Baptist women deacons and deaconesses: key developments and trends, 1609-2005: "Baptist women deacons and deaconesses: key developments and trends, 1609-2005" is a big topic. It covers four centuries. It spans international boundaries. It exhibits considerable conflict.

It relates to the Bible, theology, church history, and ethics. Therefore, I have chosen a special way to present this paper: I will ask and answer key questions that I believe will help get to the heart of the story.

First, does this topic have enough importance to justify an article? That sounds like an odd way to begin, but answers vary. Baptists have disagreed over whether Phoebe in Romans 16:1 was a deacon or simply a servant and whether the women in 1 Timothy 3:11 were deacons or the wives of deacons. Baptist history is filled with arguments for and against women deacons and deaconesses and their ordination. Further, noted Baptists have interpreted in radically different ways the potential contributions of women in diaconal roles. To illustrate, in 2000 Mike Clingenpeel, editor of the Virginia Religious Herald, wrote: "Excluding women as deacons seems a terrible squandering of human giftedness." (1) In sharp contrast, upon learning of my interest in writing a book on women deacons, the editor of the Oklahoma Baptist Messenger described the issue as a "can of worms," (2) and the editor of the Georgia Christian Index questioned the study by stating that "surely there is some more compelling work in which to invest your research and writing skills." (3)

Issues at Stake Relating to Women Deacons

What issues are at stake in this discussion relating to women deacons? A partial list would include at least the following: the power of God to call women into whatever ministry he chooses; the focus given or not given to the life, spirit, and teachings of Christ in assessing the matter; literal views of scripture compared to more contextual understandings; misuses of the writings of the apostle Paul relating to women; the place of women in the ministry and service of the church; the implications of growing patterns of excessive pastoral authority in Baptist life; increasing concerns about women's subordination and submissiveness in denominational confessions of faith, resolutions, theological education, missions programming, and curriculum literature; diverse attitudes regarding the biblical basis and meaning of ordination; misuses of the autonomy of the local church against women's leadership and service; and theological influences that affect Baptists' attitudes toward women.

A key issue at stake is the credibility and integrity of the Southern Baptist Convention and its agencies. For example, on October 6, 2004, the SBC North American Mission Board adopted a document that it will apparently use as a guideline to determine what constitutes a New Testament church. (4) That document attacked ordained women deacons and, by inference, churches that ordain them. Evidently, NAMB will use that document to determine how to distribute money for new church starts. Since, by implication, churches with women deacons are not New Testament churches, they probably should not count on receiving mission money. That kind of action turns church starts into a denominational chess game with a preset conclusion; women deacons and their churches will likely lose every time.

Factors Promoting My Interest in this Study

What factors prompted my interest in the history of women in the diaconate? In the early 1970s, while in seminary, I wrote a seminar paper for Professor Glenn Hinson on the roles of deaconesses in the early church. In 1977, I prepared an article for Baptist History and Heritage titled "Deaconesses in Baptist History: A Preliminary Study." In 1979, Broadman Press published my book, The Emerging Role of Deacons, which included material on women in the diaconate. In 1990, I did extensive study on Baptist deacons in the American Baptist Historical Collection in Rochester, New York, and in the Library of Congress in Washington.

Several women deacons, all important to my personal pilgrimage, have inspired me. Professor Evelyn Underwood, who taught me United States history at Mars Hill College in the 1960s, was, in the 1970s, elected both a deacon and a deacon chair in the Mars Hill Baptist Church. In 1982, my own mother-in-law, Mary Eisenhauer, was elected one of the first three women deacons in the First Baptist Church of Asheville, North Carolina. In 1993, Mary Jane and I took our older daughter to Baylor University. During her four years there, Anita Rolf, deacon in First Baptist Church, Waco, adopted Dana as her daughter away from home and ministered to her in wonderful ways.

Having decided that Baptists historically have typically not given women equal play in many critical church leadership roles; having studied the life and teachings of Christ who spent his earthly ministry removing shackles from persons suffering from bondage; having read the writings of the earliest Baptists who clearly favored women deacons; having gained some sense of a biblically based conscience by studying ethics under Henlee Barnette; having determined that suppression of women in church leadership roles is an arrogant form of masculine dominance; having reacted negatively to growing patterns of Southern Baptist opposition to ordained women deacons; having served alongside women deacons when I served as deacon chair at First Baptist Church, Nashville, in 1990; having concluded that women are bringing and can bring to diaconal ministries an incredible array of gifts; having realized that God can call anyone into ministry and service roles; and having decided that I had a responsibility to speak up, I wrote a recent book (5) and prepared this paper.

