This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on May 28, 2026.
As Southern Baptists prepare to consider Al Mohler’s so called “Truth and Unity Amendment” at their annual meeting in Orlando next month, many Baptist women are becoming weary of Southern Baptist men defining “unity” as joining together to silence women.
Meredith Stone, executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry, posted a video on social media last week to name how tired women are of these antics. Then Southern Baptist men had a meltdown, calling her a Jezebel, Satan, a serpent and a vicious wolf for committing the unpardonable sin of daring to question Mohler’s patriarchy, which includes not only prohibiting women from being called “pastor” or functioning as pastors, but also from discussing a male pastor’s sermons on podcasts.
Stone appeared on BNG’s podcast “Highest Power: Church + State” this week for an interview about the controversy. Here is an edited version of my full interview with her.
Is there anything different in Mohler’s amendment than in previous proposals over the past few years?
This is an intensification of what has been said before. It says a Southern Baptist church does not affirm, endorse or employ a woman in the office or function of pastor, overseer, elder. And the “function” is new. A lot of churches had women serving as children’s pastors, women’s pastors, missions pastors. And just by saying the title of “pastor,” their church was going to be disfellowshipped or up for disfellowship. Some were saying, “Well, we’ll just change their title. We’ll call the, children’s director instead of a children’s pastor.”
What Mohler has been saying is because that has been viewed as a workaround for some churches, adding in “the function of pastor” clarifies. If she is speaking or teaching before the whole congregation, if she is doing anything in an authoritative role that would be equivalent to pastor, overseer, elder, then she is doing the thing that would get you disfellowshipped.
He’s also highlighting any kind of preaching that happens. We had the big controversy in 2021 over Beth Moore preaching on Mother’s Day at a church. And this is a way in which they’re trying to find even more clarification.
What I’ve seen from some Southern Baptist pastors here in the last week is they’ve said, “OK, if we’re going to say women can’t preach before the assembled congregation, what about the children’s sermon? She’s expositing Scripture to the children, but it’s in front of the whole church. Can women not give children’s sermons anymore if this passes?”
“Can women not give children’s sermons anymore if this passes?”
Another thing I saw come up was a church has a podcast, where all their ministers are part of the podcast, and sometimes people ask questions. If a woman were to somehow speak about Scripture or give any kind of authoritative teaching on a podcast, does that count as the function of pastor? And Mohler says, well, that would be a problem.
So not even just having the title, no preaching before everyone, no podcasting before everyone. I imagine questions will come up about, can she even write in the newsletter? Because it will be read by the whole church.