Myth: Baptists Don`t Believe In Women Pastors
By Sheri Adams, Professor of Church History and Theology
School of Divinity at Gardner-Webb University, NC
Without a guiding principle, the Bible`s teachings on women may appear to be confusing to some people. Only husbands of one wife should be deacons (1 Tim. 3:12), yet Phoebe is a deaconess (Rom. 16:1). Women are not to speak in the church at Corinth (1 Cor. 15:34), yet they are given instructions about praying and prophesying in worship (1 Cor. 11:5ff.). Women are told not to teach or be in authority over men (1 Tim. 2:12), yet women did teach, and at least one woman Priscilla, along with her husband, Aquila, taught a man (Acts 18:26).
Egalitarian or Submissive
Baptists, as most other denominations, are divided in their approach to the Bible on the role of women in the church. Some follow a literal interpretation of certain biblical passages and make a case for the submission of women to men in the church. While these Baptists usually insist that women are equal in the sight of God, they believe that God has given men and women different roles in the home and in the church. They interpret Genesis 2 to mean that Eve was created to be Adam`s helper and that ancient cultural pattern is applied universally to the present. For these Baptists, Jesus was not overly radical in his treatment of women (notably that he did not select a woman to be an apostle), and Paul taught a clear division of roles that is an inherent part of nature.
Other Baptists follow an egalitarian perspective. In Galatians 3:27-28, Paul wrote, "As many of you as are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus " (NRSV).1 The "Address to the Public," adopted on May 9, 1991, by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, asserted:
We take Galatians as a clue to the way the Church should be ordered. We interpret the reference to women the same way we interpret the reference to slaves. If we have submissive roles for women, we must also have a place for slaves in the Church. In Galatians Paul follows the spirit of Jesus who courageously challenged the conventional wisdom of his day. It was a wisdom with rigid boundaries between men and women in religion and in public life. Jesus deliberately broke those barriers. He called women to follow him; he treated women as equally capable of dealing with sacred issues. Our model for the role of women in matters of faith is the Lord Jesus.2
Women in Early Baptist Life
Rosemary Radford Ruether suggests that the acceptance of women in non-traditional roles is often determined by need. For example, in the old West, every pair of hands was needed and valued. Women in that setting had more freedom than their counterparts in the old South. A similar pattern is evident in the New Testament. In Acts, women were disciples of Jesus and active in positions of leadership.3 While doors began to close before the end of the New Testament era, women still were active in public ministry. The subsequent history of the church, however, is a history of women becoming more and more powerless within the developing official hierarchy.
Baptist beginnings in early seventeenth-century England also illustrate the truth of Ruether`s thesis. Baptists drew many of their members from the lower classes. General Baptists especially allowed women deacons. One particularly influential woman was Dorothy Hazzard, who helped form the Broadmead Baptist Church and occasionally preached. Another preacher was a Mrs. Attaway. Richer, established religious groups ridiculed General Baptists for giving women positions of authority. Still, women were actively involved in ministries of all kinds and suffered persecution, imprisonment, and death, just like the men.4
Particular Baptists were never as open as the General Baptists to the role of women in ministry. As the Baptist faith institutionalized in the late seventeenth century, the views of leaders like John Bunyan prevailed. Because men were made in the image of God, he said, women should not lead worship.
Baptist Women in America
In colonial America, Baptists gave no appearance that they were going to take the New World by storm until the First Great Awakening proved to be the catalyst they needed. American Congregationalism divided over the benefits of revival. Some New Light Congregationalists, supporters of revival methods, embraced believer`s baptism and entered into Baptist life. Some of these new Baptists, called Separate Baptists, were open to the ministry of women, even women preachers.
The most famous of these women was Martha Stearns Marshall, sister of Shubal Stearns and wife of Daniel Marshall. Stearns and Marshall were the leaders of the Separate Baptist movement that brought significant growth to Baptists in the South during the late eighteenth century. Martha Stearns was regarded as a powerful preacher. Another Separate Baptist woman, Margaret Clay, was sentenced, but spared the whip, for preaching without a license. Unfortunately, history has forgotten the names of most other women exhorters.5
Once again, as Baptist work became more official, women`s roles diminished. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, women found their greatest avenue for ministry in foreign missions. At first, mission agencies felt that a single woman could manage on a foreign field only with a male counterpart; but once that hurdle was cleared, single women poured out of America to live and work all over the world. For most Baptists, it was a case of "out of sight, out of mind," and they were largely unaware that women performed ministries of all kinds abroad, even planting churches and preaching. According to a popular story, Lottie Moon was once criticized for preaching the gospel to the Chinese. Her retort was that if the mission board wanted to send men to preach, they were welcome to do so, and if the men came, she would stop preaching.
