household of God today—truths about gender, sexuality, manhood, womanhood, marriage, children, and so on. This failure of nerve will inevitably lead to a failure of ministry. For the pastor’s job is not merely to save souls for heaven, but to shepherd the people of God by “teaching them to observe everything [Jesus] commanded” (Matt. 28:20; cf. 2 Tim. 4:2).
Second, Southern Baptist pastors who have already found their courage must not content themselves with the health of their flock alone. Such a course of action ignores the fact that, to modify a few lines from one of the greats, the fires of feminism will spread. The forests of Texas and the Bible Belt will burn. And all that was once great and good about Southern Baptists will be gone. To borrow a phrase from the hobbit Meriadoc Brandybuck: there won’t be an SBC, Pippin—at least, not one worth having. If that sounds alarmist, it can only be because you have forgotten the state of virtually every denomination that has softened its views on God’s design for the sexes and ordained women to the pastorate. Such a move is almost always the first domino to fall.[65]
Let us be more like the apostle Paul, therefore, who said that he felt “daily pressure” from his “concern for all the churches” (2 Cor. 11:28). And let every pastor who cares about the health and future of the SBC make every effort to do what he can to oppose the feminist creep… while it still can be opposed.
~~~~~
As a three-time graduate of Southern Baptist seminaries, I am fully aware that the Southern Baptist Convention does not consider itself a denomination. Technically, it is a cooperation of likeminded, autonomous local churches. But if it looks like a denomination, swims like a denomination, and quacks like a denomination… ↑
See Carlo M. Cipolla, “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity,” Whole Earth Review, Spring 1987, 2–7, https://gandalf.fee.urv.cat/professors/AntonioQuesada/Curs1920/Cipolla_laws.pdf. Cipolla was not alone in his observation. Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted the same: “Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than evil. One can protest against evil; it can be unmasked and, if need be, prevented by force. Evil always carries the seeds of its own destruction, as it makes men, at least, uncomfortable. Against folly we have no defense. Neither protests nor force can touch it; reasoning is no use; facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved — indeed, the fool can counter by criticizing them, and if they are undeniable, they can just be pushed aside as trivial exceptions. So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self-satisfied; in fact, he can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make him aggressive. A fool therefore must be treated more cautiously than a scoundrel.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “After Ten Years,” in Letters and Papers from Prison (New York: Touchstone Books, 1953; repr. 1971), 8. ↑
L0m3z, “What Is the Longhouse?” First Things, February 16, 2023. ↑
L0m3z, “What Is the Longhouse?” ↑
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, “Table 11. Employed Persons by Detailed Occupation, Sex, Race, and Hispanic or Latino Ethnicity,” in Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey (Washington, DC: Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024), https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm. ↑
National Center for Education Statistics, “Table 318.30. Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctor’s Degrees Conferred by Postsecondary Institutions, by Sex of Student and Discipline Division: 2019–20,” in Digest of Education Statistics (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2020), https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_318.30.asp. ↑
Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Table 11.” ↑
L0m3z, “What Is the Longhouse?” ↑
Screenshot of a workplace policy mandating preferred pronouns, image posted on Reddit, https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https://i.redd.it/re00triot3ua1.jpg (accessed March 2026). ↑
Herrick N. Fisher et al., “‘Let’s Talk about What Just Happened’: A Single-Site Survey Study of a Microaggression Response Workshop for Internal Medicine Residents,” Annals of Emergency Medicine 76, no. 4 (October 2020): 387–91, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7819694/. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt commented on this connection: “[Among women] there is a greater emphasis on what someone said which hurt someone else, even if unintentionally. There is a greater tendency to respond to an offense by mobilizing social resources to ostracize the alleged offender.” Quoted in Thomas B. Edsall, “The Gender Gap Is Taking Us to Unexpected Places,” The New York Times, January 12, 2022. ↑
Doug Ponder (@dougponder), post on X, March 5, 2023, https://x.com/dougponder/status/1635704489406504961. ↑