The Differences between Women Deacons and Deaconesses

What are the differences between women deacons and deaconesses? Throughout their history, Baptists have usually, though not always, made clear distinctions between the two. Churches with women deacons have typically treated them as equals to men deacons in nomination, election, ordination (or non-ordination), and duties. In fact, many churches with male and female deacons have chosen to use gender-neutral language to describe their deacon bodies, and they have not hesitated to elect women as chairs of their deacon bodies. Many other churches with women deacons still remain biased against electing them as deacon chairs and have not done so after having had women deacons for decades. Baptists have usually treated deaconesses differently. Deaconesses have tended not to be ordained. Deaconesses have often met separately from deacons and have been viewed, in subsidiary capacity, as assistants to deacons. In some cases, however, Baptists have ordained deaconesses and have made no distinction between deacons and deaconesses. In such cases, the terms women deacons and deaconesses have meant exactly the same thing.

When one woman deacon with strong feelings suggested that I just write about women deacons and stop using the derogatory term deaconesses, I had to inform her that deaconesses dominated the Baptist terrain far longer than women deacons. And while deaconesses were not equal to deacons in ordination and function, they still provided creative ministries. Truth be known, there probably are more deaconesses in Baptist life than women deacons, especially among African American Baptists, but women deacons get talked about more today. Another woman deacon suggested that I not even use the term woman deacon but just talk about deacons. I assured her that while I am sensitive to the concept of gender-free language, I could not write about women in the diaconate without talking about women. The terms women deacons and deaconesses are required to deal with the topic comprehensively.

Women Deacons and Baptist Origins

Did women deacons factor into Baptist origins? They most definitely did. Baptist beginnings plainly included women deacons--in nomination, election, laying on of hands, and duties--fully equal to male deacons. John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, Baptists' first two pastors, explicitly recommended women deacons. In what was possibly the first reference to women deacons in Baptist literature, John Smyth asserted in 1609 that "the church hath power to Elect, approve & ordeine her owne Elders, also: to elect, approve, & ordeine her owne Deacons both men & women." (6) Thomas Helwys, apparent author of the first English Baptist confession of faith in 1611, stated in the confession that church officers should include "Deacons Men, and Women." Further, all church officers should be put in place "By Election and approbacion off that Church or congregation whereof they are members ... with Fasting, Prayer, and Laying on of hands." (7)

Early Baptists and Women Deacons and Deaconesses

What factors caused the earliest English Baptists in the 1600s to adopt women deacons and apparently all later English Baptists in the 1600s, as well as Baptists in early America, to prefer deaconesses? Calvinism and Anabaptism served as pivotal influences. In 1542, John Calvin, Reformation leader in Geneva, had put forth a list of four church officers: pastors, doctors (or teachers), elders, and deacons. (8) As the most influential church order produced by the Reformation, it influenced the rise of English Separatism, the Particular Baptist movement, and many of the most important Baptist confessions of faith in the 1600s-1700s in England and America.

The English Separatist confession of 1596, "A True Confession," included Calvin's four officers but added a fifth, helpers, likely a reference to widows or deaconesses. Of vital importance is the fact that this confession was written in Amsterdam, a center for Mennonite Anabaptism, which had a history of openness toward women in the diaconate. English Separatist John Smyth included widows in a 1605 writing and referred to deacons "men and women" in a 1607 writing. (9) Although Smyth recommended ordination for all church officers, including women deacons, he opposed women preachers. Calvin's exclusion of women as church officers soon prevailed in English Baptist life; the significant 1644 London Confession retained Calvin's list of four male church officers. In churches that included women in the diaconate, non-ordained deaconesses became the norm. After the early 1600s, neither General nor Particular Baptist confessions included women as deacons.

Across the full scope of Baptist history, which group has been more prevalent, women deacons or deaconesses? Women deacons existed in the literature of early English Baptists in 1609-1612. Except for rare exceptions, women deacons did not appear again in Baptist church life until the early 1900s. That means that in churches that included women in the diaconate, deaconesses dominated for about 300 years after Baptists formed their first church in 1609. That also means that deaconesses functioned in a subsidiary capacity to male deacons during those three centuries.

