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“From Ordaining Women to Combating White Supremacy: Oppositional Shifts in Social Attitudes between the Southern Baptist Convention and the Alliance of Baptists”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2022

Andrew Gardner  and
Gerardo Martí
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Abstract

From its founding in 1987, the Alliance of Baptists’ stance on women in ministry served as the nexus point from which the small denominational body departed from its denominational forebears in the Southern Baptist Convention. As the Alliance adopted more and more progressive theological and social ideas, Southern Baptists adopted more and more conservative counterpoints, at times in response to each other. In 2021, the divergence of these two bodies came to the fore. As members of the Alliance of Baptists adopted a new covenant statement committing the denomination to “act to dismantle systems of white supremacy, patriarchy, and abusive power,” the Southern Baptists had walked away from working through their pro-slavery past and were agitating against critical race theory. Theological moves that began in a debate over women's ordination morphed into larger shifts that redefined what it meant to be a Baptist in the modern United States. How both denominational bodies came to embrace different systems of authority and governance in the late 1980s set both groups on divergent paths, leading to strikingly antithetical positions not only on issues of gender but also on issues surrounding race. The contrast further affirms that questions of gender and religious authority and questions of racism and white supremacy within denominational contexts are not isolated, separate questions but rather are deeply intertwined and related to one another. Overall, this SBC–Alliance history demonstrates how denominational bodies actively consider proximate organizations as they develop their own policies, processes, and public proclamations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , Summer 2022 , pp. 202 - 235
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Copyright
Copyright © 2022 by The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture

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References

Notes

A special thanks to Elesha Coffman, John Corrigan, Michael Emerson, Paul Harvey, Elizabeth Flowers, and Robert P. Jones for offering comments on earlier drafts of this article.

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9 See Campbell-Reed, Eileen R., Anatomy of a Schism: How Clergywomen's Narratives Reinterpret the Fracturing of the Southern Baptist Convention (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2016)Google Scholar; Flowers, Elizabeth, Into the Pulpit: Southern Baptist Women and Power since World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shaw, Susan, God Speaks to Us, Too: Southern Baptist Women on Church, Home, and Society (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 See Maxwell, Melody, The Woman I Am: Southern Baptist Women's Writings, 1906–2006 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2014)Google Scholar; Holcomb, Carol Crawford, Home without Walls: Southern Baptist Women and Social Reform in the Progressive Era (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2020)Google Scholar; Scales, T. Laine and Maxwell, Melody, Doing the Word: Southern Baptists’ Carver School of Church Social Work and Its Predecessors, 1907–1997 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019)Google Scholar.

11 Flowers, Into the Pulpit, 48.

12 Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention (1979), 31; Survey of the messengers on their opinion on women's ordination was proposed in 1978, Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention (1978).

13 For more context on this period in American political life, see Rolsky, Benjamin, The Rise and Fall of the Religious Left: Politics, Television, and Popular Culture in the 1970s and Beyond (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maxwell, Angie and Shields, Todd, The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williams, Daniel K., God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention (1980), 56.

15 Ammerman, Baptist Battles, 89.

16 Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention (1983), 67, 71.

17 Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention (1984), 65.

18 Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention (1982), 58.

19 For more on this type of Southern Baptist Progressive see Andrew Gardner, Binkley: A Congregational History (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, forthcoming).

20 For more on the context surrounding the formation of the Alliance of Baptists, see Gardner, Andrew, Reimagining Zion: A History of the Alliance of Baptists (Macon, GA: Nurturing Faith, 2015)Google Scholar.

21 Gardner, Reimagining Zion, 60–66.

22 Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention (1987), 144.

23 “Baptist Group Seeks Donations for Female-Pastored Churches,” The Charlotte Observer, March 13, 1987.

24 Gardner, Reimagining Zion, 62–63.

25 Gardner, Reimagining Zion, 42.

26 Stan Hastey to Mahan Siler, March 23, 1990, quoted in Gardner, Reimagining Zion, 48.

27 “Homosexuality Draws Opposition,” Los Angeles Times, February 22, 1992; “Baptist Church to Bless Gay Marriage,” Chicago Tribune, March 3, 1992; “2 Churches Ousted by Baptists’ Vote,” New York Times, June 11, 1992. The North Carolina Baptist newspaper Biblical Recorder received numerous letters to the editor and some congregations even took out advertisements denouncing the actions of the churches. “Paid Resolution Concerning Olin T. Binkley Memorial Church and Homosexuality,” Biblical Recorder, May 2, 1992; “Associations, Church Adopt Resolutions on Human Sexuality,” Biblical Recorder, May 23, 1992.

28 Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention (1992) 80–81, 118.

29 Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention (1992), 80–81.

30 Mahan Siler, interview with author, August 5, 2021.

31 Gardner, Reimagining Zion, 48–52.

32 Gardner, Reimagining Zion, 71–89; Andrew Gardner, “Reversing Roles: Denominational Community among the American Baptist Churches USA and the Alliance of Baptists,” American Baptist Quarterly 35, no. 2 (2016): 178–92.

33 Gardner, Reimagining Zion, 71–89.

34 Alliance founder Allen Neely along with Anne Thomas Neil were formative in shaping how the organization thought about missionary practices and partnerships with Christian groups around the world. See Allen Neely, A New Call to Missions: Help for Perplexed Churches (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys, 1999).

35 Gardner, Reimagining Zion, 129–31.

36 Gardner, Reimagining Zion, 138–39; The Southern Baptist Alliance, “A Call to Repentance,” March 10, 1990, https://www.baptistholocauststudies.org/alliance-of-baptists.