Ordination
Northern Baptist records contain evidence of the ordination of women by the late 1880s. Since that time, American Baptist women have served as pastors of churches. A 1985 study revealed that 3 percent of American Baptist pastors and 16 percent of the associate and assistant pastors were women. By 2002, the numbers had continued to increase. American Baptists had 1,049 ordained women (14 percent of the total number of ordained ministers) with 923 serving in local church ministries. Eight percent of American Baptist pastors (373) were women. The role of associate pastor was especially open to women, with 33 percent (207) serving in that capacity.6
Southern Baptists were much slower to ordain a woman. On August 9, 1964, at Watts Street Baptist Church, Durham, North Carolina, Addie Davis was the first Southern Baptist woman ordained to the pastoral ministry. Throughout the twentieth century, Southern Baptist women were involved in ministries of all kinds, often unpaid and unnoticed. They did, however, run a major mission entity, the Woman`s Missionary Union, and discovered there was not a great deal of difference in speaking before hundreds of people and preaching before the same people.
Close to 2,000 Southern Baptist women (or women with Southern Baptist roots) have been ordained. The majority of these women serve in chaplaincy roles, but many are also associate pastors and even senior pastors. Others are missionaries, teachers, denominational workers, campus ministers, or associational workers.
Some of these women have found a home with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF). This is especially true since the Southern Baptist Convention defines ministry for women in increasingly narrow terms and rejects women for pastoral ministry. In 2002, the CBF had 40 women on staff. The CBF also had 85 women field personnel, both single and married. Some CBF women are involved in church planting and/or pastoring.7 Other Baptist groups have encouraged women who feel called to the pastorate, including the Alliance of Baptists, Baptist General Conference, and Progressive National Baptists.
The Future
The Baptist heritage gives evidence to the call of God upon women for pastoral ministry. While some women saw little or no way to act upon their call, others channeled their pastoral gifts into missions or other kinds of service. A precious few have found churches willing to accept them as pastors.
The Baptist past reveals that pastoral ministry is often determined more by need than by theology. Churches hesitant to acknowledge the validity of women pastors, but in need of ministerial leadership, have let women speak, but not preach; they have let them deliver a message, but not a sermon; and they have let them plant churches, but not pastor churches. But churches that have experienced the pastoral leadership of dedicated Christian women can attest the truth of the declaration, "in Christ there is neither male nor female."
Is it true that Baptists do not support women in pastoral ministry? Of course, some Baptists do not, but the Baptist tradition of freedom dispels the myth. Denying and stifling a strong sense of call is as difficult for a woman as it is for a man. Women have preached and served as Baptist pastors, and they will persevere in spite of the opposition as they are called.
Note: Published with permission of the Baptist History and Heritage Society, the William H. Whitsitt Baptist Heritage Society, and the Center for Baptist Studies at Mercer University, one of eleven pamphlets in the "Baptist Myths" series available at P. O. Box 728, Brentwood, TN37024, (800) 966-2278.
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Used by permission.
"An Address to the Public" from the Interim Steering Committee of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, adopted on May 9, 1991" in Walter B. Shurden, ed., Struggle for the Soul of the SBC: Moderate Responses to the Fundamentalist Movement (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1993), 312.
See Acts 1:14; 2:44-47; 4:32-35; 8:3; 9:2; 9:36; 12:12; 16:14; 17:12; 17:34; 18:2-3; 18:26.
See Leon, McBeth, Women in Baptist Life (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1979) for a historical overview of the role of women in Baptist life.
Karen O`Dell Bullock, Word and Way (May 23, 1995): 13.
"Leadership, Diversity, Global Concern Celebrating Fifty Years of American Baptist Women`s Ministry," American Baptist Quarterly, 20 (September 2001): 282. See also American Baptist Women in Ministry Report as of June 18, 2002: http://www.abwim.org/statistics.htm
Telephone interview with Sarah Frances Anders, July 18, 2002.
