And The Answer Is....You Bet They Can!

(…Continued from the previous post “Can a Woman Minister?”)

Dear Boo and Bubble,

Of course, whenever I stick my toe into the waters of some subject that has even the slightest theological implications, I feel compelled to check the soundness of my thoughts against the writings of your great, great, great, great grandfather J.B. Cottrell.  Thus is the case in this whole issue of women and their abilities to administer the work of the church.  If you couple his writings with great Granddaddy Schaefer’s comment, you are certainly getting a double dose of “Amens” from my lineage as well as Captain’s.

As you read these words, please remember that they were written in the late 19^th century.  Although Cottrell never explicitly calls for the ordination of women, I think the last paragraph could easily be interpreted that way.  It’s evident that he was a man way ahead of his time and I find his expressions to be ironically on point for current times. 

The Church and Women.

(Published sometime around 1882 – publication is unknown.  The link to this article can be found at http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00026239/00007/2j.  It is among many materials in a collection at the University of Florida Smathers Archival Library. )

We think the Church never could have succeeded, under its present organization, without the assistance of women.  They ministered to Christ and the Apostles, with their sympathies and means, and were essential features in the primitive movements of Christianity.  Throughout its entire history, the purity and zeal of the Church have been greatly indebted to the devotion and activity of consecrated women.  They have stood in the front lines of the advancing forces, and have courageously borne their part in the ceaseless conflicts.  Their presence and loyalty have been an inspiration to men and a joy to angels.  We doubt know the great Head of the Church also, has been delighted with the womanly affection in which His cause has been held by those whose representatives followed him to the cross and the grave, and who were ready, at the early dawn of the third day, to anoint His precious body.

The ministry of consecrated women was never more needed than at this period.  The increasing tendency in the Church to worldliness, the lightness with which Church vows are held by many; the meagerness of spiritual influence and numerous other evils can be best restrained and removed by the influence of the piety and devotion of women.  Such influence is essential to the protection and purification of the principles which determine character and mold and develop life.  None other can so well accomplish what is necessary to place the feet of many in the paths of virtue, and give courage and fidelity to keep them therein.  Women are seated at the very fountain of life.  To their tender hands are committed the molding of human destinies and the spiritual type of the church. By religious instruction, by affectionate solicitude, and by that tender sympathy and watch-care which only they can exercise, immeasurable good can be effected by them for the cause of Christianity.  Nor is the help of Christian women to be limited to the narrow, yet all important, circle of the home.  It has a wide sphere in Christian work.  In the social prayer-circle, in the classroom, in the Sunday School, in the ripening fields of missionary enterprise, in pastoral aid societies, and in Christian authorship, are to be found spheres of labor for consecrated women; in which the fullest measure of usefulness may be attained.  In them also, their constraining love for Christ may have its highest expression, and bring forth its richest fruitage.  

Many noble women appreciate their duties and privileges in the Church, and are working up to the high standard of religious obligation.  They are doing all they can for their Lord who has done so much for them.  There is need, however, for more laborers like those faithful ones whose devotion is complete, and whose loyalty is so ardent.  The Lord of the vineyard calls upon all true Christian women to enter the field, now ready for harvest.  That call is so clear and full, and yet so personal, that it should be answered with the zeal and devotion of true love.  The reward would come now in the consciousness of discharged duty, and after a while, in the approbation of Him who shall give to every one according to his or her deeds.

Can a Woman Minister?

Dear Boo and Bubble,

I’ve been at this Bridge Project now for over three years and the challenge of not repeating myself has surfaced.  Sometimes a seed of thought planted in an earlier blog goes unnoticed in the recesses of my mind until it somehow and somewhat miraculously breaks through as a conscious idea which must be shared with you.  It is incumbent upon me, then, to research the project and make sure there is no redundancy.  None of what I’m telling you in this and the next post has been told before (although looking back on it, the topic might have triggered from two previous places: Sunday, April 21, 2013 - “Don’t Wake Me Up” and Saturday, May 11, 2013 – “He That Breaketh the Hedge Shall Be Bitten by a Serpent”). 

Great Granddaddy Schaefer grew up as a staunch Baptist.  It was the denomination of his forebears – intensely independent, rooted in the Gospel, fierce in its proselytizing, and robust in the missionary field – and he was very proud to claim it.  Even though each church controlled its own internal organization and selection of ministers, Baptist churches historically belonged to a national convention to oversee funding for and management of common concerns such as seminaries and mission work. The issues that plunged our country into Civil War during the mid-1800’s also rendered asunder this national connection and out of this fracture, the Southern Baptist Convention was formed.

My family’s home church, First Baptist of Greenville, traditionally maintained a rather pivotal membership in the SBC because of its size and financial wealth.  The relationship between church and convention remained symbiotic and all was well until 1970 when an intense struggle arose between conservative and more moderate forces within the convention over the ideological direction of the denomination.  No doubt the turmoil of the times – the Civil Rights and Feminist Movements, the Viet Nam war protests, and overall liberalization of societal norms – instigated the conflict. At stake as well was control of SBC’s vast resources found in the brick and mortar on seminary campuses and in the missionary support system that spanned the globe.  By 1979, the conservatives gained control of a majority of delegates to the annual SBC meeting and the new national organization cleaned house, replacing all leaders within Southern Baptist agencies with conservatives.  

During this time, the membership of First Baptist watched intently.  The congregation as a whole fell into the moderate category and they monitored official votes at the annual meetings with the result moving the convention ever more into a less tolerant position on issue after issue. Grandaddy Schaefer was among them and the straw that broke his SBC back came in 1973 when the convention voted to disallow the ordination of women, thus denying them the opportunity to officially be ministers.  At the annual meeting that year, the delegates passed a resolution that read in part: “Man was not made for woman, but the woman for the man.  Woman is the glory of man. Woman would not have existed without man.”

 

In response to this edict, Granddaddy always scoffed “A man who thinks a woman can’t minister….didn’t have a mother!”

(To be continued….)