Duties of English Baptist Deaconesses

What duties did early English Baptist churches assign to deaconesses? Apparently, the earliest list of duties for deaconesses appears in the 1679 records of the Broadmead Baptist Church in Bristol, England. Deaconesses were asked to visit sick women and to find out if they had needs, since in some cases it might not be proper for men to inquire. They were also to visit sick "brethren"; that was why deaconesses had to be at least sixty years old, so that they might not give offense. Deaconesses were also to report back to the elders and deacons the conditions and needs of the sick persons whom they had visited. In visiting the sick, deaconesses were to "speak a word to their souls, as occasion requires, for support or consolation, to build them up in a spiritual lively faith in Jesus Christ." (10) This early list of deaconess duties focused on meeting the physical and spiritual needs of the sick.

The Diaconal Role of Baptist Women in Colonial America

What diaconal roles did Baptist churches give to women in Colonial America? Apparently, no Baptist records in the 1600s in America focused on women in the diaconate. In 1768, Morgan Edwards, noted pastor of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia, often described as the first Baptist historian in America, published a few copies of his book, The Customs of Primitive Churches. His writing strongly favored deaconesses, and even suggested that they could be ordained, although he admitted that he had never witnessed such an ordination. His views on deaconesses may have been one reason why the Philadelphia Association, of which he was a leader, refused to adopt his book as a manual for its churches.

Edwards traveled up and down the eastern seaboard visiting Baptist churches. His writings of the early 1770s contain the most detailed lists of Baptist deaconesses in America up to that time. Examination of his writings shows that he discovered deaconesses in nine Separate Baptist churches in Virginia, three in North Carolina, and one in South Carolina. He also found them in a few Particular Baptist churches in South Carolina, although he gave no examples, and in a few Tunker (German) Baptist churches in Pennsylvania, again providing no examples. (11) Reasons for these deaconess developments may have included the Great Awakening coupled with a mounting emphasis on liberty as the American Revolution approached, and the presence of deaconesses in the Sandy Creek Baptist Church in North Carolina, the mother Separate Baptist church in the South from which came numerous other churches.

Nineteenth-Century Patterns

What patterns characterized the 1800s? Baptist churches and associations in the 1800s increasingly described diaconal functions in administrative, business, and management categories, with an emphasis on deacons as managers, trustees, boards, treasurers, assessors, collectors, and disbursers of church funds, often to the neglect of the more caring and supportive ministries. Probably the most influential book written about Baptist deacons and deaconesses in the 1800s was R. B. C. Howell's 1846 work, The Deaconship: Its Nature, Qualifications, Relations, Duties. Howell, noted pastor of First Baptist Church, Nashville, Tennessee, and editor of the Tennessee newspaper, The Baptist, would gain even more influence through his eight-year presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1850s. He designated deacons the executive board of the church and deaconesses as non-ordained assistants to deacons. Thus, Howell's views of deacons and deaconesses, coupled with those of the Landmark movement, with which he disagreed on most other topics, helped to guarantee that churches for decades to come would treat deaconesses as subordinate to deacons.

The Subordination of Women in Baptist Life

Is the emphasis on the subordination of women to men in Baptist life, with its implications for women deacons, a contemporary development? Heavens no; Baptists have been gifted in subordinating women for centuries. Adrian Rogers was not the first Southern Baptist Convention president to support such views. Further, the 1984 SBC resolution opposing the ordination of women was simply the formalization of a long-term pattern. Let me illustrate with an unpublished, handwritten manuscript by Lansing Burrows, a document housed in the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives. Burrows served as pastor of the First Baptist Churches of Augusta, Georgia, in 1883-1889, and Nashville, Tennessee, in 1899-1909; he also held three major roles in the Southern Baptist Convention: recording secretary in 1881-1913, statistician in 1881-1919, and president in 1914-1917.

Prior to all that, in 1872, Burrows gave a lecture at his church in Bordentown, New Jersey. Titled "Woman's Position in the Church," this lecture, which grew out of his reaction to women in the pulpit and to deaconesses, represented his response to what he called "The Woman Problem." Burrows made two contrasting points. First, he asserted New Testament authority for woman's equality in things spiritual, quoting Galatians 3:28-29, including Paul's claim that in Christ there is neither male nor female. However, his second point took a sharp turn toward a different direction: In things temporal, subordination is woman's role in the church. Then Burrows developed an elaborate section in which he excluded women from church leadership.

