INDIANAPOLIS — At the intersection of West Maryland Street and South Capitol Avenue on Tuesday, an Indiana pastor, James Farmer, was telling passersby through a loudspeaker why he believes the Bible forbids women from being pastors when a Kansas man, John Fitzgerald, approached in solidarity, gesturing over to some women standing a few feet away: “This is rebellion,” he said, going on to clarify that what he meant is that the women a few feet away were rebelling against God.
The women included Meredith Stone and others from the group Baptist Women in Ministry. The women held signs such as “Preaching Power Knows No Gender.” Asked for comment, Stone smiled. She said the women had gotten sneers by passersby but also lots of thank-yous and covert thumbs ups.
Inside the adjacent Indiana Convention Center, those and other relatively wide-ranging views held by 10,000-plus Southern Baptists were (generally) channeled in an orderly manner within the Robert’s Rules of Order, a parliamentary process enforced by the huge denomination’s outgoing President Bart Barber — an avuncular Texas pastor whose quips Tuesday at times served to diffuse swells of tension in the room.
Barber, in his final convention address, preached the importance of unity, which became an ongoing theme for convention leadership speaking throughout the day as the denomination moved to take up knotty themes like the separation of religion and state, in vitro fertilization and the question — set to be formally taken up Wednesday, but looming over the convention Tuesday — of whether to intensify and widen the denomination’s ban on female pastors.