NEWS STORY: Unique Ministers’ Conference Elects Woman President

c. 2003 Religion News Service HAMPTON, Va. _ For decades, African-American clergy from across the nation have reserved the first week of June for a time of respite and renewal near the Chesapeake Bay. But this year, for the first time, the Hampton University Ministers’ Conference opened Monday (June 2) with a presidential address by […]

c. 2003 Religion News Service

HAMPTON, Va. _ For decades, African-American clergy from across the nation have reserved the first week of June for a time of respite and renewal near the Chesapeake Bay.

But this year, for the first time, the Hampton University Ministers’ Conference opened Monday (June 2) with a presidential address by a woman. Under the new leadership of the Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook, an American Baptist minister from the Bronx, N.Y, the 89th annual event marked a juncture in the long tradition of what is known as the largest interdenominational gathering of black ministers in the country.


“It’s a brand new day,” she preached, not only referring to herself but encouraging the opening session crowd of 7,500 to let the conference be a fresh starting point for them as well. “If you will just be open to the power of God, God’s power can be poured upon your life in an amazing new way.”

Before she preached, the 46-year-old minister nicknamed “Dr. Sujay” took time out especially for her sisters in the faith. After she asked all the female ministers in the arena to stand, she declared: “Don’t quit. … Tonight is a living testimony that God rewards faithfulness. Don’t give up.”

The historic moment with Cook as president came amid a meeting whose participants already embellish it with superlatives. Ministers old and new describe it with verbiage that might usually be sprinkled in their sermons.

“I consider it being on the mountaintop _ I mean, really on the peak of the mountaintop,” said Minister Sharlene Hartwell, an associate minister of a Long Island congregation and a student at New York Theological Seminary who attended for her third year.

“You hear about the music. You hear about the preaching, but you really don’t quite grasp the essence of it until you get here.”

Pastor John L. Goodwine of Sweet Home Baptist Church in Columbia, S.C., has come 18 years in a row.

“Hampton is heaven on earth,” he said. “It’s a high that you can’t really express.”


But the conference, which its president and others call the “mecca for black preachers,” reached a new stage with the election of Cook in 2002 and her first address a year later. Dignitaries dubbed “first ladies of the civil rights movement” sat on the dais of the conference to mark the transition.

“This is a great moment in the history of our country and it surely is a great moment for women,” declared Dorothy Height, president emeritus of the National Council of Negro Women.

Coretta Scott King, widow of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., congratulated the conference. “You have sent a clarion message that women do indeed have a leadership role to play in religious life,” she said.

Experts on black church life agreed, comparing Cook’s election to strides made by women in denominational settings, like the 2000 election of Bishop Vashti McKenzie as the first female bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

But Mary Sawyer, author of a book on black ecumenical relations, said the conference’s advancement of a woman leader may be even more significant.

“It’s an interdenominational conference and it suggests recognition and acceptance by a broad spectrum of the church”,” said Sawyer, an associate professor of religious studies at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.


Cook and others acknowledge that everyone did not view her election as a cause for celebration.

“There’s a lot of guys that didn’t even come this year because of a woman president, but I’m of the opinion if God has called you, who am I to judge you?” said the Rev. Samuel Blow, pastor of a Baltimore church affiliated with the National Baptist Convention, USA.

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The Rev. James Forbes, pastor of New York’s Riverside Church and Cook’s seminary professor, noted that her leadership experience _ offering a weekly ministry on Wall Street, working on domestic policy issues with the Clinton administration _ caused her to be “fully credentialed” for the post. Other clergy said just like officers that preceded her, Cook worked her way through the ranks of the organization, serving at one point as necrologist, responsible for noting the deaths of ministers since the previous conference.

Just as the gathering has evolved in the gender of its leaders, it also has grown in size and stature.

Once housed in the university’s chapel and later in a hall on campus, it now meets in the 8,000-seat Convocation Center.

Although many of the leaders who attend are black Baptists, its range of attendees include a sprinkling of whites as well as a few Catholics and representatives of numerous other denominations.


“It is thoroughly multidenominational,” said the Rev. Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, professor of African-American studies and sociology at Colby College. “You will see Episcopal priests. You will see Pentecostals.”

Last year, more than 9,000 attended the conference, in part because it included the popular preaching of Bishop T.D. Jakes, a Pentecostal preacher based in Dallas.

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Under Cook’s leadership, the gathering has returned to an inward focus, with the theme “Making the Connection: The Contemplative Life of the Minister.”

“Programmatically, she’s made some moves to remind us of some of the original kinds of intentions of our conference and that was to provide a forum and a place to get renewed and refreshed,” said the Rev. Timothy Tee Boddie, executive secretary of the conference.

Cook, pastor of the Bronx Christian Fellowship, said her perspective as a preacher, wife and mother of two school-aged children has prompted her redirection of the conference.

“For me, particularly being a female, the life balance issues are important,” she said in an interview before the conference. “We cannot burn out and we cannot lose our families in the process.”


After the inward look this year, she plans to use the rest of her four-year term to draw attention to the infrastructure of ministries and then, help churches reach out nationally and internationally.

The Rev. Ella Mitchell, the first ordained woman to preach at the conference about 20 years ago, said the enthusiasm for the gathering will likely grow, especially among women.

“What’s going to happen is we’re going to have more women coming to the conference, more women who will be working in the conference, participating in the conference,” predicted Mitchell, a retired scholar residing in Atlanta. Cook recalled when she first attended the conference 23 years ago, the 10 or so women ministers in attendance met in a hotel room “because we were not accepted.

Now, she relishes the change.

“It’s an exciting time,” she said. “I’m not just a women’s advocate. My thing is you do … ministry well.”

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