The Southern Baptist Convention—a Protestant Christian denomination with over 47,000 churches nationwide—voted Feb. 21 to remove Saddleback Church from its group for recently appointing a woman as a pastor.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee ousted Saddleback’s membership—along with four other churches—“on the basis that the church has a faith and practice that does not closely identify with the convention’s adopted statement of faith, as demonstrated by the church having a female teaching pastor functioning in the office of pastor.”