Chan^ng Hands: The
Practice٠٢
Ordaining
Eileen R. Campbell-Reed
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Eileen R. Campbell-Reed is associate professor / theology and coordinator for coaching, mentoring, and internship at Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Tennessee center) and co-director / the Learning Pastoral Imagination Project.
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The struggle؛٠ opposed
espond؛r٠ that
responsehas
God been
—Carolyn Blevins1 Across five decades Baptist hands are changing the ways they confer roles and authority for m inistry through ordination. Baptists have responded to m any social and theological factors, yet one change stands above the others in its significance and impact, w hen a Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) church first ordained a woman to m inistry in 1964 the practices, processes, and meanings of ordination took new directions. This essay surveys Baptist women's ordination as novelty, controversy, shifting process, and contested symbol in Baptist life. Ordination is one of torce formal authorizing practices for ministry. Along with theological education and a stated call to ministry, ordination serves to gather social, spiritual, and theological authority to the person of the m inister for his or her puhlic work on behalf of the church. Ordination is both a ritualized event and a well-traveled gateway to the larger, meaningladen practice of formal or professional ministry. For centuries wom en served the church with little or no audmrization. When asked why they are, or are not, or are not yet ordained, women
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offer im portant clues about the changing practice of ordination. The Baptist Women in Ministry (BW1M) Registry is a databank of women's ordinations and professional m inistry collected since 2007. Of the 1,032 entries, approximately one-third are from women serving as professional ministers, or seminarians, without ordination (yet), and two-thirds are women reporting their ordinations. Following a brief overview of historical context, women's stories will illustrate the changing process, meanings, and empirical realities of Baptist ordination.2
Baptist Ordination in Histori€al Context Historian William Brackney says that from their birth in seventeenthcentury England, Baptists cherished both freedom and order, and so organized them selves into “associations" of neighboring churches that could agree doctrinally and cooperate in the work ofbenevolence, missions, education, and so on. The associations often played a role in ordination, making judgm ents about the doctrinal soundness of ministers, giving counsel as pastors moved from church to church, and guarding churches from the dangers of fraudulent ministers and those ill-suited to the work. At the same frme, associational ordination could prevent ministers caught in disagreem ents with their congregations from losing their credentials and support.3 Between 1845 and 1945, Baptists affiliated with the SBC ordained m en for m inistry in a process that was not uniform, but relatively consistent within a range of variations. The practice included the following basic elements:* • identifying the (male) candidate for ministry, usually through a stated call and recognition of spiritual gifts • gathering an ordination council or presbytery • examining the candidate • v o ti^ to r o c o m m e d o f f iin ^ io n ( o r n o t) • holding an ordination cerem ony or service, including prayer and laying on hands. One variation to these basic elem ents was determ ining when a minister might be ordained: after declaring a call to ministry; following formal education an d /o r a trial period of m inistiy, which m ight include a ״license״
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to preach; or w hen a congregation invited a m inister to serve. Another regular variation related to who should examine a candidate: a council of neighborhood ministers, a com m ittee of pastors from the Baptist association, or a presbytery of m inisters and ordained deacons an d /o r non-ordained lay people. The examination usually included questions about the potential m inister’s conversion experience, calling to ministry, doctrinal beliefs, an d /o r pastoral skills. The cerem onies conferring ordinations and laying on hands varied extensively depending on region, worship style, and congregational customs.5 Following World War 11 a new professional m inistry ideal and expansion oftheological education blossomed in the United States. Despite a stated com m itm ent to the priesthood of all believers, Baptists largely equated Christian m inistry with the pastorate. The professional ideal and ^ c ia liz a tio n of m inistry roles inspired Baptists to extend ordained m inistry to include more educators, musicians, counselors, chaplains, and age-level specialists. Increasingly Baptist colleges and seminaries, as well as the SBC itself, expanded and em braced the professional ideal for an educated and ordained m inistry.؟؛ Within what historian Bill j. Leonard calls the "ever evolving tension betw een local church autonom y and associational cooperation,” Baptists questioned, debated, and discerned w om en’s ordination. By the 1970s, Baptist wom en were attending sem inary in greater numbers, serving as chaplains and educators, and also declaring their calls to pastoral ministry. The questions becam e an occasion for Southern Baptists—and those who departed the m other denom ination—to consider more intentionally the process and m eaning of ordination.7
Ordination as Novelty Freewill, American (ABC-USA), and British Baptists ordained women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, no Southern Baptist church ordained a woman until 1964 w hen the Watts street Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina, ordained Addie Davis. Warren Carr, pastor at Watts Street, chaired h er examination council for the Yates Baptist Association. In a close reading of her story, historian Curtis Freeman observes that Davis’ ordination was a com m unal exercise in seeking new light from scripture for the mission of the church.8
