Rick Warren, founder and pastor of Saddleback Church, is challenging the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) belief that women should not be pastors in their church. Saddleback was disfellowshipped by SBC officials after Warren had ordained women with the title of “pastor.” The Washington Post interviewed the CRCC’s executive director, Richard Flory, about his thoughts on Warren’s disagreement with SBC.
Rick Warren unsuccessfully appealed the Southern Baptist Convention’s booting of Saddleback over women pastors. But Richard Flory told the Washington Post (paywall) that Warren has not become a progressive. He is “reading the culture and responding to it,” Flory said, while offering evangelicalism focused on individual salvation rather than societal structures.
Richard Flory, of the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture, said Warren is doing what he’s always done: “reading the culture and responding to it,” in this case regarding gender. But at the core, Flory said, Warren is offering evangelicalism in the politically conservative form that it has taken for more than a century, focused almost entirely on individual salvation rather than societal structures.
Read the full article on the Washington Post here.
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