Burrows's summary admonishment will surely encourage all the women who read his words today: "Let no woman chafe beneath this subordination. Let her remember the pit from which she was digged. Her Saviour has taken her from among the bondslaves of Satan, and placed her in charge of a flowering garden, not amid the dust and blood of the battle." Further, "Disdain not this humble ministry, my sisters; it is God's plan; it answers your own cravings, it is endorsed by your own tender intuitions." (12) That kind of logic (or should I say illogic?) regarding women deacons and ministers has existed in every century of Baptist life.

The Professional Deaconess Movement

What was the professional deaconess movement in the late 1800s and 1900s? Baptist deaconess sisterhoods, organizations of professional deaconesses affiliated with deaconess homes, sometimes called motherhouses, arose in the late 1800s first in England and then in the United States. The background of this development lay within an international Protestant model that originated in German Lutheranism in 1836 under the leadership of Theodore Fliedner. The purpose of Fliedner's model was to provide Christian service in hospitals and in social ministries.

In 1890, under the leadership of F. B. Meyer, minister of Regent's Park Chapel and honorary superintendent of the London Baptist Association Forward Movement, the Baptist Deaconess Home and Mission was dedicated in London to train deaconesses in the art of visiting and nursing the sick and poor, particularly in inner-city areas. In England, during the 1900s, the ministries of sisterhood deaconesses broadened and experienced many organizational changes. By the late 1960s, most of these deaconesses were serving in pastoral ministries. In 1975, the Order of Baptist Deaconesses was dissolved when all serving deaconesses were transferred to the official, accredited list of ministers serving in the Baptist Union of Great Britain.

Because of needs generated by immigration, urbanization, and industrialization, Walter Rauschenbusch, pastor of the Second German Baptist Church in New York City, and noted leader of the Social Gospel Movement, joined hands with Leighton Williams, pastor of the Amity Baptist Church in New York City in 1894, to establish the Baptist Deaconess Home at 312 West 54th Street. The first officers of the home were Mrs. William R. Williams as president and Mrs. Walter (Pauline) Rauschenbusch as vice president.

Deaconess candidates took a course of training, took no vows, and received no salary. But they had a home with all expenses paid, including old-age provisions. They became teachers, nurses, and visitors, especially to the poor and sick, but also to mothers needing help with household chores. Each candidate's application for admission had to include reference letters and a medical certificate from a physician. Candidates had to be between 21 and 35 years of age, had to agree to a two-year probationary period, and had to bring the following articles of clothing: "Six sets of plain underwear. Two plain wash dresses. Two dark underskirts. Six gingham aprons. Six single sheets. Six pair pillow slips. Six towels. Two pairs of shoes. One pair of rubbers. A rain coat, umbrella, and three pairs of gloves." (13) They first wore a simple black or brown dress in winter and a gray one in summer. By 1907, their common garb was dark blue.

On May 11, 1923, Johanna Langhorst died; her life was significant because it had included involvements in Baptist deaconess homes in three cities. Born in Germany fifty years earlier, she had moved to the United States in the early 1890s. She found Christ in early 1896 under the preaching of Walter Rauschenbusch. Under the influence of the deaconess home in New York, she decided to become a deaconess. In late 1896, she entered the Deaconess Hospital in Dayton, Ohio, and graduated in 1899. She was ordained to deaconess work in November of that year back in the Second German Baptist Church in New York.

Following years of deaconess service in New York, Langhorst moved to Chicago in early 1914 and took charge of the German Baptist Deaconess Home as superintendent. She was serving in that position when she died in 1923. At her funeral on May 14, five deaconesses and one female missionary served as pallbearers.

The strongest developments regarding deaconess sisterhoods among Baptists in America occurred among the German Baptists. Although professional and volunteer deaconess organizations arose in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Dayton in the late nineteenth century, the movement did not gain in the United States the level of acceptance that it achieved in Europe. As the twentieth century progressed, the movement gradually died out. The quaint dress, adoption of social work by non-church organizations, and other factors may have worked against the movement.

