LOUISVILLE, Ky. — As thousands of Southern Baptist Convention members consider this week in Indianapolis whether to intensify a ban on women pastors, they may hear reference to a study hatched last year by a Ph.D. student a couple of hours down Interstate 65.
“Nobody directed me to do this,” Kevin McClure, the student, said as he walked around the lush campus of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “I didn’t get paid for this. This is totally volunteer. No dark money was behind this. I was just a normal SBC layperson who just wanted to know the answer to these questions.”
The main question he had: Of the 50,000 or so churches to which the Southern Baptist Convention claims ties, how many really have female pastors?
If just a few, the debate was irrelevant. If the number was large, then, McClure felt, the denomination really had a problem on its hands.
