Women cannot serve as the senior pastor of a Southern Baptist church.

Delegates at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting have voted overwhelmingly to create a task force to oversee an independent investigation into the denomination’s handling of sexual abuse.

The Southern Baptist Convention has tamped down a push from the right at its largest meeting in decades, electing a new president who has worked to bridge racial divides in the church and defeating an effort to make an issue of critical race theory.

Controversies over the handling of sex abuse cases and critical race theory are likely to dominate the Southern Baptists' annual meeting, set to begin Tuesday.

FILE - In this Tuesday, June 11, 2019 file photo, Janene Cates Putman of Athens, Tenn., holds a sign during a demonstration outside the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting in Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo/Julie Bennett)Emily Snook is the daughter of a Southern Baptist pastor. For many SBC women, even those committed to staying, the topic of gender became more volatile this month when popular Bible teacher Beth Moore said she no longer considered herself Southern Baptist. Yet she is among a number of SBC women publicly sharing their dismay about sex abuse and the vitriol directed at Moore. But she says many Southern Baptist women, including students of hers, were unsettled by the criticism of Moore.

(Adelle M. Banks/Religion News Service via AP)NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) — For nearly three decades, Beth Moore has been the very model of a modern Southern Baptist. Her work as a Bible teacher has permeated down to small church Bible study groups and sold-out stadiums with her Living Proof Live events. It described what she and other concerned Southern Baptists were seeing as being wrong in their denomination. Barr, the author of “The Making of Biblical Womanhood,” a forthcoming book on gender roles among evangelicals, grew up a Southern Baptist. She still loves the things Southern Baptists believe, she said, and is determined to stay connected with a local church.