The Southern Baptists Convention is making another attempt to get all its overseas missionaries to pledge that they agree with the denomination's revised statement of faith — a document that opposes women pastors and says wives should submit to their husbands.
Avery Willis, senior vice president of the International Mission Board, has been contacting missionaries by phone to follow up the original request, made a year ago by board President Jerry Rankin.
The nation's largest foreign mission board estimates that less than 1 percent of its 5,400 personnel have not yet complied, Baptist Press reported.
The dispute involves missionaries who were hired under pledges to agree with the previous, 1963 version of the "Baptist Faith and Message" statement.
The 2000 revision, among other things, opposes women pastors and says "a wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband."
Willis is telling personnel currently in the United States that they will not be returned overseas without making a commitment. However, a Baptists spokesman said the phone calls are meant to persuade the missionaries to agree to the faith statement, not to tell them they're fired.
The board said 32 missionaries who resigned in the past year cited Rankin's letter as one reason, but the Baptist Standard of Texas says others are believed to have left for that reason without explicitly saying so.
Newly hired missionaries are required to adhere to the 2000 faith statement.