A Winding and Widening Path: American Women’s Roles in Twentieth-Century Baptist Life
Melody Maxwell
Melody Maxwell is associate professor of church history at Acadia Divinity College.
In the spnng of 2017 I joined ten other young Baptist women leaders from across North America in walking a labyrinth at Truett Seminary in Waco, Tkxas. You are likely familiar with a labyrinth's curving path, from the outside of a circle into its center, representing an individual's spiritual journey. Labyrinths are not designed to provide the fastest route to the center, but are made of winding paths that allow space for contemplation and prayer. Most labyrinths widen as they near their middle, providing a large central space for participants to reflect and commune with God. In some sense, the winding and widening path of a labyrinth symbolizes the course of women's roles in twentieth-century Baptist life in the United States. Like a labyrinth, women's contributions and journeys were not always straightforward. Some Baptist women adopted new careers as ministers at the same time that others prioritized homemaking—while other Baptist women worked to balance these two roles. Opposition from male leaders and sometimes from Baptist women themselves meant that women's journeys in the church were winding and unique. My article argues that, rather than a linear journey of rapid progress into the center, Baptist women
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in the twentieth century slowly walked a path of changing roles and reflection. As they journeyed through the changing cultures of the century, Baptist women in the United States found a way that gradually widened before them. Roles that very few Baptist women filled in 1900, such as ordained minister, opened to more women as the twentieth century progressed. By the end of the century, Baptist women found themselves in the center of a broadening path with more space for a variety of ministries than previous generations had experienced. Those who paused for a moment of reflection likely recognized that they and their foremothers had participated in a sacred journey. While it is impossible to document all the curves along the path traveled by millions of Baptist women throughout the course of a century, in this article I will analyze the broad outlines of this journey. From church leadership, missions work, and denominational support, to efforts toward justice and ordained ministry, Baptist women took gradual strides to fill a number of significant roles along the way, influenced by changes in national and denominational cultures. Although they composed a majority of Northern Baptists,1 Southern Baptists, National Baptists, and other twentieth-century Baptist groups in the United States, women have typically been understudied and their contributions undervalued. This article seeks to ameliorate this problem by telling the stories of specific women and placing them within the context of the winding and widening path of women in twentieth-century Baptist life. Church Leadership
Our journey begins with Mary Huff, an ordinary Baptist woman living in rural Virginia in the 1970s. She faithfully taught girls about missions at Chestnut Grove Baptist Church, without pay or acclaim. Her name was not recorded in church or denominational records, and her life and writings are not studied by scholars of Baptist life. Many would say that Mary Huff was insignificant in Christian history. Yet a young woman who was taught by her explains that Huff was “an extraordinary and important Baptist woman.2 ״By investing in the lives of girls, she expanded their visions and formed their hearts for ministry. Some of these young women, like the one quoted above, went on to dedicate their lives to vocational missions service after having been exposed to the possibility by Huffs teachings. Others committed to years of volunteer church ministry as Huff had done. Huff is representative
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of the thousands of Baptist women who worked tirelessly and quietly in lay roles in local churches, shaping the lives of those around them. Though not widely celebrated, these leaders were a significant force in twentieth-century Baptist life. Throughout the twentieth century, women served in a variety of volunteer roles in Baptist churches. Although usually restricted from formal pastoral leadership because of conservative gender constructs, women often played an invaluable (though less visible) role in sustaining the ongoing work of the church. Baptist women typically took the lead in church hospitality and meal arrangements, nursery and children's work, and ministry to other women. A Baptist woman with interest in ministry might marry a pastor and assume the role of pastor's wife, which included expectations of supporting her husband, caring for church members, working with children, and ideally playing the piano for church services.3 In addition, millions of laywomen who were not pastor's spouses dedicated their lives to informal service in the church. Especially in the first half of the twentieth century, when most women did not work outside the home, many churches could not have succeeded without the countless hours of volunteer efforts undertaken by their female members. Their story, usually untold, demonstrates a key contribution of women to Baptist life. During the twentieth century, ministry positions other than senior pastor began to be formalized in Baptist churches as part of a broader trend toward professionalization. Larger churches began to hire staff to lead children and youth ministries, music ministries, and education ministries, among other roles. Many of these were men, but women filled some of these positions as well. They were usually given titles such as “youth director" or “education director," and were not usually ordained or well compensated.4 The number of women serving in such roles increased in the second half of the twentieth century, reflecting the growing numbers of American5 women in the workplace. A few women even began serving as ordained ministers on church staffs, as described below.6 Still, the majority of Baptist women served in informal, volunteer capacities in their local churches, roles that were considered socially and culturally acceptable for their gender. From providing food for church socials to teaching Vacation Bible Schools, women's efforts helped sustain the ministry of Baptist churches.
