Local & State
Church expulsions highlight divide on women leadership |
Published Friday, July 21, 2023 12:00 pm |
Church expulsions highlight divide on women leadership
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COURTESY ANGELA FRITZ |
Angela Fritz, 70 (center), a deacon at First Baptist Church-West, said women in leadership positions inspire young women to do the same. “It’s very important, because you can’t be what you can’t see,” she said. |
Women have faced many obstacles to equality to men.
They still face hurdles when it comes to leadership in the church.
In June, Linda Barnes Popham found out that the predominantly white Southern Baptist Convention voted to expel her church, Fern Creek Baptist in Louisville, Kentucky, along with four others that are led by female pastors. In addition, Virginia pastor Mike Law pushed for an amendment to the SBC constitution that would further restrict the role of women in leadership, by stating that a church could remain a member only if it “does not affirm, appoint or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind.”
More than 2,000 male pastors and professors signed a letter in support of the proposed amendment, which must be passed in consecutive years to go into effect. The SBC has 13.7 million members, but has seen declines over more than a decade in both members and baptisms.
Popham, Fern Creek’s pastor for 30 years and an active member since she was a 16-year-old pianist in the church choir, was stunned.
“I never believed this would happen,” Popham told the New York Times. “Why would you want to silence the voices of the faithful churches? Why?”
Although Popham did not see the expulsions coming, Pastor Ricky A. Woods of historically Black First Baptist Church-West in Charlotte wasn’t surprised.
“Not shocked, not surprised,” Woods said.
According to Woods, there’s a very clear difference between American Baptists and Southern Baptists.
“Not all Baptists believe that. And of those, the Primitive Baptists and the Southern Baptists are the most conservative in their views,” he said. “Other Baptists don’t see the world the way they do. And they don’t see the Bible of the Gospel the way they do.”
Woods compared how Southern Baptists tend to relate to the story of Pharaoh instead of Moses in the Book of Exodus as more restrictive under the pretext of a theological argument rather than a cultural issue.
FBC-West, on the other hand, has a more progressive history.
Originally attached to First Baptist Charlotte, a Southern Baptist-affiliated church, FBC-West was founded in 1867 by formerly enslaved people after prohibitions against African Americans worshipping in the same space as whites. In the 21st century, FBC-West, Charlotte’s oldest Black Baptist congregation, is one of the more progressive Baptist churches in the region.
“This congregation was ordaining women as deacons as early as the [19]80s,” said Woods, 65, who has been at FBC-West for 28 years. “In fact, this church licensed and ordained the first woman from the [former Mecklenburg General Baptist] Association Rev. Dr. Barbara Marshall. It was critical and it was important because Barbara Marshall was one of the first African American females in naval chaplaincy. She would not have been able to move forward with her commission as a naval chaplain without commission without ordination.”
Churches typically license ministers, but it was rare, especially 40 years ago, for them to do ordinations for women.
FBC-West deacon Angela Fritz, 70, believes the church is a very “encouraging community” and hasn’t run into any problems herself as far as seeking leadership.
“First Baptist Church-West is the kind of church that encourages,” she said. “I never knew that girls couldn’t do things because that's not what my parents did. That wasn’t what my church did and other organizations I was a part of did.”
Fritz, a retired teacher who spent 28 years at Myers Park High School, has served in the church in roles ranging from choir director to Sunday School teacher and her current position. Fritz said it’s important for young Black women to have women church leaders to look up.
“It’s very important, because you can’t be what you don’t see,” she said. “And if you see leadership in the church, that can transition to leadership in the workplace and in schools. If you look at the education system, now, if you look at the principals just in CMS, probably at least half if not more are female.”
Similarly, Gabrielle Heyward, a member of Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, looked up to women leaders like associate minister Michelle Jones, who inspired her to become a youth leader. Jones is the daughter of Friendship senior minister Clifford Jones.
“One of the reasons why I became a youth leader was because I had girls that I was looking up to, and I wanted to be just like them,” said Heyward, 20, a journalism and mass communications major at North Carolina A&T State University. “And I got that opportunity. Now I am giving back to high school girls by volunteering with Vacation Bible School this summer.”
No congregation can reach its full potential without the input and talent of all its members, Heyward said. That includes women in leadership.
“I hope that the situation becomes resolved and we can take a step in having women lead in the church because it is important,” she said. “Having different viewpoints is also important because the church can’t grow if only men are leading. The church grows when everyone works together.”
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