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For several decades sociologist Sarah Frances Anders tracked Baptist women's ordinations. Ficking up on Anders' work in 2007, Famela Durso and I launched the BWIM Registry to collect nam es of women in ministry, ordained and not (yet) ordained. That year we estim ated around 2
, ﻣ ﻤ ﻪ
ordinations of Baptist women by SBC congregations and churches that broke away from the denom ination after the 1980s. Since 2008, Durso has collected another 296 nam es of ordained women, bringing our estim ate to 2,350. Beginning in 2007 the registry collected 1,032 records: • 629 ordained clergywomen • 355 unordained m inisters and sem inarians • 47 guests/proxies registering for others Nearly all participants reported connections with the SBC, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF), Alliance of Baptists, Baptist General Association of Virginia (BGAV), an d /o r Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT). A small num ber of wom en reported ^filiations with historic black Baptist denom inations and ABC-USA churches/ Many ordained women (168) provided additional information about their ordinations, including these novelties: • first ordination in a church an d /o r association • first woman to serve as pastor of a church in a state • first woman to be ordained with a spouse For example, Naomi Adkins Brown reports that she was both the first woman licensed in 2005 and ordained in 2008 at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Joliet, Illinois, by Isaac Singleton, pastor of Mount Zion for forty-seven years. The Baptist “firsts ״were part of larger U.S. church trends in women's sem inary enrollm ent, ordination, and professional m inistry service. However, those trends never took hold fully in the SBC. Women's ordination rem ained a perpetual novelty and disputed issue, contributing to the denom inational split and birth of new Baptist groups.™
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Ordination as Controversy In 1984 and again in 2000 the controversy over women's ordination crystalized in official statem ents of the SBC. However, ordination itself rem ains a mainly local pmctice. In 1991 Charles Lumpkin recalls that his spouse Vicki Lumpkin “was the first woman to he ordained by ?otomac Baptist Association (Virginia), and the open a o c ia tio n a l council swelled with those that did not want a woman (any woman) ordained. However, the council also swelled with those that knew her and wished her ordination. She was recom m ended for ordination by a comfortable majority." Other associational conflicts did not end so well, becoming embroiled in controversy and m aking news headlines as Southern Baptists m arched toward schism. Kathy Manis Findley says that in 1993 both her "home church in Little Rock and the Arkansas Baptist State Convention exploded" over her r e v e s t for ordination after four years of hospital chaplaincy. The controversy gave birth to Frovidence Baptist Church, which called Findley as its pastor.11 Of the 355 women in the BWIM register not (yet) ordained, 250 replied with the following reasons for the lack thereof: • Ministry does not require ordination (61 %). • The right circum stances are not yet available (41 %). • 1 support women's ordination, but feel uncomfortable with it for m yself (10%).
• 1 anticipate ordination after seminary. • Miscellaneous: o n tro v ersy with pastors and churches, family complications, complex discernm ent processes For example, w hen Rev. A's childhood church ordained her, she felt support from m ost members, but a small group left the church in protest of h er ordination, including deacons who ״raised" her and served on her ordination council. Another woman said that "Ordination has been available to me, but since my husband is an ordained minister, 1 have felt that it might hinder any future doors in Southern Baptist churches that God m ight open for him." Often controversies about women's ordination are intertw ined with weighty, complex, and sometimes lengthy periods of discernm ent.
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Ordination as Shifting Process The ordination process for women generally follows the same sequence as the one settled with Baptists by 1945. The following variations in the process are noteworthy: • the length of time from call to ordination • sim ultaneous ordination with spouses • (non)involvem ent of associations • the level and type of discernm ent by churches Many wom en reported waiting years or decades to receive ordination. When Adalene Dixon was ordained at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in ?enney Farms, Florida, in 2006, she was not only the first woman ordained: she had been m inistering for fifteen years already. A ^ l s a church licensed Susan Stephenson in 1982, but “couldn't bring them selves to take the leap to ordination." First Bapist Church in Okahoma City finally ordained her twenty years later. Another woman's ordination “ran into complications" right after sem inary in 1976. She was finally ordained in 2001 by a church she served for more than a decade. One effect of ordination coming at the end of a career is a shift in m eaning from hopeful anticipation to acknowledgem ent and affirmation of m inistry well done.12 In the BWIM Registry at least sixteen women reported being ordained on the same day as their spouses, w h e n Betty Anne and Sam Schlegel were ordained together in 1976, she was the first woman ordained by First Baptist Church of Crystal River, Florida. The couple's sem inary professor, Henlee Barnette, advised them to seek ordination as “the more biblical thing to do" in the church that called them . They did not include the Marion Baptist Association. Instead the church's pastor, L. B. Thomason, chaired an examination council made up of former pastors and sem inary professors.12 The shifting involvement with local Baptist associations seems connected to (potential) controversies and new p attern s for convening a council. In 1997 Anita Thom pson and her pastor Dr. Jesse Croom knew that the bylaws of First Baptist Church in Ahoskie, North Carolina, allowed them to “form their own ordination council or work through the local association." They decided to test the “norm al route" with the West Chowan Baptist Association to see if it might refuse to “examine a female candidate."
