Global Courant
Southern Baptists lost one of their largest congregations last week amid tensions in America’s largest Protestant denomination over women in the pulpit.
The Matthews, North Carolina-based Elevation Church sent a letter to the Southern Baptist Convention on July 26 notifying them of their intention to disengage “effective immediately.”
The letter from the megachurch gave no reason for the disengagement, although Elevation Pastor Steven Furtick’s wife, Holly Furtick, preaches and posts her sermons online.
Last month, an overwhelming majority of more than 12,000 voting delegates at the 2023 SBC Annual Meeting in New Orleans approved a tentative vote to amend the SBC’s constitution to formally ban women from serving in pastoral roles.
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The headquarters of the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, Tennessee. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)
As a “complementary” denomination, the SBC holds that men and women have different but complementary roles in society and in church leadership. The SBC’s recent vote confirmed previous teachings set forth in The Baptist Faith & Message 2000, a doctrinal statement that says “the office of minister is limited to men as qualified by scripture.”
Elevation Church has multiple locations in Charlotte and throughout North Carolina, as well as nearby states and Canada.
A 2016 photo of the Elevation Church campus in Matthews, North Carolina, near Charlotte. (Google Maps)
The megachurch had about 26,000 congregation members each week by 2022, making it the seventh most attended Protestant church in the US, according to Outreach magazine. According to the most recent data from the SBC, Elevation Church had an average attendance of 10,185 people in 2021.
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Elevation’s departure from the SBC follows in the wake of the denomination’s ouster of the California-based Saddleback Church, the second-largest Protestant congregation in the US and led by influential Baptist author Rick Warren.
The California-based Saddleback Church of famed Baptist minister and author Rick Warren failed in its appeal against the SBC’s decision to expel the church for having a female pastor. (Michael Tran/FilmMagic via Getty Images)
Warren went on a media blitz after his church was banned over the issue of women serving in pastoral teaching roles, a decision they appealed to the SBC.
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Saddleback’s impeachment was confirmed last month by a vote of 9,437 to 1,212.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Jon Brown is a writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to jon.brown@fox.com.
