The recent dismissal of a gender-bias lawsuit involving Abyssinian Baptist Church, while constitutionally predictable is spiritually and theologically unfinished.
A federal judge ruled the claims brought by Eboni Marshall Turman, a former assistant minister and nationally respected theologian and professor, could not be adjudicated due to the ecclesial exception doctrine, a First Amendment doctrine that shields churches from civil court review of decisions regarding ministerial leadership. The court did not weigh the merits of Turman’s allegations. It could not. The court determined the law prohibits it.
Braxton Wade
But even though this matter may be prohibited by the courts, that does not relieve the church of responsibility to examine its own practices — especially when those practices shape who is seen as fit to lead at the highest levels of authority.
In this case, Turman and some church members claim gender bias played a role in Kevin R. Johnson’s election as pastor instead of Turman being elected pastor.
Abyssinian Baptist Church is not simply another local congregation. Founded in 1808 in protest of racial discrimination in worship, Abyssinian’s origin is tethered to resistance and dignity. Over time, it became one of the most influential Black churches in the nation, shaped by senior pastors whose impact reached far beyond Harlem — figures such as Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Samuel DeWitt Proctor and Calvin O. Butts.
Due to its stature, the Abyssinian, often called “The Black Vatican,” functions as a pioneer in Black Baptist life. Its leadership decisions help shape what is imagined as possible across a wide ecosystem of Black Baptist congregations. What happens in its pulpit does not remain in Harlem; it reverberates through search committees, seminaries and denominational conversations across the nation.
That is why this case cannot be reduced to internal governance or dismissed as procedural. It raises a larger ecclesial question about how power, authority and gender continue to be ordered in Black Baptist churches.
Eboni Marshall Turman
The Black Baptist church never has lacked gifted women. Women preach, teach, organize and sustain congregational life. They serve as associate ministers, executive pastors and theological educators. In many churches, women constitute the majority of the congregation and the backbone of its ministry.
Yet the senior pastorate within the Black Baptist church, the symbolic and functional center of authority, remains overwhelmingly male.
This exclusion is almost never official. On paper, many Black Baptist churches affirm women can preach and serve as pastors. In practice, resistance surfaces through subtler mechanisms: search committees privileging “fit,” unspoken assumptions about pastoral authority rooted in charismatic masculinity and theological appeals to “discernment” that are rarely interrogated.
“Women are affirmed in calling, celebrated in service and blocked at the point where authority becomes undeniable.”
The result is a familiar paradox: Women are affirmed in calling, celebrated in service and blocked at the point where authority becomes undeniable.
Here, the prophetic voice of Gina M. Stewart offers clarity. Stewart has challenged the church with disarming honesty: “If you are prejudiced, say you’re prejudiced. If you’re sexist, say you’re sexist. … Speak up against injustice and abuses of power.”
Her words refuse to let sexism hide behind theological language or institutional habit. Applied to the Abyssinian case, Stewart’s challenge presses the church to ask whether what is being protected is doctrine or discomfort with women holding visible, uncontested authority.
The hesitation is not merely cultural; it is institutional. Gregory Perkins warned churches recognizing women in senior or authoritative pastoral roles may risk exclusion from broader Baptist cooperation within the Southern Baptist Convention. His observation exposes a structural bind facing many Black Baptist congregations: Affirming women’s leadership can carry denominational or relational costs.
In these churches and systems, faithfulness to women often competes with faithfulness to denominational networks and patriarchy.
As a result, some churches quietly limit women’s authority while publicly celebrating their gifts. Women are allowed to lead so long as that leadership does not challenge the symbolic center of power, typically a man.
In this light, resistance to women serving as senior pastors is not theological caution. It is institutional risk management.
Black Baptist churches rightly cherish congregational autonomy — born out of resistance to white control, theological paternalism and external domination. Yet autonomy untethered from self-critique can calcify into insulation. When appeals to “church freedom” silence questions about gender justice, autonomy begins to serve power rather than people.
“A church that names injustice in the streets but refuses to interrogate inequity in the pulpit risks undermining its own moral authority.”
The prophetic tradition of the Black Church always has insisted that liberation must be internal as well as external. A church that names injustice in the streets but refuses to interrogate inequity in the pulpit risks undermining its own moral authority.
Turman’s own response underscores the heart of the matter. Gender bias, she said, “has no place in God’s house.” The claim is not legal; it is theological. It asks whether Black Baptist churches are willing to examine the gap between the justice they proclaim publicly and the power they preserve internally.
Abyssinian Baptist Church stands at this crossroads not because it is uniquely flawed, but because it is uniquely influential. The question before the Black Baptist church is not whether women are called to lead. Scripture, history and lived experience already have answered that.
The question is whether our practice will match the prophetic proclamation we dare to preach.
Braxton Wade is a Clemons Fellow with BNG. He is a graduate of the University of Richmond and Chicago Theological Seminary and lives in Richmond, Va.