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Thom pson recalls: “Thankfully, the associational ordination council was wonderfully accepting." However, she rem ains the only wom an ordained by that association.14 In the BWIM Registry, 599 women report a location for their ordination. Of those, only 31 (5.2%) record a Baptist association taking part in the ordination. Of the associational ordinations, 21 are in Virginia and North Carolina, four are in ABC-USA contexts, and six are in other states. The involvement oflocal Baptist associations in the ordination process is m inim al in this pool of reports. Without comparative data I can observe tentatively that stories and data in the BWIM Registry suggest the locus of ordination is shifting away ftom associations and to churches and ad hoc com m ittees convened by churches that include ministers, deacons, and sem inary professors.^ A loss of associational involvement in ordinations could potentially compromise the safeguards for churches and m inisters against fraud and doctrinal irregularities. However, connectionahsm among progressive Baptists (who ordain women) is increasingly built around affinity groups that are not geographically proximate. The connecting points are social and mobile as well as theological and practical, changing the ways m inistry knowledge and safety are com m unicated and y a rd e d . Less a ^ c ia tio n a l involvem ent might also hinder the careful and wide-ranging discernm ent that Freeman identifies as essential for ordination. A num ber of churches, including my own, have responded to this concern by extending the process up to a year for discerning ordination (rather than a two-hour examination council). Other changes to the cerem ony include a growing num ber of female-led ordinations and more fell-con^egational ^ rtic ip a tio n in laying hands on new m inisters.16
Ordination as Contested Symbol The full impact of Baptist women's ordination on Baptist identity and meaning-making is beyond the scope of this hrief survey. To ordination as novelty, controversy, reversal from anticipation to affirmation, we can add two more Issues. First, as 1 have argued elsewhere, during the SBC schism women's ordination took on a contested symbolic function. To biblicist-conservatives, ordained women are cultural symhols of all that is troubling in Baptist life and with hum anity. Thus wom en seeking ordination are symhols of a violation
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of God's ״delegated order" in families, ministry, and society (God the head of man, m an the head of women, parents the head of children, etc.). To autonomist-progressive Baptists, ordained women are symbols of “freedom and autonomy" and upheld as positive examples of God's incarnational presence and calling These views turn women's ordination into a clash of cultural symbols, signifying conflict and contention. The clash also reflects ongoing sexism in the Baptist lifeworld in which ordination is practiced 17 Finally, women's ordination is a signpost for shifting denom inational affiliations. In the BWIM Registry, wom en reported that 47 percent of ordaining congregations were primarily affiliated with CBF, and 64 percent of them had a CBF connection. Only 22 percent of ordaining churches held a prim ary affiliation with the SBC, but 48 percent affiliated with the SBC in some way The clergywomen, however, identified them selves more with the progrèssive groups: CBF 77 percent. Alliance of Baptists 23 percent, ABC-USA 15 percent, BGAV 10 percent, and BGCT 8 percent. Fewer than 10 percent of the ordained wom en in the registry personally identify with the SBC. As Carolyn Blevins observed, the struggle for women called by God continues, and many women serve witb autborization from tbeir calling and education, yet without being ordained. However, the struggle IS also one of labor with God, giving birth to new meanings, affiliations, and processes for the practice of ordination and opening the gateway to empowered ministry. BH&HS
Notes 1 Carolyn D Blevins, Women's Place in Baptist Life (Nashville, TN Baptist History and Heritage Society, 2003), 15 2 E Brooks Hohfield draws on Max Weber’s designations of three forms of authority for m inistry rational authority (special skills and knowledge), charism a of office (ordination), and charism a of person (divine call) See God's Ambassadors A History of the Christian Clergy in America (Grand Rapids Eerdmans, 2010), 1-3 The initial data from 617 entries to the BWIM Registry was reponed in Eileen R Campbell-Reed and Pamela R Durso, ”The state of Women in Baptist Life, 2006” in No Longer Ignored A Collection o f Articles on Baptist Women, ed Charles W Deweese and Pamela R Durso (Atlanta Baptist History and Heritage Society, 2007), 280-84 This essay utilizes data from the BWIM Registry (ww wbwim info) including 400-plus additional entries as of 1 D ecem ber 2015 3 William H Brackney, "Philadelphia's Creat Contribution to Baptist Life and T hought, ״American Baptist Quarterly 27 1 (January 2008) 15-16, 21, Bill j Leonard, "Baptist Associations m the South," American Baptist Quarterly 27 1 (January 2008) 27-31, John E Steely, "Ministerial Certification m Southern Baptist History Ordination,” Baptist History and Heritage 15 1 (January 1080) 23-29, 61