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Missions Work
Another woman on the path of Baptist life in the twentieth century was Mable Ruth Daniels. Daniels, a young Freewill Baptist living in Michigan, in 1913 met another single woman serving with that denomination in India. After hearing about the need for female missionaries in India, she “at once״ volunteered to work there through the Free Baptist Woman's Missionary Society. The women of the Hillsdale Quarterly Meeting enthusiastically agreed to pay all her expenses on the mission field. Once she had arrived and completed language study, Daniels set about directing Baptist schools, supervising lace-making classes, and teaching in a women's Bible training school. Soon she also took on the tasks of visiting Indian women secluded in their residences (called zenanas), guiding Indian Bible women, and directing multiple boys' schools.7 Daniels' multifaceted service among “heathen" women and children in India, and her support by Baptist women in America, typified the spirit of the woman's missionary movement that involved many Baptist women in missions in the early twentieth century and beyond. While they were generally prohibited from serving as ordained ministers, many twentieth-century Baptist women fulfilled a calling to Christian service through missions work. This was especially true at the beginning of the century, when the interdenominational woman's missionary movement was at its height. The rise of women's clubs in earlier decades had empowered American women to organize for causes they supported. The woman's missionary movement involved millions of women in sending and supporting international missionaries, typically single women. For the first time, Christian women had found a missions task that was theirs alone: Christianizing “heathen" women overseas whom male missionaries could not reach because of restrictive social customs. In the late nineteenth century many groups of American women had formed their own missionary societies, for example: • • • •
Woman's American Baptist Missionary Society (Boston, 1871) Woman's American Baptist Missionary Society of the West (Chicago, 1871; later merged with the Boston group) Woman's Missionary Union of the Southern Baptist Convention (Baltimore, 1888) Woman's Convention of the National Baptist Convention (Louisville, 1900).8
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Into the early decades of the twentieth century these groups raised support for missionaries, published missions periodicals, and provided Christian women with expanded opportunities for leadership within a realm considered appropriate for them. In fact, the most renowned leaders of the woman's missionary movement were Northern Baptists: Helen Barrett Montgomery and Lucy Waterbury Peabody. Tbgether Montgomery and Peabody helped lead the Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions, including coordinating a woman's missions jubilee in seventy cities and writing popular mission studies. Montgomery's book Western Women in Eastern Lands sold more than 100,000 copies.9 The successes of Montgomery and Peabody demonstrated the expanding path of leadership opening for notable Baptist women. Less well known, but still respected, were the hundreds of Baptist women such as Mable Daniels who found vocational fulfillment by working as missionaries themselves. Service on foreign mission fields often afforded women opportunities they might not have in the United States, with single women working as nurses and doctors, teachers and school superintendents, and evangelists among listening women and sometimes men. Married female missionaries also filled such roles, although more of their time was consumed by family demands. While the woman's missionary movement declined after World War I, serving as a missionary continued to be an admirable path for Baptist women, both single and married, throughout the twentieth century. This role reflected the emphasis many Baptists placed upon evangelism and conversion, gradually expanding women's spheres without revolutionizing gender expectations. Southern Baptist women especially prioritized the missionary task, with Woman's Missionary Union serving as a major pathway for women's involvement in that conservative denomination at a time when some women in other Baptist groups had taken on wider roles. More than one million individuals were active participants in WMU at its peak in the mid-twentieth century.10 They worked to support the thousands of Southern Baptist women and men serving on mission fields around the world. Female missionaries who returned to the United States on furlough found ready audiences with Baptist women's groups, who eagerly collected funds and supplies to send overseas as considered appropriate for their ancillary position. Always a missions-oriented people, Baptists and especially Baptist
