Every summer when the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting rolls around, my husband and I find ourselves once again discussing why we’ve chosen to stay affiliated with such a troubled and troubling organization. Why are we still here?
Both of us were raised in SBC churches and grew up attending RAs and GAs like other kids our age. My husband was ordained in an SBC church and has spent his entire ministerial career at Southern Baptist churches (he likes to joke that his “hope is built on nothing less/than Lottie Moon and Baptist Press”). I attended a Southern Baptist university and am currently up to my elbows in glitter from this year’s Illumination Station-themed vacation Bible school.
Rebecca Johnson
We value Scripture and evangelism, and we’ve stayed in this denomination as long as we have because we believe Baptist churches can accomplish more on the mission field together as part of the Cooperative Program than they can individually. We’ve stayed because this is our convention too, because women have just as much a right to serve the Lord in a Southern Baptist context as Al Mohler does, because someone has to continue to remind this entity of our shared identity, defined by Christ’s work and mission, not by gender.
We’ve stayed, in part, to dissent.
But we’re also unspeakably weary of the drama and feeling the SBC has colossally missed the point. What was meant to be a collaborative group of autonomous churches working together for the sake of evangelism has become a good old boys’ club so obsessed with making sure women know their place they are willing to sacrifice the effectiveness of church ministries across the country.
As I think about this week, I think about the girls and young women I’ve had the privilege of pastoring (Shepherding? Overseeing? Teaching? Preaching to? Ministering to? Discipling? Serving? Leading? Tell me the right term, and I’ll use it.). They’ve grown up hearing these issues endlessly and viciously debated.
I’m saddened to think we are giving them the impression God does not call women to ministry. Years ago, I spoke with the girls in our youth group about God’s purpose for their lives. One said, “I used to think God was calling me to be a pastor but now I know I was wrong about that. God doesn’t call women.”
“Single women can be missionaries,” she was told, “but in order to plant churches here in the U.S., you have to be married.”
I think about the brilliant, funny, passionate women who attended that little Baptist college with me. The vast majority of them have left the faith entirely, largely due to how women are treated in our denomination. One woman worked at our state’s Baptist convention after graduation and was told she could not be a church planter because she was a single woman. “Single women can be missionaries,” she was told, “but in order to plant churches here in the U.S., you have to be married.” We were told the highest calling we could imagine was marriage to a pastor.
I think about my friends who have attended Southern Baptist seminaries because God was calling them to be well-equipped for service, only to have doors slammed in their faces. One became a chaplain in a children’s cancer ward because God has called her to sit with the sick and dying as God’s hands and feet. God forbid she ask to be ordained by an SBC church. She risks getting her beloved church family deemed “out of friendly cooperation.”
I think about the incredible female professors and staff members at Baptist seminaries. Will they be allowed to discuss Scripture with mixed-gender classes? And at what precise age does a boy grow out of being a child (whose spiritual development can safely be left to the womenfolk) and into a man (who must only be taught by other men)?
I think about Beth Moore, about the years of behind-the-scenes disrespect and diminishment she endured from her male peers, until she was pushed out. I worry about other female Bible teachers at Lifeway like Jen Wilkin and wonder, “How long does she have left before they push her out too?”
Everything I know about studying and loving Scripture I learned from women like these.
I think about the women of the New Testament, who certainly would have gotten their communities disfellowshipped under Al Mohler’s guidelines.
“I think about the women of the New Testament, who certainly would have gotten their communities disfellowshipped under Al Mohler’s guidelines.”
Mary Magdalene, apostle to the apostles, proclaiming Christ’s empty tomb to the disciples on the third day? Guilty of affirming “a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor/elder/overseer, specifically preaching to the assembled congregation.” She’s out.
Priscilla pulling Apollos aside to explain to him the way of Christ more accurately? Yikes. Almost as bad as a woman interpreting Scripture on a podcast!
Phoebe carrying the Epistle to the Romans to Rome on Paul’s behalf? Inappropriate. What if Roman men had questions about its theology and she was the only one present to explain? An unmitigated nightmare.
I think about Baptist missionaries, both historically and today. From what I know of both Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong, each of them fulfilled the function of a pastor by preaching to the assembled congregation. Will the International Mission Board stop commissioning female missionaries? Or are we comfortable with women holding authority over brown and Black bodies in foreign lands as long as they stay silent among white men here at home?
I think about my own daughter. I pray I will raise her to have a thriving relationship with the Lord Jesus, to know and love him, to seek out the lost and hurting, to show them his love. And when the time comes, I will encourage her to find a local church body that values her gifting, even if it does not belong to this faith tradition.
Christ isn’t confused about the role women play in his kingdom. He knows the worth of his daughters, no matter which way the SBC vote goes.
Well, my Southern Baptist college would be proud of how I turned out after all: I married a pastor! I’m even a stay-at-home mom, exactly where SBC leadership would prefer I stay. This week, I’ll do just that: stay at home with my kids, discipling (Prophesying to? Catechizing? Instructing?) them, so my husband can fly to Orlando and vote against the Truth and Unity Amendment, for our church’s sake, for my sake and for the sake of our sisters in Christ who are so busy doing the work of the kingdom that they can’t take time off to argue about it.
For any others like me still left in the Southern Baptist Convention, I pray you have the courage to speak and vote on behalf of the women in your churches who aren’t able to attend as messengers. And for those of you who have already left the Southern Baptists behind for friendlier skies, pray for us. We are still here.
Rebecca Johnson has been an educator across three states in both public and private schools. She currently is a member of a Baptist church in Northern Oklahoma where she serves with her husband, Matt, in young adult ministry.