A Tennessee Baptist church may lose its voting rights and be severed from the state Baptist Convention because of its decision to hire a female pastor, which the Southern Baptist Convention does not allow.
According to the Knoxville News Sentinel Wednesday, in light of First Baptist Church in Jefferson City’s move to hire Ellen Di Giosia to be senior pastor, a committee of the Tennessee Baptist Convention has deemed the congregation “not a cooperating church.”
FBC in Jefferson City is affiliated with the more theologically moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Tennessee Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. However, it maintains ties with the more conservative Tennessee Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention, according to its website.
Di Giosia, previously an associate pastor with San Antonio’s Woodland Baptist Church, is First Baptist’s 32nd pastor, and was hired earlier this summer and formally installed on Sunday. She is the only female pastor leading a church connected with the Tennessee Baptist Convention. While other women lead Baptist churches in the state, those congregations are not linked to the TBC.
Southern Baptists affirm that…
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