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women prioritized missions service in the twentieth century, especially but not exclusively in its earlier decades. Denominational Support
On a summer day in 1905, twenty־six־year01־d Nannie Helen Burroughs, leader of the National Baptist Women's Convention, delivered a keynote address at the first meeting of the Baptist World Alliance in London, a gathering filled with men who occupied denominational leadership positions in England and the United States. Later that day, Burroughs spoke to a crowd of nearly 10,000 people gathered in Hyde Park; a newspaper report described her as “the most popular speaker of the afternoon."11 What would have been remarkable achievements for any speaker was even more notable for a young African-American Baptist woman at the beginning of the twentieth century. Burroughs surmounted barriers of race, gender, and age to stride along Baptist women's widening path of denominational leadership and support during the twentieth century. Her example demonstrated the extraordinary way that some Baptist women walked ahead of their peers on the journey. While the majority of formal leaders of Baptist denominations throughout the century were male, a few noteworthy women demonstrated their leadership abilities among men and women alike. Many other women, though not always serving in official leadership capacities, supported their denominations through giving, promoting denominational programs, and educating others for Baptist work. In addition to Burroughs, Helen Barrett Montgomery played a significant role in Baptist life by serving as the president of the Northern Baptist Convention (not just the convention's women's organization) from 1921 to 1922. Her success in fundraising among Northern Baptist women led the convention to elect her to a broader post; she became the first woman to lead a major American denomination.12 Changing roles for women in American culture influenced her election. The woman's suffrage movement, though controversial, helped more Americans envision increased rights and roles for women. These changes were more readily embraced by Northern Baptists, with their urban and progressive contexts, than they were by conservative and largely rural Southern Baptists. In her leadership of the NBC, Montgomery attempted to take a moderating position between fundamentalist and modernist extremes. Her role, along with that of Burroughs, was remarkable when compared with that of Southern Baptist
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women who were not even allowed to address their denominational gathering directly until 1929. Divergent attitudes toward women's leadership and public speaking, influenced by cultural differences, were evident among Baptists in the United States in the twentieth century. Although few twentieth-century Baptist women were denominational leaders, women made significant contributions to a variety of Baptist efforts throughout the century. Despite what often was a lack of income, Baptist women donated their labor, savings, and teachings to causes in which they believed. National Baptist women supported charitable projects, sold their needlework, collected stamps, and purchased tracts to spread the cause of Christ.13 Southern Baptist women promoted tithing, studied and prayed for denominational projects, and rescued denominational mission boards from debt on more than one occasion. Northern Baptist women donated more than $450,000 to their denomination.14 Remarkably, women's contributions were often larger than those of Baptist men employed in the workforce, demonstrating the supportive role considered appropriate for women within their denominational and national cultures.15 As they raised the next generation of Baptist young people, many Baptist women also passed on their priority of denominational support through Christian education and personal example, leading younger women (and men) to take up the Baptist cause. Seeking Justice
Some Baptist women in the twentieth century also trod the path of social justice. “It's a funny thing," mused Baptist activist Fannie Lou Hamer in a 1973 interview, "that if you don't speak out ain't nobody going to speak out for you." Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper, first encountered resistance when she attempted to register to vote as an African-American woman. Despite being beaten and jailed multiple times, Hamer persisted in pursuing voting rights for herself and others. She worked for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and even ran for Congress in 1964 as part of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, testifying about her experience to a national audience. Hamer represented a small but significant minority of twentieth-century Baptist women who sought justice for themselves and others. In the early years of the century, some Baptist women were influenced by the social gospel movement and the reform impulse of the Progressive
