ORLANDO, Fla. (RNS) — A Florida pastor who has argued that the nation’s largest Protestant denomination has become too woke and liberal was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention on Tuesday (June 9).
Willy Rice, senior pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, Florida, received 5,217 votes — 57% of the votes cast. His opponent, Josh Powell, lead pastor of Taylors First Baptist Church in South Carolina, received 3,821 votes, or 42%.
Rice’s election is a triumph for critics who claim that the denomination has lost its way in recent years. He has alleged that the SBC’s sexual abuse crisis was more hoax than reality and said that the denomination’s leaders had followed the culture more than the Bible.
The two candidates were similar. Both are conservative. Both are in favor of a ban on churches with women pastors. Both are fans of missionary work and are lifelong Southern Baptists. Both claimed that concerns that the SBC had a sexual abuse crisis were overblown.
But they offered disparate views of the state of the convention during a lunchtime forum, held a few hours before the election, during the SBC’s gathering at Orange County Convention Center in Orlando this week.
“I’m afraid, you know, if we are not careful, we’re going to hug ourselves to death,” Rice …