Rick Warren Gives Final Appeal to SBC Messengers To Not Oust Saddleback + Gets Microphone Cut Off
Rick Warren made a final appeal yesterday at the 2023 Southern Baptist Convention that Saddleback church not be disfellowshipped for having women pastors, in contravention to the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. But with an earlier vote on Resolution Six crystalizing language that would forbid women from being able to assume the office of pastor/ elder/ bishop, his appeals, by and large, fell on deaf ears.
Warren has been insufferable this last week on social media, first issuing an “apology” to women on for not allowing them to be pastors during his tenure at Saddleback and then insulting complementarian Southern Baptists as a bunch of angry fundamentalists for also not following his lead.
In his brief screed before the convention (full transcript below), Warren insisted that he wasn’t asking anyone to change their theology on women preachers, only that they allow egalitarian churches to consist peacefully within the denomination. It’s a disingenuous plea, given that he’s publicly argued on social media that not allowing women to preach is a sin that must be repented of.
Warren reiterated an argument he’s previously made on social media: “Now the Baptist Faith and Message is 4032 words. Saddleback disagrees with one word. That’s 99.99999999999 in agreement. Isn’t that close enough?”
This is stupid for a number of reason, least of which is one word can make an enormous difference. And in 2023, the difference between “man” and “woman” is not a small one. Perhaps Warren needs to become more familiar with Arius and the one-word difference between homoousios/ homoiousios- terms used to describe the divinity of the Son in the Trinity. The battle came to a head at the Council of Nicea over whether or not Jesus is of the same substance as the Father, or as the latter suggests, he’s of a similar substance as the Father. In this, the former won out. Christ is the same substance as the Father, and the difference came not down to a single word, but rather a single letter, the letter i, or iota in Greek.
Then, being warned that he only had three minutes to speak, Warren hit his limit, was given another 10 seconds, and then had his mic cut off mid-sentence. Being silenced and unable to finish was an inevitable surprise for Warren, who spoke for over 5 minutes last year and likely was counting on receiving the same special treatment afforded a man of his perceived importance, but he was denied.
Hopefully, those will be his last words.
Saddleback’s excising from the Southern Baptist Convention will be considered tomorrow, and unless something drastic happens, he’ll go down in a well-deserved defeat.
