The proposed Article XVIII of the "Baptist Faith and Message," drafted by a seven-member committee, passed overwhelmingly by a show-of-hands vote on the opening day of the SBC's annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The article on the family urges wives to submit to their husband's authority, upholds lifelong marriage as a biblical model and rejects the legitimacy of homosexual unions. It also holds couples responsible for their children "from the moment of conception."

It was the first amendment of the SBC's doctrinal statement in 35 years. The last major revision occurred in 1963, under direction of a committee comprised of the presidents of the state Baptist conventions.

The latest revising committee was appointed by SBC President Tom Elliff last year in response to a motion made at the annual meeting in Dallas, Texas. The committee was chaired by Anthony Jordan, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma.

In a news conference after adoption of the new section, Jordan said the addition was needed because of the challenges modern culture presents to the biblical understanding of family.

Due to the "destruction and break-up of the home," it is time for Southern Baptists to clarify their stance, he said.

The four-paragraph statement says God has "ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society." It defines family as "persons related to one another by marriage, blood or adoption."

Marriage is "the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime," it adds.

The most-discussed portion of the statement highlights the roles of men and women in a marriage and declares that wives must submit to their husbands.

"A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church," it declares. "He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willing submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation."

The first attempt to amend the proposal focused on this section, with a messenger asserting that the committee's work was unbiblical.

"We need to be very clear that when we amend the 'Baptist Faith and Message,' a document that has stood us well as Southern Baptists for nearly three decades, that we do so scripturally," said Tim Owings, pastor of First Church of Augusta, Ga. and former pastor of First Church in Mooresville.

His amendment would have changed the article to read: "Both husband and wife are to submit graciously to each other as servant leaders in the home, even as the church willingly submits to the lordship of Christ."

This is more in keeping with the Bible's teaching in Ephesians 5:21, he said. In that passage, the Apostle Paul admonishes his readers to "submit to one another out of reverence for Christ."

This verse comes immediately prior to Paul's oft-quoted discourse on husbands and wives.

Many conservative Christians separate verse 21 from the verses that follow, giving more weight to the verses about wives submitting to husbands.

But other scholars say verse 21 should be understood as the thesis statement of the entire passage that follows. According to this view, the admonition to "submit to one another" is illustrated in the following verses with applications of how wives are to submit to husbands and husbands to wives.

This is commonly referred to as language of "mutual submission."

The view of mutual submission was not embraced by the drafting committee, which emphasized not Ephesians 5:21 but later verses in Ephesians 5, such as verses 22 and 23 which say:

"Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church."

Dorothy Patterson (center) of Wake Forest, a member of the Baptist Faith and Message Study Committee, speaks during the committee's report. With her on the platform are Anthony L. Jordan, committee chair and executive director-treasurer of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma; and Mary Mohler, committee member and wife of Al Mohler, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president.

In response to Owings' proposed amendment, committee member Dorothy Patterson acknowledged the call for mutual submission in Ephesians 5:21 but said that must yield to other scriptures that give "the very clear admonition for wives to submit to their husbands."

Patterson, a biblical scholar who recently completed a doctorate with a dissertation on the theology of womanhood and the wife of newly elected SBC President Paige Patterson, spoke more on this subject in a news conference.

"When it comes to submitting to my husband even when he's wrong, I just do it," she said. "He is accountable to God."

Her sentiment was echoed by the other female member of the committee, Mary Mohler, wife of Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

"The whole issue comes down to a matter of Scripture," she said. "It's not my prerogative to go through and start cutting and slashing passages.... It is my pleasure and responsibility to submit to the leadership of my husband in our home.... My glad acceptance of that says nothing about my gifts or abilities or intelligence."

On the convention floor, one other messenger spoke in favor of the amendment and two others spoke against the amendment, including former SBC President Adrian Rogers. Rogers, pastor of Bellevue Church in Cordova, Tenn., said the appeal to mutual submission "confuses things.

"The wife is to love her husband and reverence her husband as the church does the Lord Jesus Christ," he said. The amendment "convolutes all that. It would make it seem as though Christ would find himself submitting to the church...and turns the entire thing on its head."

Owings returned to the microphone to assure that was not his intent in suggesting the amendment.

"The wording of this change in no way suggests that Christ is to submit to any of us," he said. "Christ is the head. That is without equivocation."

The suggested amendment failed by a large margin on a show-of-hands vote.

A second attempt to amend the committee's wording was made by Dennis Wiles of First Church in Huntsville, Ala.

He suggested an expansion of the statement's description of families as "composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood or adoption."

After this sentence, he would have added: "The Bible contains many examples of the diverse manifestations of the family. Singles adults, childless couples, widows and widowers can comprise legitimate expressions of the family."

Wiles said his concern was that the statement not appear to exclude those who are not parents or who are not married. "I am simply asking that we include a broad biblical statement about the family and not just one about parenting."

His concern was shared by David McNair of First Church in Jackson, Miss.

"Over one-third of the adult members of SBC churches are in a single state," McNair said. "I appreciate the work the committee has done, but what they have not said is a very important message. They are not addressing singleness in our Southern Baptist churches. This amendment will help with that."

Committee chair Jordan spoke against the amendment, arguing that "when you talk about being related through marriage, blood or adoption, it covers all those." Further, he said, the committee had worked to keep the statement in a succinct form.

As before, this proposal to amend the statement failed on a show-of-hands vote.

Although most Southern Baptists who oppose aspects of the new statement on family did not attend the annual meeting in Salt Lake City, they and other non-Baptists were quoted widely in the secular and religious press. Critics included pastors, scholars, feminists, ethicists and workers with battered women.

Reba Cobb, a member of Crescent Hill Church in Louisville, Ky., and former director of the Center for Women and Children there, told the Louisville Courier-Journal that the position taken by the SBC is similar to the justification used by some men who beat their wives.

To focus only on the language about wives submitting sends women "a terrible mixed message about what to do when a husband batters them" and leads some women to think they have no choice but to submit, Cobb said. "And we send a message to the husband that he can do whatever he need to because he is the head of the household."

Prior to the SBC, the committee's wording had been criticized by Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics in Nashville, Tenn. Parham said the statement on family "forgot Jesus."

"A Christian definition of family should be grounded in Jesus' definition of family," he said. "Jesus defined family first in terms of loyalty to God, not blood ties.... The statement forgot Jesus and made June Cleaver a biblical model for motherhood."

Other critics said the statement was offensive to women who work outside the home and that it implies women should do things their husbands demand even if they know those things are wrong.

Committee member Richard Land said that only an "absurd reading" of the statement could be construed to imply that women should not work outside the home. His own wife, he said, earned a doctorate and works as a counselor.

"I think what we're saying is that's a decision for a husband and wife to make," Land said. "But if a husband doesn't want his wife to work outside the home, then she should not."

Patterson also attempted to explain the limits to which a wife must obey the demands of her husband.

"If Paige were to come in and tell me to shoot my granddaughter, he better run for cover," she said. "There's no way that's from God."

On the other hand, if he said they should take their dog to church, she would obey him. Only she would hope he was preaching that day and would have to suffer through the dog's howling, she said. (ABP)