Southern Baptists oust four churches

The Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee voted Tuesday to oust four of its churches, two over policies deemed to be too inclusive of gay and transgender people and two more for employing pastors convicted of sex offenses.

The actions were announced at a meeting marked by warnings from two top leaders that the Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, was damaging itself with divisions over critical issues including race.

“We should mourn when closet racists and neo-Confederates feel more at home in our churches than do many of our people of color,” said the organization’s president, J.D. Greear in his opening speech.

The two churches expelled for gay and transgender inclusion were St. Matthews Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., and Towne View Baptist Church, in Kennesaw, Ga.

Towne View’s pastor, the Rev. Jim Conrad, has said that he would not appeal the ouster and plans to affiliate his church, at least temporarily, with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which lets churches set their own LGBT policies.

St. Matthews Baptist lost its affiliation with the Kentucky Baptist Convention in 2018 because it made financial contributions to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Southern Baptist Convention officials said West Side Baptist Church in Sharpsville, Pa., was ousted because it “knowingly employs as pastor a registered sex offender,” while Antioch Baptist Church in Sevierville, Tenn., has a pastor who was convicted of statutory rape.