ATLANTA (ABP) — The name “Baptist” is not widely respected in America “because for so long so many Baptists have worked so hard to exclude so many,” best-selling author and Baptist layman John Grisham said Jan. 31.
Grisham told a New Baptist Covenant audience in Atlanta that the Mississippi Baptist church in which he grew up used the Bible to justify segregation and the subjugation of women.
“Sadly, in many ways and in many places, that church still exists today,” Grisham said in a rare public appearance he said.
Many other Baptist churches have moved toward openness and inclusion, including his current congregation, University Baptist Church in Charlottesville. “If there is a hint of discrimination,” he said, “my wife would go somewhere else and take me with her.”
Churches that made biblical arguments for exclusion often based those positions on literal interpretations of selected scripture passages, Grisham said. “Even as a child, I didn't understand this.”
Although women were often “the backbone of the church,” they were not permitted to hold certain positions of spiritual leadership. However, not all members of his hometown church agreed with such literal interpretations, he added.
“My mother may have played lip service to this submission stuff,” he said, “but she didn't really believe it.”