37 Aaron Weaver, ed., CBF at 25: Stories of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (Macon, GA: Nurturing Faith, 2016); Terry Maples and Gene Wilder, Reclaiming and Re-forming Baptist Identity: Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (Macon, GA: Nurturing Faith, 2017).

38 Stan Hastey, email message to author, August 4, 2021.

39 Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention (1995), 80–81.

40 Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention (1995), 81.

41 Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention (1995), 81; The Southern Baptist Alliance, “A Call to Repentance.”

42 The Southern Baptist Alliance, “A Call to Repentance.”

43 A key example is Mosaic, formerly the First Southern Baptist Church of East Los Angeles. See Martí, Gerardo, A Mosaic of Believers: Diversity and Innovation in a Multiethnic Church (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

44 Quotes selected from Gardner, Reimagining Zion, 41–43.

45 Siler, interview with author, August 5, 2021.

46 Al Mohler, “The Alliance of Baptists Affirms Same-Sex Marriage,” AlbertMohler.com, April 28, 2004, https://albertmohler.com/2004/04/28/the-alliance-of-baptists-affirms-same-sex-marriage.

47 Al Mohler, “When ‘Discernment’ Leads to Disaster,” AlbertMohler.com, August 18, 2015, https://albertmohler.com/2015/08/18/when-discernment-leads-to-disaster.

48 Al Mohler, “All Other Ground Is Sinking Sand: A Portrait of Theological Disaster,” AlbertMohler.com, February 12, 2018, https://albertmohler.com/2018/02/12/ground-sinking-sand-portrait-theological-disaster.

49 Michael-Ray Mathews, interview with author, July 30, 2021.

50 “State of Women in Baptist Life: Updated 2016,” Baptist Women in Ministry, https://bwim.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/SWBL-2015-revised-7-11-16.pdf.

51 The essays from the 1987 gathering were published in Alan Neely, ed., Being Baptist Means Freedom (Macon, GA: The Southern Baptist Alliance, 1988).

52 “‘Why Baptist?’ Group Explores Who They Are, Who They Are Not,” Baptist News Global, April 28, 2017, https://baptistnews.com/article/baptist-group-explores-not-arent/#.YPglDGgpDBJ.

53 “Alliance of Baptists Encourages Churches to Welcome Transgender Persons,” Baptist News Global, May 1, 2017, https://baptistnews.com/article/alliance-baptists-encourages-churches-welcome-transgender-persons/#.YPg2FGgpDBL.

54 Annual of the 2014 Southern Baptist Convention (2014), 86–88.

55 Annual of the 2016 Southern Baptist Convention (2016), 83–85.

56 “Alliance of Baptists Re-Visioning Working Group,” in Paula Dempsey, email message to author, February 6, 2018. One of the article's authors served for one year on the covenant Re-visioning Working Group.

57 See Neely, Being Baptist Means Freedom. See also works like Shurden, Walter, The Baptist Identity: Four Fragile Freedoms (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys, 1993)Google Scholar. Shurden's popular work summarizes Baptist identity into four distinct categories: Bible Freedom, Soul Freedom, Church Freedom, and Religious Freedom. The work includes the Alliance founding covenant in its appendix.

58 “Covenant and Mission,” Alliance of Baptists, April 10, 2021, https://allianceofbaptists.org/who-we-are/.

59 Annual of the 2019 Southern Baptist Convention (2019), 105–107.

60 “Movement Wants to Make Southern Baptists Conservative Again,” Christianity Today, October 30, 2020, https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2020/october/conservative-baptist-network-cbn-southern-baptist-sbc.html. For more on the Conservative Baptist Network of Southern Baptists, see their website, “Conservative Baptist Network,” https://conservativebaptistnetwork.com/.

61 Martí, Gerardo, “The Unexpected Orthodoxy of Donald J. Trump,” Sociology of Religion 80, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 1–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 “Resolution on the Incompatibility of Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality with The Baptist Faith and Message,” http://southernbaptistsagainstracism.org.

63 “On the Sufficiency of Scripture for Race and Racial Reconciliation,” Southern Baptist Convention, June 21, 2021, https://www.sbc.net/resource-library/resolutions/on-the-sufficiency-of-scripture-for-race-and-racial-reconciliation/.

64 For broader context, see Hilde Løvdal Stephens and Gerardo Martí, “Public Schools, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and the Christian Right: How Trump Refueled Family Value Politics,” in Trump and the Transformation of Religion and Politics, ed. Anand Sokhey and Paul Djupe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming).

65 See Greene, Alison Collis, “Reckoning with Southern Baptist Histories,” Southern Cultures 25, no. 3 (fall 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 See Newman, Mark, Getting Right with God: Southern Baptists and Desegregation, 1945–1995 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Stricklin, David, A Genealogy of Dissent: Southern Baptist Protest in the Twentieth Century (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1999)Google Scholar. For more on Christians who generally opposed integration and civil rights, see Baker, Kelly J., The Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK's Appeal to Protestant America, 1915–1930 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2011)Google Scholar; DuPont, Carolyn, Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 Gardner, Reimagining Zion, 86–87.

68 Hastey, email message to author, 4 August 2021.

69 Hastey, email message to author, 4 August 2021.

70 Brophy, Sorcha A., “Orthodoxy as Project: Temporality and Action in an American Protestant Denomination,” Sociology of Religion 77, no. 2 (Summer 2016): 123–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.