What's happening in the Southern Baptist Convention, Part 1: it's not new
This might be significant, but it’s not a new development. Below is an excerpt from my college capstone project, written in 1999.
Women’s struggle for respect as church leaders has been a particularly explosive issue representative of the growing rift between moderates and conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention (a divide that has paralleled and been reinforced by the aforementioned culture war and religious realignment along conservative-progressive lines). Coinciding with increasing gender equity in the culture at large in the 1970s, many of the most influential bodies in the SBC such as Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Kentucky) and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (North Carolina) became somewhat progressive in terms of gender equality, and they in fact encouraged women in ministry by holding conferences regarding women in the church and by establishing women’s centers on some campuses. In 1980 a female co-pastor at a church in Richmond baptized new Christians, and women were chairs of deacons at a few churches. However, the beginning of a holy war came in 1979 when the conservatives launched the first offensive in a plan to overtake the SBC and managed to land their candidate, Adrian Rogers, in the SBC presidency. Rogers’ bid for the presidency was successful in large part because conservative leaders had organized meetings across the country to mobilize biblical inerrantists and to encourage them to act as messengers (read: voters) at the annual meeting of the Convention. The president has the power to appoint people to many of the leadership positions in the SBC, and prior to the conservative tidal wave most presidents chose a diverse group of Baptists to represent the varied viewpoints within the SBC. However, Rogers and subsequent presidents abused their appointive powers and replaced more moderate leaders with men who had conservative tendencies. The Sunday School Board and the boards of trustees at Southern Baptist seminaries were just a few of the bodies that became theologically homogeneous.
Conservatives continued their offensive to eradicate the influence of moderates in the 1980s. At the 1980 Convention, a resolution that urged SBC institutions only to hire faculty and staff who would affirm biblical inerrancy was passed. During the same year in his address to a congregation, fundamentalist leader Paul Pressler revealed part of his political plan when he asserted that conservatives “need to go for the jugular - we need to go for the trustees [of Southern Baptist seminaries].” After forcing the inerrancy issue and overtaking many of the key positions in the SBC hierarchy, conservatives extended their agenda so that it became more social and moral in nature. Paige Patterson, who along with Pressler was the key organizer of the conservative coup, intimated in 1986 that conservative planks not only on theology but also on such issues as school prayer, abortion, and federal budget reduction would influence the future hiring policies of the SBC.
This excerpt certainly doesn’t cover everything the SBC has done to marginalize women. (And, of course, it doesn’t even touch the reality that the SBC was founded on white supremacy. I highly recommend Robert P. Jones’ book White Too Long for that history.) It is simply to show that the “issue” of women in ministry has been a live one in the SBC for a long, long time, and I believe it has little to do with theology and almost everything to do with politics and power. I allow the SBC, the denomination of my youth, to take up very little of my brain space these days. I’m called to ministry, and I don’t need the SBC to affirm that. Instead, I’d rather use the privilege that comes with not having to care about what the SBC does to lift up the amazing women in ministry that I know.