Congregational Autonomy and the 1965 Turn on Ordination

Two things separate American Baptist Churches USA from the Southern Baptist Convention it split from in 1845, and both trace to the same root: congregational autonomy. Where the Southern Baptist Convention binds its churches to a single confession, the Baptist Faith and Message, American Baptist Churches USA holds no confession that member congregations must sign. Each church answers to its own reading of scripture and its own regional association, one of thirty four spread across the country, rather than to a national creed.

That autonomy cuts both ways on the question of who may be ordained. In 1965, the denomination adopted a resolution affirming gender equality and the ordination of women, a decision the Southern Baptist Convention reversed course on in the opposite direction thirty five years later when its own 2000 revision of the Baptist Faith and Message restricted the pastorate to men. American Baptist Churches USA does not compel any individual congregation to call a woman as pastor, since that decision belongs to the local church under the same autonomy that lets a Southern Baptist congregation decline to. What the 1965 resolution settled was the denomination's own position, not every pulpit beneath it. Headquartered today in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, the denomination counts roughly 1.1 million members across some 4,900 congregations, a fraction of its Southern Baptist counterpart's size but still one of the mainline tradition's most recognized member bodies.