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Era to seek to improve conditions in their communities. Even conservative Southern Baptist women's leaders emphasized the importance of ״social service with the Gospel as its motive and conversion as its aim ... for the uplift of the community of which the [missionary] society is a part.16 ״They urged Southern Baptist women to minister to immigrants and those in need through club meetings, industrial schools, hospital and prison ministries, and the establishment of settlement houses. Northern Baptist women partieipated in similar efforts, especially in smaller urban centers populated by immigrants.17 Female missionaries and deaconesses served in residential ministries, including settlement houses established by the American Baptist Home Mission Society; Anne Hansen, for example, worked at Emmanuel House Christian Center in Brooklyn, New York, and later at the Aiken Institute in Chicago.18 National Baptist women sought social and economic improvement for African-Americans, who faced multiple forms of discrimination along the journey. Nannie Helen Burroughs spoke of the importance of ״the bathtub, the broom, and the Bible ״for racial uplift, combining expectations for social respectability with Christian priorities as part of the curriculum of the National Training School she established in Washington, D.C., in 1909.19 Burroughs' emphasis on domestic decorum implicitly countered stereotypes of African-American women as unkempt and unladylike. Other schools, such as the Baptist Missionary Training School in Chicago and the Baptist Institute in Philadelphia, prepared Northern Baptist young women for service in the United States and abroad, emphasizing compassionate ministry skills considered appropriate for white Baptist women.20 Among Southern Baptists, the WMU Training School, later the Carver School of Social Work, trained generations of young women (and later men) for social ministry, although it was ultimately shut down by conservatives in the 1990s during the SBC controversy.21 By the mid-twentieth century, racial inequality had become a major issue in the United States, with the emerging civil rights movement capturing the attention of the nation. While some white Baptist women, especially in the South, exhibited blatant racial prejudice, other Baptist women, especially African-Americans, worked tirelessly for justice, influenced by the growing struggle for equality. Prathia Hall, for example, fought for voting rights through SNCC, explaining that ״God intends us to be free, and assists us, and empowers us in the struggle for freedom.22 ״Hall joined other justice-minded black Baptists in forming the Progressive National Baptist Convention in
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1961, a more activist denomination than the National Baptist Convention from which it emerged. Progressive Baptist women donated funds to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center in support of civil rights activism.23 Other African-American Baptists, however, influenced by conservative ideology, were more reluctant to join the movement.24 Civil rights efforts among Baptists were often led by men, but women played a significant role in these efforts as well. The emerging women's rights movement in the United States empowered women, Baptist and otherwise, to assume leadership roles. Mary Fair Burks and JoAnne Robinson, for example, were members of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church who catalyzed the Montgomery Bus Boycott.25 In Birmingham, women comprised the majority of the members of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, serving as ushers, singers, event planners, and activists for justice.26 Exemplary Baptist women also demonstrated leadership in civil rights work in other towns throughout the South. Along their journey, African-American Baptist women especially demonstrated a holistic concern for social justice along with individual salvation. Ordained Ministry
