The Southern Baptist Convention moved on Wednesday to strengthen its prohibition on women as church leaders and preachers, voting decisively to add language to its constitution clarifying that its churches do not “affirm, appoint or endorse” women as pastors.
“This will allow the Southern Baptist Convention to move forward in unity and truth,” R. Albert Mohler Jr., who proposed the change, said from the floor of the group’s annual convention on Wednesday morning.
The motion passed easily, with 75 percent of some 8,000 votes. It must pass again next year, again with a two-thirds majority, in order to enter the denomination’s constitution.
“We can hardly turn to the right or the left without finding confusion about gender,” Colin Smothers, a pastor from Kansas, said from the floor before the vote.
“What better way to express our countercultural commitment to the goodness of God’s word than to affirm God’s creation order related to the office of pastor?” added Mr. Smothers, who is the executive director of an organization that advocates distinct roles for men and women.
It was the second victory at the meeting by a faction aiming to steer the country’s largest Protestant denomination to the right. On Tuesday, the denomination elected as president a firebrand pastor from Florida, Willy Rice, who has said he wants to challenge “the system” and has warned about overreach in the denomination’s approach to sexual abuse reform. Mr. Rice and his opponent both supported the amendment.
“It feels good to win,” said William Wolfe, executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership, a young advocacy group that endorsed Mr. Rice and has pushed for strengthening the prohibition on women pastors.
Mr. Wolfe said he hoped the amendment would be interpreted broadly, including to prohibit women as guest preachers even if they do not hold the title of pastor.
But some voters, or “messengers,” expressed concerns that the amendment left open crucial questions, including whether it could be used to oust churches that don’t have women preach or hold the title “pastor,” but allow them to function in ways that other Southern Baptists disagree with, such as supervising male employees or volunteers.
“I think we should be cautious about adding another amendment when we already have some disagreement on what it means,” Rob Collingsworth, a messenger from Fort Worth, Texas, said in an interview.
Many attendees said Baptists were tired of debating an issue they generally agree on. A vast majority of the country’s 47,000 Southern Baptist congregations already forbid women to serve as head pastors, and do not invite women to preach on Sunday mornings. Their statement of faith has long defined the office of pastor as limited to “men as qualified by Scripture.”
But the denomination has struggled in recent years with whether and how to crack down on the perceived encroachment of women in the pulpit. A similar proposed amendment passed in 2023, but did not secure the two-thirds majority it required the next year to become part of the denomination’s constitution. Another similar measure failed to pass in 2025.
In 2023, Southern Baptists voted to expel what was at the time its largest congregation, Saddleback Church in Southern California, after the church’s founding pastor, Rick Warren, handed over leadership to a husband-and-wife team.
Opponents of the constitutional amendment at the meeting in Orlando largely did not defend the ordination of women, but argued that the existing system already has mechanisms to remove the few congregations with women as head pastors and preachers.
“What we have already works,” Doug Mize, a pastor from South Carolina who opposed the amendment, said from the floor.
An investigatory committee reported to attendees on Tuesday that it received 44 reports of Southern Baptist churches with women pastors in the last year. Ultimately, 20 of those churches voluntarily withdrew, and the committee recommended 10 others to be removed from the denomination.
Expulsion is largely symbolic and does not prevent a church from continuing to operate. Southern Baptist congregations are autonomous and self-governing.
Supporters of the constitutional amendment argued that firmer procedures were necessary, because the acceptance of women pastors often precedes broader theological and cultural shifts to the left, including the acceptance of homosexuality.
“The mentality in the convention was ‘You’re never more than one vote away, or one year away, from drift,’” said Andrew Walker, associate dean of theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which Mr. Mohler leads. He described the amendment as a way to bring “procedural clarity” on an issue that is popular within the denomination, but divisive in the broader culture.
This year’s proposal triumphed in part because it came from Mr. Mohler, a longtime spokesman for Southern Baptist priorities in the public square. He also narrowed its language a week before the convention, with the final language reading that the prohibition on women as pastors applied “specifically” to “preaching to the assembled congregation.”
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