Yanna J. Weisberg, Colin G. DeYoung, and Jacob B. Hirsh, “Gender Differences in Personality across the Ten Aspects of the Big Five,” Frontiers in Psychology 2 (August 1, 2011), https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00178. ↑
Allie Beth Stuckey, Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion (New York: Sentinel, 2024); see also Joe Rigney, The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits (Canon Press, 2025). ↑
“2022 College Free Speech Rankings: Gender Differences in Censorship Attitudes,” FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), https://www.fire.org/news/2022-college-free-speech-rankings-gender-differences-censorship-attitudes (accessed March 2026). ↑
See, for example, Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (New York: Penguin Press, 2018). ↑
Thomas B. Edsall, “The Gender Gap Is Taking Us to Unexpected Places,” New York Times, January 12, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/12/opinion/gender-gap-politics.html. ↑
“Iatrogenic” is something everyone knows, even if the word is new. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder (New York: Random House, 2012), 110–11, reminds us how “naïve interventionism” often does more harm than good. Iatrogenics, therefore, is the term that describes the harm that is caused by attempts at healing. Iatrogenics literally means ‘caused by the healer.’ ↑
Such a response proved to be correct, by the way. See Doug Ponder and Bryan Laughlin, “The COVID Test for Christian Virtue,” Sola Ecclesia, September 18, 2023. ↑
Michael H. Haischer et al., “Who Is Wearing a Mask? Gender-, Age-, and Location-Related Differences during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” PLOS ONE 15, no. 10 (October 15, 2020): e0240785, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240785. ↑
Weisberg, DeYoung, and Hirsh, “Gender Differences in Personality.” See also 1 Peter 3:6–7, where the apostle beat all these psychologists to the punch, recognizing similar natural trends that must be resisted with the help of God’s Spirit. ↑
Helen Andrews, “The Great Feminization,” Compact, October 16, 2025. ↑
- I could add more examples, by the way, but time won’t permit me to do so (Hebrews 11:32). But here’s one more for the footnote readers: Studies show that female-owned businesses report lower revenue, slower growth, and a smaller number of total employees than male-owned businesses. This is owing, in part, to female business-owners placing “less value on achieving business success than their male counterparts.” See Gary N. Powell and Kimberly A. Eddleston, “The Paradox of the Contented Female Business Owner,” Journal of Vocational Behavior, 73, no. 1 (August 2008): 24–36. ↑
Andrews, “The Great Feminization.” ↑
Andrews, “The Great Feminization.” ↑
See Doug Ponder, “Different For and Different From,”American Reformer, April 5, 2024. See also Doug Ponder, “Pastors Are Elders Are Overseers,” Center for Baptist Leadership, May 29, 2024. Finally, see Doug Ponder, “Who Shepherds the Flock? (A Response to Russ Barkdale),” The Baptist Review, May 30, 2024. ↑
For further commentary on this point, see Joe Rigney, “Empathy, Feminism, and the Church,” American Reformer, January 26, 2024. ↑
Abigail Dodds, “The Beauty and Abuse of Empathy: How Virtue Becomes a Tyrant,” Desiring God, April 14, 2020. ↑
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908; repr., San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 35. ↑
This phrase was coined by Catholic sociologist Karl Stern in Flight from Woman (1965; repr., New York: Paragon House, 1985), where he described the tendency of mid-twentieth-century feminists to act like men. For commentary on this tendency, see Alice von Hildebrand and Peter Kreeft, Women and the Priesthood, cited in “Sexual Symbolism,” Peter Kreeft (blog), accessed March 2, 2026. ↑
Lest any still doubt what strikes me as abundantly apparent, recall that in 2010 Hanna Rosin announced “The End of Men” in The Atlantic. Not long after, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign slogan was, “The future is female.” ↑
For a breathtaking look at the depth and extent of this, see Alastair Roberts, “A Crisis of Discourse—Part 2: A Problem of Gender,” Alastair’s Adversaria (blog), November 17, 2016. ↑
See The Baptist Faith and Message 2000, Article VI, “The Church.” It is unfortunate that the BF&M does not take a clear position on the office of deacon, as this has contributed to much confusion and widespread variance in practice, not least because some SBC churches have what David Schrock has called “delders,” that is, deacons who essentially function as elders instead of, you know, actual deacons. ↑
This is no exaggeration. See Colin Smothers, “Is the Slippery Slope Actually Slippery? Egalitarianism and the Open-and-Affirming Position,” Christ Over All, March 23, 2023. ↑
See Joe Rigney, Leadership and Emotional Sabotage: Resisting the Anxiety that Will Wreck Your Family, Destroy Your Church, and Ruin the World (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2024), 74ff. ↑
Rigney, Leadership and Emotional Sabotage, 75. ↑
