Pastors Bruce Frank and Mike Keahbone, who were both on task forces for sexual abuse reform, were eliminated during the first round of voting Tuesday evening, as was Jared Moore. David Allen was eliminated during the second round of voting Wednesday morning.
Pressley voiced appreciation Monday night for the SBC’s Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force (ARITF) in helping his church to respond to allegations of sexual abuse. The pastor said his goal as SBC president would be to help Southern Baptists “support our confession” and “our commitment to the Great Commission.”
On the morning of Wednesday, June 12, Southern Baptist Convention messengers failed to get enough votes to approve an amendment to the SBC constitution banning women from holding the office of pastor.
The change, authored by Pastor Mike Law and known as the Law Amendment, would have added a doctrinal position that is already stated in the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 (BFM) but is not present in the convention’s constitution.
The results of a vote taken by written ballot were announced just before messengers broke for lunch. Out of the 10,942 messengers present at the meeting, 5,099 (61.45%) voted in favor of the amendment, and 3,185 (38.38%) voted against it.
In 2023, messengers met the two-thirds majority required to approve Law’s amendment. However, amendments to the SBC constitution require a two-thirds majority vote for two years in a row, so the amendment came before messengers again this year but failed to gain enough to be ratified.
A motion to abolish the ERLC, as well as a motion to censure Albert Mohler, Ben Mandrell, and Bart Barber, both failed by large margins Wednesday morning. Mohler is president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Mandrell is president of Lifeway Christian Resources, and Bart Barber was the president of the SBC before his term concluded later that day.
Bi-vocational pastor Louis Cook said, “I move that the messengers censure Albert Mohler, Ben Mandrell, and Bart Barber for their roles in approving an amicus brief in the state of Kentucky that prevented an abuse survivor from having her day in court.” Mohler and Mandrell each defended themselves at microphones, and messengers voted not to allow the motion to go to a vote.
