The Struggle of Women in the SBC
Posted: March 23, 2011 Filed under: Church, SBC 1 Comment »
I originally posted this at SBC Voices
Before becoming a Southern Baptist, I knew the SBC mostly as a convention that believed in “once saved, always saved” and had strong opinions on women in the pastorate. I was saved in a Baptist church in Irving, Texas at the age of 14 but would not have considered myself a Baptist (much less a Southern Baptist, really) at the time, mainly because I did not know enough about Scripture, theology, tradition, or history to have an opinion.
I worked as a Bible study leader and then youth pastor at a Congregational Methodist church for a total of about 18 months. During this time, I studied Scripture, theology, tradition, and history. To make a long story short, I became a complementarian, charismatic, Baptist Calvinist and stand firmly there today.
As I became more acquainted with Baptist history, one issue stuck out to me like a sore thumb: how we got to the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message’s statements on women in ministry and the home. I am thankful for the SBC’s Conservative Resurgence and our Biblical stance on manhood and womanhood, but not as thankful for the up-and-down events leading up to it.
First, here is the BFM2000′s statement:
Article VI. The Church. While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.
Article XVIII. The Family. The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to his people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. 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 willingly 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.
I strongly and openly affirm the BFM2000 on these issues. For a very basic idea on how I feel about women in ministry, see my post about the controversy at Irving Bible Church.
Now, let’s take a look at the timeline of events regarding women in the SBC:
- 1885: Women are refused admission as messengers at the annual meeting.
- 1888: The Women’s Missionary Union (WMU) forms in the basement of a Methodist church since they could not meet in a Baptist church.
- 1904: Women are allowed to attend classes at Southern Seminary, but could not earn credit or participate in class discussion.
- 1918: Women are allowed to serve as messengers.
- 1929: Women allowed to give the WMU report at the annual meeting (previously delivered by men).
- 1963: Marie Mathis is elected as Second Vice-President, the first woman to hold office.
- 1964: Addie Davis becomes first ordained woman to SBC ministry.
- 1984: A vote in Kansas City passed to adopt a resolution against women in the pastorate, the rationale being that “man was first in creation and the woman was first in the Edenic fall.” This was a pivotal moment in, and probably my only real problem with, the Conservative Resurgence.
- 1995: The WMU is renounced in a letter by Jerry Rankin for cooperating with the CBF missionary education resources and the chairman for the International Mission Board likened their cooperation to an adulteress.
- 1998: The family portion of the BFM is amended to include that women should “graciously submit” to their husbands. Dorothy Patterson, wife of Paige, said, “When it comes to submitting to my husband, even when he is wrong, I just do it. He is accountable to God.”
- 2000: The BFM is revised with the above statements included.
As you can see, there are some highlights and lowlights. This, by no means, is an exhaustive timeline but I believe it outlines the struggle of women in the SBC.
Two events in this timeline were most troubling to me:
- The wording of the 1984 Kansas City rationale - I do believe that the role of women is due to the creative order of Adam first, Eve second; but I would argue that it has nothing to do, at all, with Eve taking the first bite in the Garden. Actually, I believe that it was due to Adam’s lack of God-ordered leadership in the situation. Guess who is blamed in Scripture for the Fall? Adam.
- The Paige-Pressler, Rankin led attack on the WMU – The WMU should be commended for offering help to the CBF, not called an “adulteress” for not submitting to the SBC solely.
Thankfully, I believe this is well behind the SBC. The BFM2000 clearly states the equality and importance of women while describing the role of men and women in the home and ministry. I do think that Mrs. Patterson is a bit off when saying that she submits regardless of her husband’s validity. There are times when the husband should love his wife enough to be wrong and go the way she believes is right (as long as sin or detriment to the family isn’t involved). We must lead strongly but gently.
I pray that we would love our wives and our sisters in Christ as God’s most wonderful creations and not treat them as second-class citizens. I’d even go so far to say that we can learn much from them!
Years ago I was a full-fledged complementarian on the issue of men and women. But there were things that troubled me. I knew of a number of complementarians who treated their wives very poorly – hardly a recommendation for the doctrine. In any case as I studied the issue of women in ministry in Baptist history and came across the case of eldresses in the Sandy Creek Baptist Church and Assn., I decided to tackle that specific issue as I knew the Sandy Creek Separate Baptists were a people who meant what they said about the Bible being their authority. Unfortunately, the records wee gone, burned up in a fire around 1801 in the home of the person who was clerk of both the Assn. and the Church (if my memory serves correctly after 40 plus years). It became necessary to reconstruct how they could have justified what seems to be a serious departure from biblical faith and practice.
