The vetting process: The Tennessean’s Liam Adams details how McLaurin’s falsified credentials were uncovered:

Executive committee chair Philip Robertson confirmed McLaurin’s resignation in a statement Thursday. A presidential search team, in a review of McLaurin’s application for the permanent position, “discovered disqualifying information during their process of vetting and due diligence,” Robertson said.

“McLaurin’s education credentials that he presented in his resume are false,” Robertson said.

The New York Times’ Ruth Graham explains why the resignation matters:

With more than 13 million members, the S.B.C. is the nation’s largest Protestant denomination and serves as a bellwether for priorities among American evangelicals. The S.B.C. has been wracked by fierce divisions in recent years over politics, gender and race. Some conservatives in the denomination fear that it is drifting toward liberalism, while others fear a takeover by a faction that values ideological purity over all.

At the S.B.C.’s annual meeting this summer, delegates hotly debated women’s roles in church leadership. The denomination voted against readmitting two churches that had appealed their expulsion for having women pastors. Delegates also took steps to amend the denomination’s constitution to strengthen the ban on women as pastors, a move that may open up other hundreds of churches to investigation and expulsions.

The executive committee, which has more than 80 members, conducts business for the denomination between its annual meetings. The chief executive of the committee is considered more powerful in many ways than the denomination’s president, a more high-profile but comparatively symbolic role.

Pointing to McLaurin’s request for forgiveness for “the harm or hurt that this has caused,” the SBC’s president, Bart Barber, says, “Biblical Christianity offers you one and only one response to that plea, fellow Southern Baptists. Yes, Willie, I forgive you.”

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. From Buddhists to Zoroastrians: “The exhibit hall at the Parliament of the World’s Religions brought the diversity of religious practices and spiritual beliefs to life.”

Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana reports from Chicago.

See additional coverage from Smietana and The Associated Press’ David Crary.