In 1978 Isabel Docampo felt called to vocational ministry. Docampo, an active member of Primera Iglesia Bautista Hispano Americana of New Orleans, Louisiana, began studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, alongside a growing number of women. As she learned from influential female role models, Docampo explained that she “critically analyzed the androcentric, hierarchical pastoral authority of church leaders.״ She was soon ordained, an opportunity that most earlier Baptist women had not had. Docampo went on to serve on the steering committee of Southern Baptist Women in Ministry, a new organization that advocated for women's roles in vocational ministry. The late twentieth century saw a widening path of possibilities open for Baptist women in church leadership, influenced by changing roles for women in American culture.27 Although rare, some Baptist women in the United States had been ordained to ministry before this period. As early as 1876, Freewill Baptists in Pennsylvania ordained M. A. Brennan.28 By 1920, sixteen Northern Baptist women had been ordained. Imogene Stewart was perhaps the first National
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Baptist woman to be ordained,29 by Greater Pearly Gate Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., in 1959.30 Yet the issue of women's ordination to the diaconate and to pastoral ministry did not become a significant topic in most Baptist contexts until the 1960s. During these years of change, the second wave of feminism swept across the United States, with activists and women's ״libbers" advocating for women’s rights. Baptist women (and others) began to reexamine what the Bible said about women's roles, and to seek equity in the church and ministry. As the topic of gender roles took priority across the United States, both American Baptists and Southern Baptists carried out significant conversations about women's roles in ministry during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Both groups convened conferences on women in church-related vocations. American Baptist Women gathered in 1968 to discuss this topic, expressing concern about the low number of women serving in executive leadership positions in their denomination. The next year the convention passed a resolution on ״Increased Opportunities for Women"; in 1977 a ״Resolution on the Empowerment of Women in the American Baptist Churches" was issued.31 Throughout the 1970s American Baptists held multiple conferenees and consultations on this topic. A task force on women in ministry presented a report in 1975, making specific requests about increased representation of women in American Baptist leadership and confessing that ״we have permitted the evil of sexism to go unchallenged in ourselves and in our denomination."32 Soon afterward, ABC's National Ministries promoted a two-and-a-half-year program on ״Feminism and the Church Tbday.33 ״The influence of the broader feminist movement was evident in such emphases. A study of women in ministry among American Baptists was also conducted, reporting that discrimination against women was prevalent ״in the seminaries, among executive and area ministers, among pulpit committee representatives, and among the laity in general.34 ״While the national denomination worked diligently to advance women's roles in ministry, the reality was that some churches, influenced by conservative traditions, were hesitant to call female ministers. Among Southern Baptists, resistance to women in ministry was even greater within their conservative denominational and regional context. However, multiple denominational leaders, influenced by the more progrèssive ideology popular among an educated elite, sought to advance the cause.
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The SBC held its Consultation on Women in Church-Related Vocations in 1978 in order to “define the present situation/ ׳portray a “balanced variety of views/ ׳and “identify and explain the options ״available to women in ministry.35 Though this language was more cautious than that of American Baptists, most participants in the consultation strongly supported women's service in vocational ministry. By this time, between fifty and one hundred Southern Baptist women had been ordained to pastoral ministry, beginning with Addie Davis, whom Watts Street Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina, ordained in 1964.36 In the 1970s multiple SBC publications promoted women in ministry, the SBC's Christian Life Commission sponsored a conference on “Christian Liberation for Contemporary Women, ״and a few women were nominated for leadership positions within the convention.37 The topic of women in ministry was frequently discussed at the SBC's annual gatherings, with multiple resolutions passed on the subject. In 1973, 1980, and 1981, resolutions supported traditional gender roles, reflecting the generally conservative constituency of the convention. A 1983 résolution, however, “encourage[d] all Southern