The college headed by prominent Southern Baptist Paige Patterson is to hold a crisis meeting of trustees in the wake of a wave of negative publicity regarding comments he has made about women.

Patterson, 75, has been embroiled in controversy after a 2000 recording of him speaking about domestic violence resurfaced. He also made comments defending the sexual objectification of a 16-year-old girl as 'biblical' that have caused widespread outrage.

A statement released by Kevin Ueckert , chairman of trustees of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, of which Patterson is president, said: 'Since April 28, 2018, I, and the Executive Committee of the board of trustees, have been in conversation with our president. In light of recent events, Dr. Patterson has requested that I convene our full trustee board to meet in official session.'

The meeting will be held in the afternoon of May 22.

Patterson, a combative and controversial figure who was one of the architects of the 'conservative resurgence' that saw the SBC lurch decisively to the right during the 1990s, has been under increasing pressure since his comments resurfaced. In the recording, he appears to advise abused women to submit to their husbands.

In a sign that Patterson may have gone too far even for a denomination that is noted for its espousal of 'complementarianism', the view that wives should submit to their husbands and that women should not exercise authority over men in church situations, a petition calling for his removal has been signed by nearly 2,400 Southern Baptists, most of them women.

It calls on Ueckert and SWBTS trustees to 'exercise the authority you have been given by the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention and to take a strong stand against unbiblical teaching regarding womanhood, sexuality, and domestic violence'.

It says: 'We are shocked by the video that has surfaced showing Dr Paige Patterson objectify a teenage girl and then suggest this as behavior that is biblical. We are further grieved by the dangerous and unwise counsel given by Dr Patterson to women in abusive situations. His recent remarks of clarification do not repudiate his unwise counsel in the past; nor has he offered explanation or repentance for inappropriate comments regarding a teenage girl, the unbiblical teaching he offered on the biblical meaning of womanhood in that objectification, and the inappropriate nature of his own observations of her body.'

The letter says the world 'wonder how we could possibly be part of a denomination that counts Dr Patterson as a leader' and concludes: 'The Southern Baptist Convention cannot allow the biblical view of leadership to be misused in such a way that a leader with an unbiblical view of authority, womanhood, and sexuality be allowed to continue in leadership.'