NEWS FEATURE: Southern Baptist Women Serve Despite Restrictions

c. 2000 Religion News Service CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. _ A trinity of Tennessee Southern Baptist churchwomen _ a five-term deacon, a new chaplain and a veteran minister of education _ offers a contrasting picture of leadership in a denomination whose faith statement now excludes women from pastoral office. In June, the Southern Baptist Convention revised its […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. _ A trinity of Tennessee Southern Baptist churchwomen _ a five-term deacon, a new chaplain and a veteran minister of education _ offers a contrasting picture of leadership in a denomination whose faith statement now excludes women from pastoral office.

In June, the Southern Baptist Convention revised its standard-bearing Baptist Faith and Message to read, “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”


But the statement came along late in the active church life of Betty Galloway, 81, Tennessee’s first female Southern Baptist deacon.

A former missionary to China and Thailand, Galloway was elected in 1971 to what would turn out to be five terms as deacon at First Baptist Church, Oak Ridge, in northeast Tennessee. First Baptist pastor Larry Dipboye linked the choice of Galloway to her reputation for service that began when her husband, Ed, became pastor in 1957 and continued after his death in 1970.

Her election as deacon, Dipboye said, “was both a statement of support for the Galloways’ ministry of 13 years and a statement of respect for Betty’s ministry leadership.”

Interviewed just before her recent move to Washington state to be with family, Galloway refused to take the limelight for her historic role among Tennessee Baptists. She emphasized instead the congregation’s vision when it first amended its rules to include women in the diaconate. “It’s the church that took that action,” Galloway said.

In mid-July, a 2-year-old organization called the Tennessee Baptists Encouraging Women in Ministry honored Galloway’s congregation by giving the church the first Betty Galloway Award for Advocacy for Women in Ministry.

The award recognizes institutions or individuals supporting women called to ministry, said the Rev. Mary Jayne Allen, minister of education at First Baptist Church of Chattanooga and the group’s first president.

Asked about the darkest moments in her long tenure as deacon, Galloway indicated the real challenges came from her own heart. What she most clearly remembers is “this feeling of guilt for not being able to do all the things that I felt I should be doing as a deacon. Time just didn’t seem to … permit it.”


According to Dipboye, 12 of the 30 deacons of First Baptist Church, Oak Ridge, are now women. But Oak Ridge is not the norm, according to Ircel Harrison, coordinator of the Tennessee Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a state-level chapter of the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship formed in reaction to conservative trends in the SBC.

Harrison estimated only a small percentage of the state’s 3,000 congregations that relate to the SBC have women deacons.

Richard Land, president of the SBC’s Nashville-based Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said he believes the New Testament restricts women from positions of authority in local churches. Because the modern diaconate would most likely put women in a role of leadership rather than strictly service, he said, he “personally would not vote to ordain a woman as a deacon.”

Land emphasized that the recent Baptist Faith and Message statement “is nothing more than a summary of what the overwhelming majority of Southern Baptists have always believed.”

The same day as the award ceremony in Oak Ridge, First Baptist Church of Nashville made its own historic move when it ordained Ryan Leigh Chambers. It was the congregation’s only female ordination to ministry in its 180-year history.

Chambers’ spiritual dream was to become a chaplain.

“I really think I encounter my call every time I enter a hospital,” she said.


Chambers grew up at First Baptist Church of Nashville and studied psychology and religion at Nashville’s Belmont University, a Baptist school. After graduating in 1998, she decided to step out of her comfortable Southern Baptist world and pursue seminary studies at Harvard.

She said the experience opened her eyes to a diverse religious landscape and her heart to the chaplaincy. A one-year placement in Boston’s Dana Farber Cancer Institute as part of her studies cemented her decision to pursue the chaplaincy.

“It was just really divine intervention,” Chambers said. “I just totally fell in love with the place.”

Chambers is beginning a residency at the Department of Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Nashville. The program is part of a certification process, the “Ph.D. of chaplaincy,” as she termed it.

The chaplain-in-training saw her ordination as “a stamp of approval, not just by my church, but by God.” But the event’s timing about a month after the SBC’s national gathering thrust Chambers’ personally meaningful ceremony into the context of national controversy.

Chambers said scheduling the ordination so close to SBC’s controversial announcement “was a very … big coincidence.” She was finishing at Harvard when the news hit about the SBC decision. “I had no idea that the whole big … mess with the Southern Baptist Convention was going to come,” she said.


The same Sunday evening Chambers was ordained in Nashville, it was Chattanooga’s Allen who presented First Baptist Church, Oak Ridge, with the award named after Galloway, the pioneering woman deacon.

Ordained in fall 1996, Allen’s official role at First Baptist Church of Chattanooga is “minister of education.” But because she is busy across the spectrum of church life, many in the congregation think of her as “associate pastor.”

For example, Allen conducts weddings and funerals. And though she doesn’t preach every week, “I am in the pulpit every Sunday for some reason,” Allen said, such as reading the day’s Scripture or leading prayer. Her responsibilities in the educational program include supervising a minister to families with children and a youth minister, both men.

Allen, Galloway and Chambers said they share a sense of disappointment over the SBC action defining the pastorate as a man’s domain. They said it reflects a power play within the denomination.

“There are men who feel threatened,” Galloway said of the SBC leaders.

Chambers said she senses a reluctance to replace old habits. “Churches are having to kind of change the way that they’ve looked at things,” she said. The Southern Baptist “convention is just afraid to break routine.”

Crucial for the women is respect for what they consider a divine call.

“I just don’t think that God makes a difference in the call and the gifts,” said Allen. “Who am I to say that God’s spirit cannot call a woman to preach?”


Asked what she would say to young women in Southern Baptist churches interested in ministry, Galloway turned to the song, “Climb Every Mountain,” a personal favorite. “This is my feeling about life,” she said. “Follow your … dreams, follow your calling.”

DEAEND PARKS

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