In 1998, I spent the spring and summer in Rogers, Ark., with my grandparents. I had graduated from college the year before and was floundering, so hanging out for five months with my three living grandparents was a blessing even though my maternal grandfather and I didn’t see eye-to-eye on the Southern Baptist Convention’s amendment to their statement of faith:
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. (from Article XVIII on The Family, Baptist Faith and Message)
Mara Bim
I learned of this statement when the week after the convention, on Father’s Day, I attended my maternal grandparents’ Southern Baptist church with them. The (male) pastor saw fit to preach on the godliness of the SBC’s new proclamation. I almost fell off my pew.
Having been raised first as a Presbyterian and later as a Methodist, this neo-Calvinist language was foreign to me. While I’d never actually attended a church with a female pastor, I knew the Presbyterian Church first ordained women as elders in 1930 and then as presiding elders of word and sacrament in 1956, the same year Methodists began ordaining women as pastors.
After the service, I gently let my grandfather know what I thought about the SBC’s statement and the patriarchal “complementarianism” it affirmed. Not wanting to ruin our Father’s Day lunch, my grandfather and I agreed to disagree on the merits of the SBC’s statement of faith.
More disregard for women
Yesterday, as I listened to the news coming out of the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Indianapolis, I was reminded of this conversation with my grandfather. As a wife, a mother and a candidate for ordination in the United Methodist Church, I am deeply saddened that Southern Baptists continue to relegate the interpretation of Scripture to the extremist neo-Calvinists in their midst.
Those of us on the outside of the denomination (and, I imagine, quite a few on the inside) were surprised by the convention’s failed vote that was intended to ensure women are never allowed the title of “pastor.” That same resolution passed last year, but the SBC’s polity requires a change to the constitution pass by a two-thirds vote two years in a row. The vote yesterday fell just short with 61.45% of the delegation of messengers voting for the change.
While the vote to change the constitution failed, the Southern Baptist statement of faith still states: “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.” The “elder” and “overseer” were added to their statement of faith last year to further tamp down on women having any leadership roles in Southern Baptist churches.
“It signals the denomination’s next frontier in their efforts to control women’s bodies.”
A second piece of surprising news to come out of the SBC is a resolution opposing in vitro fertilization. While the resolution titled “On the Ethical Realities of Reproductive Technologies and the Dignity of the Human Embryo” is nonbinding, it signals the denomination’s next frontier in their efforts to control women’s bodies.
Most Southern Baptists, like the majority of the U.S. population, see IVF as something entirely different from abortion. It remains to be seen how this resolution will resonate with individuals who identify as Southern Baptists.
Interpreting Scripture
But at the root of both of these resolutions is the hermeneutical lens through which the leaders of the SBC interpret Scripture. The Protestant Reformation gave birth to a movement that sought to reorder how Christians practiced their faith and how they related to God. The early reformers were pushing back on what they saw as a Roman Catholic legalism that gave weight to church tradition alongside Scripture. The irony is that some Protestants have evolved to a legalistic interpretation of the Bible that forgoes the understandings and practices of our spiritual ancestors.
Over the last 500 years, this break with Roman Catholicism has resulted in hundreds of Protestant denominations. Some, like Southern Baptists, practice solo Scriptura (Latin for “only Scripture”). Others, like United Methodists, practice prima Scriptura (Latin for “first Scripture”).
Which view of Scripture a denomination takes shapes their interest in and openness to things like church history, understanding the cultural contexts in which Scripture was written, recent scientific discoveries and human reason.
Although my maternal grandparents attended a Southern Baptist church at the end of their lives, their faith and understanding of Scripture was deeper and more nuanced than what is coming out of the SBC today. My grandmother was raised Nazarene and attended a Catholic grammar school. My grandfather was the son of a Depression-era Methodist circuit-rider. Both believed in the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the world — something the Southern Baptist doctrine of cessation disavows.
My grandparents also studied church history and had a collection of different translations of the Bible. They understood the choice of which translation you read informs your understanding of Scripture. Most importantly, they believed our God-given reason should be employed in interpreting our sacred texts.
“Historically, Judaism and Christianity have understood life beginning when the soul — the spark of God — enters one’s body with the first breath.”
Historically, Judaism and Christianity have understood life beginning when the soul — the spark of God — enters one’s body with the first breath, and ending when the soul exits the body with the last one (See Genesis 2:7; 6:3, 17; 7:21-22). In fact, the Jewish and Christian words for spirit (רוּחַ and πνεῦμα) are the same ones used in Scripture for wind and breath (Genesis 1:1-2; John 20:22). When considering life, Scripture also weighs the well-being of the mother (Exodus 21:22-23).
These texts and others are why many faithful Jews and Christians allow abortion to coexist with their faiths. It is also why these same Jews and Christians do not see IVF as conflicting with their faith traditions.
Women in the church
Regarding women’s roles in the church, there is scriptural authority given to women to be pastors, teachers and preachers. In Romans 16 Paul says Phoebe is a deacon (διάκονον) and Andronicus and Junia (or Julia) are “prominent among the apostles” (ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις). There also is Priscilla, whose name is listed before her teaching-partner-husband four out of the six times the duo is mentioned in Paul’s letters, indicating she was the primary or better teacher of the pair. And there are Chloe, Euodia and Syntyche, and Nympha among others.
Reading Scripture always involves interpretation or a hermeneutical lens. As Christians, we are supposed to look at the entirety of Scripture to understand God’s relationship with creation, including humankind. There is no such thing as a “plain reading” of Scripture. Jesus himself constantly chastised his disciples and encouraged them to open their eyes and ears. The same could be said to the SBC today.
My grandparents didn’t live to see me go to seminary at age 46 or to begin the process of ordination as a deacon in the United Methodist Church. But I am confident they both would be very supportive and very proud.
Recently, while researching my great-grandfather’s Methodist roots, I came across archived newspaper articles from the 1930s and ’40s that mentioned each of my grandparents and their relationships to their churches. I was surprised to find more of the articles listed my then-unmarried grandmother, Luella Hamilton, than my grandfather.
Prayer meeting Thursday evening at 7:30. Luella Hamilton, leader. – Ardmore Daily Ardmoreite, April 14, 1940
Mara Richards Bim is serving as a Clemons Fellow with BNG. She is a recent master of divinity degree graduate from Perkins School of Theology at SMU. She also is an award-winning theater practitioner, playwright and director and founder of Cry Havoc Theater Company that operated in Dallas from 2014 to 2023.
Related articles:
Here’s what you need to know to understand that SBC resolution opposing IVF | Analysis by Mark Wingfield
Remembering the early days of controversy over IVF in America | Analysis by Kristen Thomason
Alabama politicians flee IVF backlash