Baptists to continue to explore further opportunities of service for Baptist women, ״quoting Galatians 3:28.38 That same year, Southern Baptist Women in Ministry was founded to support and encourage women serving in vocational ministry within the SBC.39 However, as conservative forces began to take control of the SBC as the result of a protracted struggle, complementarían gender roles were advanced and women were discouraged from serving in pastoral ministry. The backlash against women in ministry in the SBC reflected the broader reactionary stance of the Religious Right to the rapid cultural changes of the late twentieth century.40 A 1984 resolution, and later Southern Baptist statements on the subject, reserved certain ministry roles for men. The Alliance of Baptists and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, groups that split from the SBC during its controversy, advocated more fully for women in ministry, although men continued to fill the majority of the ministerial positions within these organizations.41 Among African-American Baptists, a few notable women were ordained and served in pastoral ministry roles in the later years of the twentieth century, including Ella Pearson Mitchell, Sheila Sholes-Ross, and Billie Boyd-Cox.42 However, male leadership remained the norm. Ordained women served in a minority of churches affiliated with the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. The National Baptist Convention of America maintained its
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policy that ־״women should not be ordained as ministers.43 ״And a committee appointed by the Progressive National Baptist Convention recommended that local churches make their own decisions on the topic of women in ministry.44 As late as 2013, historian Courtney Pace Lyons asserted that ״most AfricanAmerican Baptists continue to uphold patriarchal ecclesiology."45 The path of ordained ministry for women was narrowed by cultural expectations of traditional gender roles in the African-American churches. On the whole, Baptist women's progress along the path of vocational ministry in the second half of the twentieth century was significant but uneven, reflecting changes in national and denominational cultures. Conclusion
A brief analysis of women's roles in twentieth-century American Baptist life reveals the course of many women's journeys, but Baptist women served in more positions than those mentioned above. Throughout the century some Baptist women found vocational fulfillment through writing hymns and Christian books, advocating for women's suffrage, creating Baptist educational curriculum, serving as counselors and chaplains, directing campus ministries, educating Baptist students, and leading the Women's Department of the Baptist World Alliance, among other tasks. These tasks demonstrated the variety of paths that Baptist women took toward leadership across the century. The journey through these and other roles was winding, not linear, with unexpected curves along the way. Women were at times slowed by conservative cultures, gender stereotypes, male denominational networks, the decline of women's mission work, racial prejudice, and opposition to female ministers, among other obstacles. Yet they continued along the path. As they went, they found that the way gradually widened, with new opportunities arising for Baptist women as national and denominational cultures changed throughout the twentieth century. By the century's end, Baptist women had made important contributions to social ministry, global missions, racial justice, and church and denominational support. Significant numbers of Baptist women served as ordained ministers, missionaries, and denominational leaders. Many more filled informal leadership roles in Baptist churches across the United States, with millions of women's stories still untold. Only by learning about and incorporating these women's journeys will we fully understand the course of Baptist life in the twentieth century, bh&hs
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Notes 1 Baptists in Northern states formed the Northern Baptist Convention in 1907. In 1950 this organization was renamed the American Baptist Convention; in 1972 it became American Baptist Churches USA. 2 Edith Fisher, personal message to author, April 16, 2018. 3 This role was sometimes referred to as “first lady” in African-American Baptist churches. 4 Eileen R. Campbell-Reed and Pamela R. Durso, “The State of Women in Baptist Life—2005, ״in No Longer Ignored: A Collection of Articles on Baptist Women, ed. Charles W. Deweese and Pamela R, Durso (Atlanta: Baptist History and Heritage Society, 2007), 250. See also Sarah Frances Anders, “Baptist Women Walking Tbgether in America, 1950־2000, ״Baptist History and Hentage 40, no. 3 (2005): 10. 