NEWS STORY: Pentecostal Leader Affirms Women As Pastors, Leaders

c. 2000 Religion News Service NEW ORLEANS _ Pentecostal Bishop Paul S. Morton has called on fellow Pentecostals to ensure their churches’ leadership roles remain open to women. He suggested that Southern Baptists might one day have to apologize for their defense of an all-male clergy, as they did five years ago for the historic […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

NEW ORLEANS _ Pentecostal Bishop Paul S. Morton has called on fellow Pentecostals to ensure their churches’ leadership roles remain open to women. He suggested that Southern Baptists might one day have to apologize for their defense of an all-male clergy, as they did five years ago for the historic racial segregation of their congregations.

Hospitality to women was one of several themes Morton evoked Monday (July 10) as the leadership of the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship assembled in this city for its seventh annual conference, which began Wednesday. An estimated 18,000 church members from across the South are expected to gather for three days of singing, preaching, workshops and networking.


Born in New Orleans 10 years ago, the predominantly African-American fellowship consists largely of former traditional Baptist churches that adopted Pentecostal-style worship and theology without formally severing their Baptist ties.

Based in New Orleans and led by Morton, a founder and presiding bishop, the fellowship claims churches in 45 states, an estimated 1 million members and a hierarchy of hundreds of bishops and fellowship pastors who made up Morton’s audience as he launched two days of pre-convention business meetings.

The crowd included a dozen or more women pastors and assistant pastors who work in Full Gospel Fellowship churches, although none of the 23 bishops on the fellowship’s governing council is a woman.

But women frequently preach in Pentecostal pulpits, and Morton’s wife, Debra, is co-pastor with him of the 20,000-member Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church.

Morton said he wants the fellowship to expand, building at least one new church in every state, a slight shift from relying on growth by converting traditional Baptist churches to the Pentecostal fold.

He also outlined a fellowship goal to launch a recording company and acquire one or two radio stations during the course of the next year _ in the name of both fellowship growth and economic development for African-American church members.

Referring to a recent Supreme Court case involving the Boy Scouts’ opposition to gay Scout leaders, he called homosexuality an “abomination.” The crowd applauded. And he urged member churches to lead congregants away from an interest in psychic readers, seances and other New Age developments, including an interest in traditional ancestor worship developing in some African-American circles.


He urged fellow pastors to keep their churches open to the preaching and leadership skills of women.

Noting that the 15.7 million-member Southern Baptist Convention recently formally asserted its belief that the Bible calls only men to positions of church leadership, Morton criticized churches “run as social clubs” by men. He quoted Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

“We have made ourselves into little gods and placed (women) where we want them to be,” said Morton.

Noting that in 1995 the predominantly white Southern Baptist Convention formally apologized to African-Americans for its support of slavery and opposition to civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s, “sooner or later that denomination is going to have to apologize to women,” said Morton, a remark that drew a standing ovation.

“There is still bondage in the church,” he said.

“They’re certainly within their rights to have their own views, as we are entitled to have our interpretation of Scripture, and we stand by it,” said Todd Starnes, an associate editor of the Baptist Press, the Southern Baptist Convention’s official news service. “And as we do not chide other churches for their view of Scripture, we would hope other churches would respect our view.”

DEA END NOLAN

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