The Southern Baptist Convention will fight some of the same high-profile battles with a new cast of characters, some of whom have enough momentum to potentially alter the convention’s policies on women pastors and its ideological alliances.
Al Mohler, one of the most influential Southern Baptists, is proposing a new measure to enshrine a ban on women pastors — reviving a debate the convention has been voting on since 2023.
Meanwhile, Florida pastor Willy Rice has received widespread acclaim amid his campaign for SBC president against South Carolina pastor Josh Powell. If Rice is victorious, it would be an important win for a faction that wants to pull the convention further to the right.
The SBC annual meeting, this year in Orlando from June 9-10, is considered the largest gathering of evangelical Christians globally within a two-day period. The Nashville-based SBC is the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.
Here’s what to know about the major conflicts facing Southern Baptists and how they will appear on the floor in Orlando.
Cultural battles take center stage over financial concerns
The SBC has been grappling with declining membership and financial constraints, which has affected funding to cover legal expenses in abuse-related lawsuits.
Southern Baptist delegates, called messengers, at the 2025 SBC annual meeting in Dallas voted on proposals that called for greater financial transparency from executives at the SBC’s major agencies. Those proposals ultimately failed, but the denomination’s administrative arm revised the SBC Business and Financial Plan. At the same meeting, messengers approved a special $3 million allocation to help cover abuse-related legal expenses.
These actions have quelled some contentiousness over finances. In its place, other political and social debates have taken center stage.
The SBC remains divided over women pastors, despite three consecutive years of votes on proposals to enshrine a ban on women pastors. A proposed amendment to the SBC constitution passed at the 2023 SBC annual meeting but in 2024 failed to receive the necessary two-thirds majority vote to ratify the proposal. Another attempt at last year’s annual meeting failed.
But this year, it’s coming back and with renewed muster.
Renewed fight on women pastor ban
Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, announced in a series of social media videos that he will propose a measure to enshrine a ban on women pastors.
“What we’re saying there is this is where Southern Baptists are absolutely united,” Mohler said in a June 2 post. “We did that a generation ago on the LGBTQ issues, and that has really helped the SBC.”
Mohler’s amendment, which would require two consecutive years of two-thirds majority votes to be ratified, would further enforce a process by which the SBC Credentials Committee recommends disfellowshipping churches. Even without such an amendment, SBC Executive Committee members, the elected representatives who manage convention business outside the two-day annual meeting, or messengers have ousted eight churches that support women in leadership. Several other major churches have willingly left for similar reasons.
The proposed ban's return to the convention has spurred opposition. For example, Baptist Women in Ministry, an advocacy group aligned with moderate Baptist organizations, has paid for a billboard in Orlando that says “God calls women to pastor, preach, and minister,” according to a news release.
Meanwhile, prominent Bible teacher Beth Moore, who famously left the SBC amid conflict over women in leadership and abuse reform, expressed concerns on social media.
“When protecting the pulpit from women becomes a far greater priority than protecting women (& children) from an abusive pulpit, something is wrong,” Moore said in a June 1 social media post.
Allegiance to Trump to play out in SBC presidential election and resolutions
Allegiance to President Donald Trump and Republican Party values on topics such as immigration has been another source of division within the SBC.
A faction within the denomination that expresses loyalty to Trump and criticizes fellow Southern Baptists for “leftward drift” has pushed for hardline positions on immigration and other issues. The Center for Baptist Leadership, a nonprofit led by self-avowed Christian nationalist William Wolfe, has been the most vocal proponent of these positions in the past couple years.
However, legislation and candidates supported by Wolfe’s group have failed to win high stakes votes at SBC annual meetings. They’re hopeful this year will be different with the candidacy of Rice, an ally of this conservative faction that wants to pull the convention rightward.
“In a day when so many leaders are afraid of acknowledging problems publicly, Pastor Willy has demonstrated a remarkable ability to diagnose what ails us,” South Carolina pastor Rhett Burns said in a June 3 column for the Center for Baptist Leadership.
Rice is running against Powell, who has received support from a mainstream conservative faction. The victor will succeed SBC President Clint Pressley, a North Carolina pastor, who is completing his second and final one-year term as the convention’s highest elected official.
The presidential election will overlap with votes on several resolutions, or nonbinding statements of the denomination’s views on various social and political issues.
One resolution on “political violence and speech” calls on Southern Baptists “to examine our own speech, online conduct, and public witness, refusing to treat image bearers as enemies to be destroyed” and on elected officials to “condemn political violence.”
Meanwhile, a resolution on immigration supports “enforcement carried out justly, humanely, and according to due process” but warns again “nativism, racial or ethnic hostility, ethno-nationalism, discrimination.”
The resolution on immigration follows a debate sparked by protests at Cities Church in Minneapolis in January amid an ICE operation and killing of two U.S. citizens. The protests at Cities Church, a Southern Baptist congregation, rallied evangelical condemnation of anti-ICE protesters. On June 3, the St. Paul City Attorney's Office announced it wouldn't charge the protesters involved.
A year earlier, the SBC’s public policy arm bowed out of the Evangelical Immigration Table, which supported positions on immigration enforcement that some in the SBC criticized as moderate. The former SBC public policy head who was in charge at the time resigned in 2025, and a new permanent president has replaced him.
Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at [email protected] or on social media @liamsadams.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Women pastors, political divisions at center of Southern Baptist meeting
Reporting by Liam Adams, Nashville Tennessean / Nashville Tennessean