5 This paper will use the term “American ״to refer to citizens of the United States. 6 Campbell-Reed and Durso, “The State of Women,251 ״. 7 Mable Ruth Daniels, The Free Baptist Woman's Missionary Society, 1873-1921 (Providence, RI: Free Baptist Woman’s Missionary Society, 1922), 123-24. 8 See Dana L. Robert, American Women in Mission: A Social History of Thdr Thought and Practice, ed. Wilbert R. Shenk (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996); Patricia Ruth Hill, The World Their Household: The American Woman's Foreign Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870-1920 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985); Mary L. Mild, “‘Whom Shall I Send?׳: An Overview of the American Baptist Women’s Foreign Missionary Movement from 18731913־,” American Baptist Quarterly 12, no. 3 (September 1993): 194-209; Melody Maxwell, The Woman I Am: Southern Baptist Women's Writings, 1906-2006 (TUscaloosa: University ofAlabama Press, 2014), 3-60; andFerronOkewole, '“Send Me Tbo׳: AfricanAmerican Baptist Women in Early Foreign Missions,” American Baptist Quarterly 24, no. 3 (September 2005): 25663־. 9 See William H. Brackney, “The Legacy of Helen B. Montgomery and Lucy W. Peabody/ International Bulletin ofMissionary Research 15, no. 4 (1991): 17478 ;־and Kendal P. Mobley, Helen Barrett Montgomery: The Global Mission of Domestic Feminism (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009). 10 Catherine Allen, A Century to Celebrate: History of Woman's Missionary Union (Birmingham, AL: Woman’s Missionary Union, 1987), 476. 11 Morning Leader, July 17, 1905, cited in Karen E. Smith, “Nannie Helen Burroughs (18791961)־: A Voice for Social Justice and Reform,” in 71oentieth-Century Shapers of Baptist Social Ethics, ed. Larry L. McSwain and William Loyd Allen (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2008), 44-45. 12 Mobley, Helen Barrett Montgomery, 245. 13 Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 161-62. 14 Mobley, Helen Barrett Montgomery, 245. 15 See Melody Maxwell, “‘Planking down the Cash׳: Woman’s Missionary Union’s Support of the Southern Baptist Convention, 19191945־,” Baptist History and Heritage 45, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 67-79. 16 Handbook of Personal Service (Baltimore, MD: Woman’s Missionary Union, 1916), 2. See also Carol Crawford Holcomb, “Mothering the South: The Influence of Gender and the Social Gospel on the Social Views of the Leadership of Woman’s Missionary Union, Auxiliary to Southern Baptist Convention, 18881930( ”־Waco, TX: Baylor University, Department of Religion, 1999); and Betsy Flowers, “Southern Baptist Evangelicals or Social Gospel Liberals? The Woman’s Missionary Union and Social Reform, 1888 to 1928," American Baptist Quarterly 19, no. 2 (2000): 106-28.
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17 See Rosalie Beck, “Alien or American? Baptists and Immigration at the Tim of the Century, ״Perspectives in Religious Studies 37, no. 3 (2010): 25765־. 18 Anne Joan Hansen papers, American Baptist Historical Society, Atlanta, Ga., https://libraries.mercer.edU/archivesspace/repositories/2/resources/222. See also Charles Deweese, “Baptist Women Deacons and Deaconesses: Key Developments and Trends, 1609־2005, ״Baptist History andHentage 40, no. 3 (2005): 7374־. 19 Victoria W. Wolcott, “׳Bible, Bath, and Broom׳: Nannie Helen Burroughs’s National Training School and African-American Racial Uplift, ״Journal of Women's History 9, no. 1 (1997): 88110־. See also Nannie Helen Burroughs, Making Your Community Christian, 6th ed. (Washington, DC: Nannie Helen Burroughs School, 1975). 20 See William H. Brackney, Congregation and Campus: Baptists in Higher Education (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2008), 16263־. 21 See T. Laine Scales and Melody Maxwell, Doing the Word: Southern Baptists' Carver School of Social Work and Its Predecessors, 1907-1997 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, forthcoming); and T. Laine Scales, “Southern Baptist Colleges, ״Women in Higher Education (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2002). 22 Prathia Hall, “This Far by Faith, ״The Faith Project, http://www.pbs.org/thisfarby־ faith/people/prathia_hall.html. 23 Pamela A. Smoot, ״׳Hear the Call׳: The Women’s Auxiliary of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc., ״Baptist History and Heñtage 46, no. 1 (2011): 52. 24 See Paul Harvey, “Is There a River? Black Baptists, the Uses of History, and the Long History of the Freedom Movement, ״in Through a Glass Darkly: Contested Notions of Baptist Identity, ed. Keith Harper (Tüscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2012), 25171־. 