By Ken Camp
The women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s deeply affected Southern Baptist life, an Oregon State University women’s studies professor said during a two-day conference on how Baptists have shaped American culture.
Ironically, feminism made a stronger impact on theological education in ultraconservative Southern Baptist seminaries than in the moderate seminaries related to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Professor Susan Shaw observed in the Oct. 12-13 conference at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, Texas.
“Feminism has had a profound impact on Baptists, and Baptists, particularly at the Southern Baptist seminaries, are deeply engaged with feminism,” Shaw said. And while feminism opened the door for women in moderate Baptist churches and seminaries, she suggested, it has not transformed these institutions in the same way that it did with the much larger SBC.
Shaw, a former Southern Baptist minister who now serves in a United Church of Christ congregation, said despite the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s stated goal of championing women in ministry, the influence of feminism is “marginalized” in theology schools aligned with the 21-year-old CBF. That contrasts with SBC seminaries, which oppose feminism but take it seriously enough to rebut with programs assigning women’s roles in the church and home that are subordinate to males.
Shaw noted three of the six Southern Baptist Convention seminaries now have programs devoted to women’s studies. While she is uncomfortable with their appropriation of the “women’s studies” label, she said the anti-feminist programs “do indicate focused attention on women’s issues and give women a central place in the seminaries’ curricula.”
By contrast, Shaw said, the women’s movement seemed to make less of a lasting mark on seminaries that partner with the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
“CBF seminaries actually offer very few courses focused on women,” Shaw said. “In fact, CBF seminaries have very few women on their faculties.” Excluding adjunct instructors, women represent only about 15 percent of the faculty at the CBF-related seminaries, she reported.
“Certainly, the CBF seminaries hold more progressive views of women than do the SBC seminaries, and I suspect the CBF seminaries would argue that they try to integrate women’s issues throughout the curriculum,” she said. “Still, when I talk to my women friends who have been on the faculties of CBF seminaries, I hear stories that affirm my suspicion that attention to women’s issues is an add-on rather than a central component of CBF theological education.”
Shaw, director of the Oregon State’s Women’s Studies program and a faculty member since 1996, said she views the emphasis on traditional women’s roles at Southern Baptist seminaries “a direct response to the progress made by feminism.”
Shaw, author of the 2008 book God Speaks to Us, Too: Southern Baptist Women on Church, Home and Society, said she “became a feminist at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,” where she earned her master’s and doctorate degrees in the 1980s.
She said that during the 1970s, many Southern Baptist leaders, especially at the denomination’s seminaries and publishing houses, embraced stated goals of the women’s movement.
Coupled with the growing consciousness of many Southern Baptists, particularly young women, female students enrolled in record numbers in SBC seminaries during the 1980s, Shaw said.
That changed abruptly with a leadership change that began in 1979, commonly known as the “conservative resurgence,” which sought to impose a more literal reading of Bible texts like those that permit only men to serve as pastors. In 1984, the SBC passed a resolution opposing women’s ordination and supporting their exclusion from the pastorate on biblical grounds.
Shaw said moderate Southern Baptists continued to defend the right of women to answer the call to ordained ministry, but few congregations ever called a woman as senior pastor. Women’s ordination was a primary influence that led many moderates to loosen ties to the SBC and form the alternative Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 1991.
The SBC continued to direct attention to the role of women, amending the Baptist Faith and Message to include a section on the family that called on a wife to “submit herself graciously” to the “servant leadership” of her husband.
Shaw noted that Southern Baptist statements argue women and men are of equal worth before God and both male and female are created in God’s image. Yet, they insist that God ordained specific gender-based roles that place men in leadership positions.
“Here, the fundamentalists draw from the rhetoric of feminism even as they oppose it,” she said. “While espousing a belief in the equality of women and men, they reinforce patriarchal family structures that disadvantage and control women. These statements attempt to appease women’s sense of fairness and need for self-worth, all the while maintaining them in a subordinate position, completely reliant on the benevolent protection of men.”