I have a whole address on the issue. It bears the title, “The Genius of Orthodoxy: Eldresses.” Interestingly enough the Moderates only referred to it by the title in reporting on the matter in the Biblical Recorder. The reason being that I sought to establish the practice as the I thought Stearns and Marshall had, namnely, based upon biblical justification. That seem to be a no-no wth the Moderates, and, of course, the Conservatives wouldn’t touch it either as it seem to be a clear cut violation of a scriptural statement (I Tim.2:11ff). One Consevative after reading the address simply said, “I don’t agree with you.” He never sought to answer it. One gentleman did say, “You laid that down between the two-sides….” I don’t remember how he put it, but since it was complimentary it will not matter.
In reconstructing the situation I made use of an intellectual method that I had developed as a result of find the present-day scientific method was wanting in dealing with issues that involved apparently contradictory aspects or sides (that is, partial truths that seem to contradict other partial truths). Then I stumbled into the fact that a leading Puritan, Matthew Poole, had made an interesting comment on I Tim. 2:11, allowing for an exception to the rule and citing all the cases of women in ministry in the Old and New Testaments to that effect.
I also was very much acquainted with the reality of what came to pass in Germany with a complementary practice. Hitler and his tyranny can be traced very clearly to the habit of obedience inculcated by the complementarian practices of the German people. Exceptions to the rule have been allowed in the British Empire and in America. Like my grandfather’s brother told me: The Germans were good soldiers, when fighting as a unit. The Turks were good fighters as individuals. The Amereicans were the best all around fighters, for if their officers got killed off the non-coms. and individual soldiers could move up and take command. He spoke from experience as he possessed a battlefield commission as a 2nd Lt. from World War I. He had served in the Spanish Amrican War, the Philippine War, World War I, and World War II.
Part of our problem today has been our methodology of approach to Scripture, narrow, focused, and analytical. Often forgotten in the press is the need to compare Scripture with Scripture. A regular Southern Baptist fundamentalist type who was my pastor a few years ago reminded me of the need to compare, when he said, “Don’t you believe the Bible?” We were talking about women obeying men, and when I asked what he meant he answered: “Have you read where God told a man to do what the woman said, where God told Abraham to do what Sarah said about Hagar?” Comparing Scripture with Scripture, and using a synthetical method (the analytical has its place, but in order to take in all that the Bible has to say about an issue, one must be synthetical, that is, taking in both sides of an issue as the Bible presents them.
Exceptions to the rule also demand that we not be so hard on the issue of, for isntance, women in ministry. Lottie Moon did some things that Southern Baptists thought only an ordained minister could do. When asked whether she had ever been ordained, she answered, “No, but I was foreordained.” I had a friend of mine, a missionary to Honduras, who was a Southern Baptist with the Conservative Baptists. He founded 16 churches. I had a retired woman missonary to Japan, a Southern Baptist, who went on her own and founded over 10 churches. She said she never pastored them, but always had them to elect men as pastors. Her labors (she was employed by the occupation forces after World War II) were as biblical as she could make them according to her understanding. Another lady friend (the mother of one of my buddies from my second year of college) founded a church which she pastored for a number of years. When she retired, she gave it to Southern Baptists. I understand that they told her tht no one could ever claim the church was founded by a woman. Today it is a good sized church in a recreational area of Missouri. Founded and pastored by a Southern Baptist woman, who upon retirement gave it to the local Assn. And she was a conservative, Bible believing woman, godly, devoted to the cause of Christ. I believe she witnessed to about 10,000 people in St. Louis back in the 50s and 60s. She also studied Arthur Pink’s Sovereignty of God among other works.
Well, I must stop. This will not earn me any popularity, though I voted for and supported the Conservative cause for longer than most people have been alive who will read this and take issue with it as Conservatives. I had Moderates who tried to destroy me. One tried to get me fired from a church, because I preached Sovereign Grace. But then I had a Conservative and a Moderate who sought and succeeded in keeping me from getting a church so they could get a friend of the Conservative in it. That fellow drove off the five black members and drove the attendance down from 200 to about 125. I had done my Doctor of Ministry on Christian Love & Race Relations and was prepared to handle an integrated church. Besides I had preached a revival in that church and had had 10 professions of faith. Actually I had another profession, too, my son. At the age of 5 or 6 as he said, “God touched my heart.” Two-three years later he was very plain about the issue that the Lord had saved him and that Easter eggs and bunnys and candy were fine, but Easter meant to him Jesus dying on a cross for his sins (a paper he had written for school).
It was in finding out that there are truths that have two-sides, truths that cannot be reconciled by the human mind, two-sided truths, truths of such nature set up a desirable tension in the mind which enables the believer to be balanced, flexible, creative, and magnetic or, in other words, mature. This was the explanation that explained that great creative outburst in America among the Baptists, especially, but including others, from 1740-1820. I do not thnk that we are aware of how really wonderful, liberal (like as in liberal in generosity), flexible, creative, and attractive biblical orthodoxy can be.