Doctrine on Wives’ Submission Rejected

Southern Baptists in Texas have repudiated the denomination’s call for women to submit graciously to their husbands.

The vote Tuesday marked the first time a state affiliate of the Southern Baptist Convention had rejected the stance. About 2,200 delegates to the group’s annual meeting voted on the matter, with only a few dozen favoring the “submit graciously” language.

The Baptist General Convention of Texas is the largest state organization, with 2.7 million members, within the Southern Baptist Convention, which has 15.7 million members nationwide. The Texas Baptists send millions of dollars each year to the national convention, but the state organization is more moderate than the national one.

“There’s a partnership in Christian marriage,” said the Rev. Charles Wade, the executive director of the Texas group. “We’re trying to say in our day any attempt to put women ‘in their place’ or somehow limit the contribution that women might have in church goes against the whole spirit of Christ.”

But Southern Baptist Convention President Paige Patterson, a Texas native, responded that “now it is up to the churches to decide with whom they agree--with a liberal, culturally acceptable view of family and church, or with a Christ-honoring, Bible-believing perspective.”

R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., called the Texas vote “an intentional rejection of a clear teaching of the Bible.”

The statement adopted in 1998 by the national Southern Baptist Convention declared: “A wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband, even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.”