Brandon Durham's Termination

This Isn't Adding Up

Prologue

From 1993-94, I was a student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS). Going in, I had no theological studies background; my undergrad degree was in aeronautical engineering, and I had been an Engineering Systems Engineer for 3 years. I was active in my church, and had been a Sunday School and discipleship teacher. And I was new to the Southern Baptist world. But my my pastor at the time had pushed me to go to SBTS. So when I got laid off from my regular job, I decided to go there.

During my time at SBTS, I interviewed with a church in southern Indiana for a youth ministry position. As that was not my wheelhouse of experience, and they wanted someone of more experience, I was not surprised that I didn’t get the call. The pastor at the time was also a SBTS student, though, and he and I became friends. He seemed established there; the church appeared to like him. He did not strike me as a controversial person at all.

A couple months later, I ran into him just outside the gym at SBTS. He let me know that, within weeks after I was there, his kids had a small dispute with the kids of one of the influential members of the church. That pastor was promptly fired: all it took was a quick business meeting. (The church was basically run by two families.)

Case Study: Brandon Durham and His Controversial Firing

So when Brandon Durham, the now former pastor at Fairmont Baptist Church in Red Level, Alabama, posted the following video on YouTube, and when I saw the Twitter/X post (before watching the video), I initially was empathetic, as—on its face—it sounded like what my friend from 30 years ago experienced.

His problems appeared to surface when he preached a Mother’s Day sermon. Aspects of the sermon caused the youth minister’s wife to take offense. Apparently, this led to some meetings with the deacons, during which Mr. Durham defended his views, and the deacons presumably had no case against him.

But according to Durham, the youth minister upped the ante by resigning, and—when half the church also threatened to eject—the church terminated him, not even giving him a chance to defend himself.

On one hand, I want to empathize with Durham. I have seen pastors who were indeed wrongfully terminated. You can’t tell me it doesn’t happen; I’ve seen it happen. And it happened in exactly the types of churches that Durham describes.

On the other hand, as I watched the video, Durham’s account left me with more questions than answers. This is not adding up.

For the record: I am speaking as a former youth minister who—as a green rookie in early 1994—took on an abusive pastor. Had it not been for one of the older women in the church, I almost certainly would have been fired or forced to resign. (The pastor ended up resigning, negotiating a comparatively nice parachute on the way out.)

I say that to point out that it is very rare for a youth minister to take on a pastor and win. Other than myself, and the youth minister at Fairmont Baptist Church, I don’t know of any other cases in the gamut of my church life where a youth minister won that fight. Every other case I know of, they got fired or were forced to resign. And even today, it is disputable as to whether I “won”, as I use the term loosely. I can tell you, from firsthand experience, that there are no winners in these situations; the issue is how badly the respective sides lose.

Also, as I know someone who is close to the Fairmont Baptist situation, that youth minister—and his wife—were highly-respected longtime members of that church, married 40 years; they were regarded as very reasonable, charitable people. And they are not known for being rabble-rousers. So for that family to pull the ejection handle, and for half the church to also threaten to leave, it begs the question of what really happened?

It left me pondering: what do we know about the Mother’s Day sermon that Durham preached?

The answer: almost nothing.

I reached out to Durham and asked him for a transcript of the sermon. Others asked for audio or other recording. So far, he has provided neither. In fact, he has not even supplied the Biblical text references that served as the focal passages for his sermon.

To me, that’s a HUGE red flag🚩.

Why? If it had been me, and if I thought I were innocent, I would reproduce, at minimum, my sermon outline and—if available—a recording and/or transcript of my sermon. I would say, “This is what I preached. This is what got me fired.” Nothing wins (or loses) like receipts.

But Durham has not provided anything of any detail with respect to what he preached. And given that this is what created the opposition, that is quite the omission. All we have to go on is his word and his account—a very vague one—of the sermon.

That tells me nothing, not even the Biblical text. And really, that is the issue here. Whatever he said in that sermon really pissed off some key people. So the issue is what did he say?

So while people do get fired for the darndest things in Baptist churches, we really don’t know if he is innocent or guilty.

Durham cites the passage from Proverbs 18:17: “The first to plead his case seems right, Until another comes and examines him.”

Sadly, Durham’s citing of that passage rings hollow, as he has not provided hard evidence. He has refused to provide a transcript of the sermon, not even the Biblical text from which he preached, not even an outline of the sermon, or even a reference to the comments he made that were of controversy.

It begs the question: what are you hiding, Brandon?