25 Pamela A Smoot, ׳׳African-American Baptist Women: Making a Way Out of No Way,״ Baptist History andHentage 42, no. 3 (2007): 2728־. 26 Wilson Fallin Jr., “Black Baptist Women and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement, 1956־1963, ״Baptist History andHentage 40, no. 3 (2005): 4547־. 27 Isabel N. Docampo, "Tracing Sister Connections: The Place of United States Latina Baptist Women in Ministry Within the Overall Story of Baptist Women in Ministry, ״Review & Expositor 110, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 97101־. 28 Pamela Robinson Durso, “She־Preachers, Bossy Women, and Children of the Devil: Women Ministers in the Baptist Tradition, 1609־2012, ״Review & Expositor 110, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 37. See also Pamela Durso, “Baptists and the Tim Ibward Baptist Women in Ministry,״ TUming Points in Baptist History: A FestschHfl in Honor of Harry Leon McBeth, ed. Michael E. Williams and Walter B. Shurden (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2008), 27587 ;־and Anders, “Baptist Women Walking Tbgether ,8-16 ״. 29 Campbell-Reed and Durso, “The State of Women,246 ״. See also James R. Lynch, “Baptist Women in Ministry Through 1920, ״American Baptist Quanerly 13, no. 4 (December 1994): 30418 ;־and James R Lynch, “A Preliminary Check List of Baptist Women in Ministry Through 1920, ״American Baptist Quanerly 13, no. 4 (December 1994): 31971־. 30 Durso, “She-Preachers,” 38. 31 L. Faye Ignatius, ״Time-Line: Women in the American Baptist Churches, ״Foundations 24, no. 3 (July 1981): 22332־. 32 General Board, American Baptist Churches in the USA, “American Baptist Churches Thsk Force on Women, ״American Baptist Quanerly 20, no. 3 (September 2001): 267. 33 Ignatius, ״Time-Line,232 ״. 34 Linda C. Spoolstra, “Project S.W.I.M: A Study of Women in Ministry, ״American Baptist Quarterly 20, no. 3 (September 2001): 238. 35 Johnni Johnson, Findings of the Consultation on Women in Church-Related Vocations (Birmingham, AL: Southern Baptist Convention Inter-Agency Council, 1978), 3.
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22
36 Leon McBeth, Women in Baptist Life (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1979), 16; Leon McBeth, "The Ordination of Women, ״Review & Expositor 78, no. 4 (Fall 1981): 517. 37 See Maxwell, The Woman I Am, 13536־. 38 SBC Annual Meeting 1983, "Resolution on Women, ״Southern Baptist Convention, http://www.sbc.net/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID = 1093. 39 Southern Baptist Women in Ministry later dropped "Southern ״from its name to reflect its broader Baptist orientation. See Libby Bellinger, "More Hidden Than Revealed: The History of Southern Baptist Women in Ministry, ״in Struggle for the Soul of the SBC, ed. Walter B. Shurden (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1993), 12950 ;־and Eileen R. Campbell-Reed and Pamela R. Durso, “The State of Women in Baptist Life 2007: A TWenty-Five-Year Retrospective on Baptist Women in Ministry( ״Atlanta: Baptist Women in Ministry, 2007). 40 See Matthew Avery Sutton, Jerry Falwell and the Rise of the Religious Right: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012); and Daniel K. Williams, God's Own Party: The Making of the Religious Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 41 See Pamela R. Durso and Kevin Pranato, "The State of Women in Baptist Life 2015" (Atlanta: Baptist Women in Ministry, 2015). 42 See Courtney Pace Lyons, "Breaking Through the Extra-Thick Stained-Glass Ceiling: African-American Baptist Women in Ministry," Review & Expositor 110, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 83-85. 43 Durso, "She-Preachers," 43. 44 Smoot, "Hear the Call," 56. 45 Lyons, "Breaking Through," 79.
A New Book from the Baptist History and Heritage Society
Tor many years Thomas Meredith urged North Carolina Baptists to provide an education for women to match that given to men. In 1891 the Baptist Female Institute was chartered, opening in 1899. Appropriately, in 1909 the faculty senate voted unanimously to rename the school Meredith College. Meredith's life and contributions in the 19th century touched on everything truly Baptist, including a major role in the 1845 founding of the Southern Baptist Convention. Indeed, Thomas Meredith was a man of his time as well as a man beyond his time.״ -George H. Shriver, Professor Emeritus, Georgia Southern University
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BH&HS W 151 Broadleaf Dr. Macon, GA 31210 O bhhs@baptisthistory.org
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478 .297.7838
Author Roger H. Crook is professor emeritus at Meredith College, Raleigh, North Carolina.