For more on this error’s roots and effects, along with what to do about it, see Doug Ponder, “Slaying Feminism: Ending the Impossible Quest for Sexual Interchangeability,” Christ Over All, October 28, 2024. ↑
For more on this particular problem, see Doug Ponder, “We’re Commanded to Love Our Neighbors, Not to Make Them Feel Loved,” Sola Ecclesia, June 5, 2023. ↑
Read the helpful commentary on this line uttered from the platform of an SBC Annual meeting by Hannah Ascol, “The 2021 Southern Baptist Convention: What Just Happened?” Founders Ministries, June 17, 2021, https://founders.org/articles/the-2021-southern-baptist-convention-what-just-happened/. ↑
I have written about that incident at length here: “Lest We Drift: Countering LifeWay’s Egalitarian Vision for the SBC,” Center for Baptist Leadership, February 15, 2025. My comments here are a summary of that article with expansion pertinent to the present point, along with developments that have arisen since its original publication. ↑
Read about the Law Amendment at David Schrock, “ENCORE: Reformed and Reforming the SBC: Christ Over the Law Amendment,” Christ Over All, June 14, 2024, https://christoverall.com/article/longform/encore-reformed-and-reforming-the-sbc-christ-over-the-law-amendment/. ↑
Andrea Lennon and Elizabeth Hyndman, “Leading Well: Guiding Others to Practice Biblical Community with Ben Mandrell,” Marked (podcast), Lifeway Women, February 3, 2025, https://women.lifeway.com/2025/02/03/marked-leading-well-guiding-others-to-practice-biblical-community-with-ben-mandrell/. ↑
Lennon and Hyndman, “Leading Well: Guiding Others to Practice Biblical Community with Ben Mandrell.” ↑
Sadly, the voluminous output of D. A. Carson has made finding this lecture less fruitful than searching for a needle in a haystack. ↑
This, of course, is precisely what Mandrell does. He does not quote Scripture and openly deny it. Instead, he subverts the logic of the Bible by seeking a workaround solution that places women in positions of authority in the church, regardless of their title. ↑
Benjamin Cole, “On the Way out the Door, Mandrell Airs Grievances with Trustees,” Baptist News Global, August 25, 2025. ↑
Cole, “On the Way out the Door.” ↑
“Salaries for Members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, and the President,” National Taxpayers Union Foundation, https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/salaries-for-members-of-congress-supreme-court-justices-and-the-president (accessed March 2026). ↑
See Ben and Lynley Mandrell, “148. A New Chapter: Reflecting on 148 Episodes of The Glass House,” The Glass House (podcast), August 4, 2025. ↑
Cole, “On the Way out the Door.” ↑
Since Baptists aren’t supposed to know anything about poker, let’s say I learned this from The Sting (1973). ↑
“Our Pastor,” Bellevue Baptist Church, https://www.bellevue.org/our-pastor/ (accessed March 2026). ↑
Russ Barksdale, “Why I Will Vote No on the Law Amendment,” The Baptist Review, May 28, 2024. ↑
See Doug Ponder, “Who Shepherds the Flock? (A Response to Russ Barksdale),” The Baptist Review, May 30, 2024. ↑
See The Baptist Faith and Message 2000, Article VI, “The Church.” ↑
Nominating “people of color” was also emphasized, but that requirement falls outside of the Bible’s purview when it lays down principles and prescriptions for leaders within the church. ↑
Additionally, I would recommend that such objectors reread the first half of this article. ↑
Note that this is a far cry from the Priscilla and Aquila scenario (Acts 18). Nor does it match the stories Deborah and Huldah. For more on those (and many other) texts in Scripture, see my doctoral thesis. ↑
See James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2010). Sadly, I don’t have time to critique his central thesis regarding the posture of “faithful presence,” nor the way in which that phrase became a cover for all kinds of shenanigans by evangelicals working in public spaces. Simply note his research on the trends of ideas to flow top-down, not bottom-up. ↑
Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor (originally published in Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, 1696; repr. Banner of Truth, 1974), 14. ↑
Marc Minter, “Did the SBTC Credentials Committee Fail Texas Baptists with Fielder Church?” Center for Baptist Leadership, August 15, 2025. ↑
Russell Moore and Jen Wilkin, “Jen Wilkin on Women in the Church,” The Russell Moore Show, January 10, 2024. ↑
For an extended critique of the “rules without reasons” view of the sexes, see Doug Ponder and Bryan Laughlin, “Complementarians and the Rise of Second-Wave Evangelical Feminism,” Sola Ecclesia, February 26, 2024. ↑
For more on the reasons behind God’s rules for the sexes, see Doug Ponder, “A Biblical Vision of the Sexes: Harmonious Asymmetry,” Eikon 6, no. 1 (Spring 2024). ↑
J. C. Ryle, “The Importance of Dogma” in Knots Untied (1874; repr. Banner of Truth, 2012) 292–293. ↑
See Colin Smothers, “Is the Slippery Slope Actually Slippery? Egalitarianism and the Open-and-Affirming Position,” Christ Over All, March 23, 2023. ↑