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4 G Thomas Halbrooks, “The Meaning and Significance of Ordination Among Southern Baptists, 1845-1945/ ׳Baptist History and Heritage 23 3 (July 1988) 24-32 See also Bill j Leonard, “Ordination, Baptist Views” in Dictionary of Baptists in America, Bill j Leonard, ed (Downers Grove, IL· InterVarsity Press, 1994), 213-14 5 Lee N Allen, “Methods and ?rocedum s of Ordination among Southern Baptists, 1845-1945,” Baptist History and Heritage ^3 3 (July 1988) 33-41 See also Leonard, “Ordination, Baptist Views ״ 6 Holifield, Gods Ambassadors, 231-34 See also Glenn T Miller, Piety and Profession American Piotestant Theological Education 1870 1970 (Grand Rapids E^rdmans, 2007), 678-705, for a discussion of the m id-tw entieth-century ideals for sem inary education 7 Leonard, “Baptist Associations m the South,” 27, Steely, “Ministerial Certification,” 29, 61 See also Brackney, “Rhiladelphia's Great Contribution,” 11 22 هargue the latter point m Eileen R Campbell-Reed, Anatomy o f a Schism How clergywomen's Narratives Reinterpret the Fracturing of the Southern Baptist Convention (Knoxville University of Tennessee Rress, 2016) 8 ?am ela R Durso, “She-Preachers, Bossy Women, and Children of the D^vil A History of Baptist Women Ministers and O rdination,” Review and Expositor, 110 1 (W inter 2013) 33-47, Ruth M B Gouldbourne, “Reinventing the w heel Women and Ministry in English Baptist Life” (Oxford W ln f ie ^ u b l1 c ^ o n ^ 9 9 7 ) , and Curtís w Freeman, Contesting Catholicity Theology for Other Baptists (Waco, TX Baylor University Press, 2015), ch 7 9 Sarah Frances Anders, “Historical Record-Keeping Essential for W1M,” Folio A Newslet ter for Baptist Women in Ministry 15 2 (Fall 1997) 6 Anders identified 1,225 ordinations of Southern Baptist wom en Eileen R Campbell-Reed and Pamela R Durso, State ٠/ Women in Baptist Life 2007 (Atlanta Baptist Women m Ministry, 2008), H In 2012 Durso estim ated 2,200 ordinations m “Slm-Preachers,” 42 Durso email to author, 12 Decem ber 2015 Durso m aintains lists of wom en's ordinations and wom en pastors of Baptist churches 10 Beginning with Naomi Adkins Brown, all quotes come from the BW1M Registry, unless otherw ise indicated See Eileen R Campbell-Reed, “Baptists in Tension The Status of Women's Leadership and Ministry, 2012," Review and Expositor HO 1 (Winter 2013) 49-64 H W ilburn T Stancil, “Divergent Views and Practices of Ordination among Southern Baptists Since 1945," Baptist History and Heritage 23 3 ( July 1988) 42-49 stancil recounts early examples of associations dismissing churches that ordained or called wom en as pastors, based on the 1984 Kansas City Resolution on ordination See also The Baptist Faith and Message, 2000 and accompanying report at h ttp //w w w s b c n^t/hfm 2000/hfm 2000 asp, accessed 1 Decernher 2015 Kathy Mams Fmdfoy, “This IS My story ׳׳m Folio, 11 4 (Spring 1994) 7 12 See also Campbell-Reed, Anatomy o fa Schism, ch 1, for the story of Anna who waited a dozen years for ordination while m inistering fulltime 13 For m om stories of w om en's ordination, the influence of sem inary, and foe role 01 p ro iesso rs m their call and the ordm ation processes, see Jennifer Harris Dault, ed , The Modern Magnificat Women Responding ؛٠ the Call of God (Macon, GA N urturing Faith Inc ), 2012 14 Email from Anita Thom pson to author regarding her singular status as ordained by the West Chowan Association, 17 Decem ber 2015 15 The Registry asks for “Church or Association ״Some w om en m ay have om itted vital inform ation about associational involvem ent We can wonder how m any churches that have departed the SBC are less involved with their associations at all A fascinating project awaits som eone willing to read associational records for patterns of change m ordinations over the last fifty years 16 Leonard, “Baptist Associations in the South,” 30, suggests a new “de facto associationalism ” that IS ecum enu al, ranging across “m ultiple statos and regions" and sharing “com m on ideological, social, or missional concerns" See also Campbell-Reed, Anatomy o fa Schism, m which chloe's narrative (ch 5) recounts a long-term discernm ent process for ordm ation 17 Campbell-Reed, Anatomy o fa Schism, ch 1