Southern Baptist delegates at the denomination's annual meeting voted definitively Wednesday for the abolition of abortion and for supervision of a coming investigation into the faith's handling of sexual abuse cases in its churches.
Wednesday's Southern Baptist Convention meeting concluded this year's gathering of the nation's largest Protestant denomination. This year's event was held at the Music City Center in Nashville, Tenn.
Participants voted on racial and sexual abuse matters earlier in the week and elected a president with moderate views. The meeting was the faith's first in two years. The June 2020 meeting was canceled because of the covid-19 pandemic.
This year's gathering was the denomination's largest, according to its executive committee. The final tally of delegates registered for this year's meeting was 15,726.
Ed Litton, the Alabama pastor elected Tuesday as the convention's next president, will decide on appointments for a task force to investigate allegations that the faith's executive committee mishandled sexual abuse cases.
The decision for a third-party investigation comes a week after recordings of conversations among Southern Baptist officials were leaked to demonstrate leaders' resistance to being held accountable for the handling of such cases in their churches.
The decision also comes in opposition to the church's general structure as a group of affiliated, self-governing churches. It's what one Idaho delegate said was "inappropriate authority of the executive committee and the convention to deal biblically with any accusation of sin."
"I believe that in order for this investigation to be truly external, independent and unbiased, then we can't have the executive committee setting the terms of the investigation themselves," said Grant Gaines, a pastor from Murfreesboro, Tenn., who proposed creating the task force. "If there is even a hint of a conflict of interest or misrepresentation or findings or biased reporting on this investigation, it will be totally disregarded by abuse survivors and the general public, and rightly so."
"I want all of you to know, I hear you," said Dr. Ronnie Floyd, executive committee president and pastor emeritus of Northwest Arkansas-based Cross Church. "We need this deliberative process. We know that this will make our convention stronger."
Also this week, delegates spoke for and against a resolution to support abolishing abortion before voting to pass an amended resolution.
"The Scripture tells us to rescue those who are being taken away to death, hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. ... The Lord is weighing our hearts today," said Bill Ascol, senior pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Owasso, Okla.
Josh Wester of the faith's public-policy arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, re-emphasized the church's stance on abortion, though he was opposed to supporting only legislation that backed its complete abolition, a move away from the commission's advocacy for measures that restrict abortions.
"The Southern Baptist Convention is the most important and formidable Protestant voice in our nation combating [the] evil [that is] abortion," Wester said. "In no uncertain terms, abortion is our generation's Holocaust. I'm speaking against this resolution not because I disagree with its aim, but because by embracing this resolution ... any move that falls short of total abolition of abortion is to be taken off the table."
Lee Brand, vice president of Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in Tennessee, won election Wednesday as the convention's new vice president. His election came a day after Litton's election to the top leadership post. Both men will serve one-year terms with the possibility of reelection.