Baptist group elects 1st woman president

The largest state Baptist convention in the nation elected its first female president on Monday.

Retired missionary Joy Fenner was elected president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. She defeated preacher David Lowrie by 60 votes, 900 to 840.

The moderate organization is the state's largest Baptist group with 5,600 affiliated congregations and more than 2.3 million members. Less than 1 percent of the convention's pastors are female.

The organization has distanced itself from some Southern Baptist leaders who have issued declarations that women should not be pastors and that wives should "graciously submit" to their husbands.

Fenner, a longtime mission worker, got her start as a church secretary at First Baptist Church in Marshall during the 1950s. She served as a missionary in Japan for 13 years.

Last year, the convention named her to the office of first vice president, putting her in position to serve the one-year term as president in 2008.

Fenner becomes the third "first" in recent years for the convention, which elected its first Hispanic president in 2004 and its first black president in 2005.

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On the Net:

Baptist General Convention of Texas: http://www.bgct.org

(This version CORRECTS that convention is the largest Baptist state group).)