Across America this week, Baptist women are carrying a familiar weight. Some are pastors who have faithfully answered the call of God, only to watch the Southern Baptist Convention debate whether God possibly could have called them.
Some are seminary students wrestling with whether the church they love will ever fully embrace the gifts God has entrusted to them.
Others are women who have taught Sunday school, chaired committees, led mission trips, discipled children, comforted grieving families and kept congregations alive through their quiet faithfulness, only to once again hear that their voices don’t belong.
Braxton Wade
For most women, the Southern Baptist Convention’s recent vote advancing a constitutional amendment restricting churches with female pastors was not merely theological. It was deeply personal. It was another reminder that some Christians remain more comfortable receiving the gifts of women without affirming their calling.
All week as I watched the reactions of gifted, called and talented women, I found myself returning to a conviction that feels increasingly important in this moment — history matters.
History matters because institutions have memories. History matters because the decisions of yesterday shape the realities of today. History matters because if we do not understand where we have been, we will spend our lives surprised by where we are. And perhaps most importantly, history matters because it teaches us what an institution values when its values are tested.
So I’ve wrestled with how to respond to the SBC’s decision and simultaneously hold the hurt of the many women I know are called to this hard and holy work.
The question that continues to surface for me is honest and uncomfortable but, did we expect anything different? Not because exclusion is inevitable, not because change is impossible, not because women aren’t called. But because history has left us clues.
The SBC was founded in 1845 because white Christians in the South wanted to preserve the right of enslavers to serve as missionaries. This is not a progressive talking point or progressive history. That is the historical record.
“The question never should be whether history affects us, the question should be whether we are honest enough to learn from it.”
When Northern Baptists objected to appointing slaveholders as missionaries, Southern Baptists chose separation rather than surrendering the institution of slavery. The largest Protestant denomination in America was born not from a disagreement over worship styles or evangelism strategies, but from a determination to protect a system that treated human beings created in the image of God as property. And its midwife was white supremacy. That history matters.
Not because Southern Baptists alive today personally participated in slavery, but rather because every institution inherits patterns.
Every institution tells and retells a story about who belongs, who leads and who gets to exercise power.
The question never should be whether history affects us, the question should be whether we are honest enough to learn from it.
History is revelation. History reveals who we are willing to exclude to preserve our comfort and power.
When we know our history, we begin to recognize recurring patterns.
We notice the same denomination that once used Scripture to defend slavery later used Scripture to resist integration. We notice the same institution that struggled to recognize the full humanity and dignity of Black people now finds itself debating the legitimacy of women’s callings. We learn these restrictions are rarely about theology and often about power.
For Black Christians, none of this feels particularly new. Black church history is, in many ways, the story of a people who learned that being welcomed into a sanctuary is not the same thing as being welcomed into leadership. It is the story of Christians who worshipped alongside people who professed Christ on Sunday while defending slavery on Monday. It is the story of believers who were told they were equal before God but denied equality by the church. That history should have taught us something.
“The names of the oppressed group change but the pattern remains remarkably familiar.”
Exclusion rarely remains isolated, and hierarchy always needs another rung.
Yesterday it was Black people, today it is women. For many churches and institutions, it has been LGBTQ people. For others it has been immigrants, refugees and those living at the margins of society. The names of the oppressed group change but the pattern remains remarkably familiar.
That is why the gospel calls us to stand with the oppressed whether we are personally affected or not. Men must stand with women. Heterosexual Christians must stand with LGBTQ siblings. White Christians must stand with Black clergy and congregations. Citizens must stand with immigrants and refugees. The privileged must stand beside the marginalized. Not because every struggle is identical, but rather because every person bears the image of God. Every person.
The church does not have the luxury of defending the dignity of only those whose oppression we understand firsthand. Following Jesus requires solidarity. Loving our neighbor requires solidarity. The gospel requires solidarity.
So at this moment, I’m standing with thousands of women and girls to say history has shown us God calls women.
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.