In the video, Durham cites three reasons that people took issue with him:

1. His support for Calvinism

Durham provides about a 2-minute answer for his support for Calvinism. He points to the founders of the SBC, challenging Baptists to review their heritage in the 1689 London Confession. What he leaves out, though: the 1689 LCBF was not nearly as integral to the founding of the SBC as their support of chattel slavery was.

So when you call on Southern Baptists to reconsider their views in light of their heritage, intellectual honesty requires that one do so with great care.

2. His support for Doug Wilson

He spends more time defending Doug Wilson that he spends defending Calvinism. He takes substantial umbrage with Examining Doug Wilson Ministries (EDWAM). As a casual follower of EDWAM, I have seen them post excerpts of quotes from Doug Wilson, who is quite the lightning rod.

While a full discussion of Doug Wilson is beyond the scope of this blog, I would argue this: if you are going into an old-school SBC church—yes, even an otherwise conservative SBC church—they aren’t necessarily going to be all gung-ho for Doug Wilson. Especially if they are not an elder-led church. And at Fairmont, deacons—not elders—held the sway. The problem: if you go into a church like that expecting to transform them into a Baptist CREC-adjacent church, then you are going to fail miserably.

(I say that as someone who was SBC for over 30 years.)

3. His alleged low View of Women

Because Durham did not provide specifics as to what fueled those accusations, I cannot answer for the merits of his case with Fairmont on that one.

On the other hand, Durham has left one, possibly two, smoking guns on the Internet: his invoking the epithet “skank” in an argument with a woman, and his promotion of a dating site for Dominionists: Dominion Dating.

Setting aside his Dominionist views and the dating site—a full examination of that is out of scope here—he doubled down on his use of “skank”. Is that enough to warrant a termination?

That he used the term is one thing; that he doubled down when called on it is another. The problem I see here—and the video reflects this—is a lack of contrition or humility. Instead, he appeals to culture wars against feminists and liberals, casting himself as a victim, all while not providing the substance that caused the conflict.

As someone who has pro-life bona fides, I can tell you a thing or two about feminism. I’ve both fought them and drank beer with them. You know how many feminists there are in the SBC today? Maybe ten, tops. The rest pulled the chute in the 1990s. Some of them are even friends of mine.

I find it hard to believe that a cabal of feminists—at Fairmont Baptist Church in Red Level, Alabama—just up and ganged up on him. If this were San Francisco, maybe. But Red Level, Alabama??? Please!

Conclusions

The major unanswered question is what did Durham say in that sermon that triggered the massive blowback? We don’t know, as Durham is being very coy on those details.

Based on my own observations of SBC life, and based on what I’ve seen from Durham’s video and other Internet presence, here’s my $0.02 of what likely happened:

(a) He made some really nasty, inappropriate comments during his sermon;

(b) The youth pastor's wife--a woman of substantial credibility--called him out;

(c) Instead of being contrite and walking those comments back, apologizing, and promising to go and sin no more, he doubled down;

(d) The youth pastor decided he'd had enough of his wife being treated this way. So he pulled the ejection handle;

(e) The rest of the church realized that Brandon was quarrelsome--and therefore concluding via 1 Timothy 3 that he is not qualified to pastor an ant colony--and decided that he was not the man they needed as pastor. So they fired him and gave him 2 months of severance.

Yes, pastors get unjustly fired every day. I’ve seen it happen. It is one of the reasons that the newer church planters tend to push for elder-run church governance, rather than a congregational/deacon-led one. The adage that “a pastor is only one business meeting away from being fired” is a true one, and a lot of old-school Baptist churches are stingy with pastors: either you tell us what we want to hear, or we show you the door.

But I don’t think that’s what happened here. What convinces me of that is not the folks at Fairmont Baptist, but Durham himself, both in what he says and what he doesn’t say.

Do I think Brandon Durham is called to be a pastor? I don’t know him, so I cannot answer for that. But I’ll say this much: if he is legitimately called, then he has much to learn about the “feed my lambs” charge that Jesus gave to Peter.

If you think that engaging in culture war fighting and calling women who dissent with you “skanks” is “feeding my lambs”, then you are either unregenerate or you’ve forgotten who you are.

But even assuming he’s innocent on that front, the larger problem seems to be that he was gung-ho for Wilson/CREC and whereas Fairmont Baptist Church had a more old-school congregationalist government model that eschewed the heavy-handed, combative style that is typical of CREC.

It also seems that Durham is, at minimum, tone deaf and lacks the optics that a good shepherd requires. And worse, from the way he talks, he doesn’t seem to want to learn.

And that’s the thing: he seems to be incriminating himself.