On the first round of voting Tuesday, Florida pastor Willy Rice won a two-year term with 57 percent of the vote from SBC messengers. He defeated Joshua Powell, a South Carolina pastor, who received 42 percent.
Rice, 62, is senior pastor of 10,000-member Calvary Church in Clearwater. He was previously a candidate for SBC president in 2022 but dropped out when allegations involving a church deacon surfaced two months before that annual meeting.
Last fall, Rice announced his candidacy for SBC president in a second attempt to lead the Convention.
A story by The Christian Post said Rice and Powell differ in their “style and emphasis,” but both candidates for SBC president supported the “Truth and Unity Amendment” that clarifies the denomination’s ban on female pastors.
AFN reported this week that amendment was overwhelmingly approved by 74 percent of messengers after years of conflict within the Convention over the question of female pastors.
According to a related New York Times story about the Wednesday vote, an unnamed “faction” within the SBC wants to “steer the country’s largest Protestant denomination to the right.”
In reality, however, many Southern Baptists know the denomination has maintained a conservative view on biblical orthodoxy, and cultural issues such as abortion and homosexuality, for nearly a half-century. The denomination has maintained those strong stances ever since the “conservative resurgence” defeated a liberal drift in the late 1970s.
Going into its annual meeting this week, the SBC has watched its church membership drop from a peak of 16.3 million in 2006 to about 12.3 million today, the Times story said.
Times: Rice helped by 'insurgent faction'
A similar Times story about Rice, published a day before the vote on female pastors, claimed an “insurgent faction” and a “rabble-rousing wing” was behind Rice’s election.
That reference is likely referring to vocal Southern Baptists such as William Wolfe. Wolfe, who leads the Center for Baptist Leadership, and who backed Rice’s nomination, wrote on X that “conservative reformers” within the SBC are not the “fringe” they are portrayed to be.
"We are the representatives of what the broad base of grassroots Southern Baptists think & want,” Wolfe, citing Rice’s election and the vote on female pastors, wrote.
The liberal New York newspaper, which doesn’t employ a conservative Evangelical in its newsroom, also describes Rice as a “firebrand” pastor because he wants to challenge “the system” within the SBC, referring to liberals within its seminaries and its ministry arms.
Basham: Rice 'woke up' to liberal push
Daily Wire reporter Megan Basham, whose religion beat includes the SBC, told American Family News the election of Rice as SBC president matters a lot to her personally.
After covering the SBC for years, including its controversies and controversial leaders, Basham said the SBC now has a new president who has acknowledged he was fooled by previous leaders and by liberal agendas. Those issues, such as sexual abuse claims and a defense of critical race theory, were intended to "dismantle" the "conservative resurgence" and replace it with liberal theology, she said.
"One of the things I appreciate about Willy Rice is how transparent he has been about being mugged by reality, so to speak," Basham told AFN. "Willy had the humility to share how he was taken in by some of that and what woke him up."
In a brief interview with American Family News, Rice said the SBC is getting its house in order after years of internal conflict and controversy.
“The Southern Baptist Convention is not eroding. We're not equivocating,” he told AFN. “We're enduring. We're standing.”
On the eve of the Tuesday vote, Rice preached a sermon from 1 Samuel at the SBC Pastors’ Conference. He said Southern Baptists can learn a lesson from the downfall of King Saul, the Israelite king. King Saul, Rice warned, exchanged a heart of obedience to God for the appearance of religion.
“It is not enough for us to engage in religious ritual,” Rice told fellow pastors. “Saul had lost sight of what mattered most: to obey is better than sacrifice, to pay attention is better than the fat of rams.”