Prior to the rise of the professional deaconess movement in Baptist life, a woman teaching at Danville Female Academy in Kentucky, wrote a two-part article in 1871 for Virginia Baptists' Religious Herald titled "Ministering Women." Way ahead of her time, she urged that "each church, especially in our large cities, could set apart and sustain say two deaconesses. These could make it their business to minister to the poor and suffering, establish Sunday schools, sewing schools, night schools and mothers' meetings. In a large city, such an instrumentality would be invaluable in reaching the poor, the degraded and the ignorant." (14) By the way, this woman's name was Lottie Moon.

Typical Baptist Approaches to the Ordination of Women Deacons

What typical approaches have Baptists taken to the ordination of women deacons in the unfolding Baptist story? The ordination of women as deacons has been a particularly sensitive issue for Baptists. Some Baptists have honestly concluded that the New Testament does not provide for women's ordination. Others, however, have opposed women's ordination by following cultural traditions, by adhering to biblical inerrancy and a literal Bible, by appealing to narrow, woman's-submission views of the Creation accounts in Genesis, by taking the apostle Paul's writings out of context, by viewing ordination as conveying authority, prestige, and special powers, and by teaching that women should be submissive to men and should not teach or have authority over men.

Baptists who have favored women's ordination have tended not to buy into cultural expectations, not to accept biblical inerrancy, not to take the Bible literally, not to read Paul's writings out of context, and not to view ordination as conveying special church authority. Rather, they have viewed ordination as a positive symbol of the church's confidence in women's gifts and as an opportunity for Christian service. For them, women teaching men in church is as normal as women teaching men in high school, college, or any other setting of life.

Today, most Southern Baptist and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship churches with women deacons tend to ordain them. Most churches in the American Baptist Churches tend not to ordain women deacons; in fact, they tend not to ordain deacons at all--men and women. Most African American Baptist churches with women in the diaconate use non-ordained deaconesses. Exceptions exist to all these patterns.

The Reemergence of Women Deacons in Baptist Life

When did women deacons reemerge in Baptist life in the United States, and what key developments have both demonstrated and supported the expansion of women deacons? General factors included the Women's Liberation Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the adoption of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, discussions of the Equal Rights Amendment in the early 1970s, the American Bicentennial of 1976 (which was saturated with freedom themes), and President Jimmy Carter's human rights initiatives.

Baptist contributions included the ordination to the ministry in 1964 by the Watts Street Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina, as the first Southern Baptist woman so ordained; the adoption of human rights resolutions and declarations by the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1960s and 1970s; the adoption of many documents by the American Baptist Convention (later American Baptist Churches) in the 1960s-1980s expressing support for increased opportunities for women; adoption of human rights pronouncements by the Baptist World Alliance in the 1970s and 1980s; a Consultation on Women in Church-Related Vocations held in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1978; the holding of the first Conference of the American Baptist Women in Ministry in 1974; and the formation in 1983 of Women in Ministry, SBC (later Southern Baptist Women in Ministry and still later Baptist Women in Ministry).

Baptist writings and publications also contributed to the cause. Examples included Norman Letsinger's 1973 dissertation at Southern Seminary titled "The Women's Liberation Movement: Implications for Southern Baptists"; Evelyn and Frank Stagg's 1978 Westminster Press book Woman in the Worm of Jesus; Leon McBeth's 1979 Broadman Press work Women in Baptist Life; Harold Nichols's 1984 Judson Press book The Work of the Deacon and Deaconess; and a key article on women deacons by Glenn Hinson that appeared in The Deacon magazine and in several Baptist state newspapers in 1972 and 1973. Many other publications could be added.

Opposition to Women Deacons

What types of opposition have women deacons faced since they reemerged in the United States? Major opposition to ordained women deacons emerged among Southern Baptists in 1973 with the formation of the Baptist Faith and Message Fellowship in Georgia with M. O. Owens of North Carolina as the first president and the launching that same year of two publications, The Southern Baptist Journal, with William A. Powell as editor, and Baptists United News, with Robert M. Tenery as editor. This organization and these publications made it their goal to seek out and destroy alleged liberalism in Southern Baptist life; among others, liberals included women ordained as deacons and the churches that ordained them.

To illustrate the nature of opposition, in late 1975 Robert Tenery attacked the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina for having recently adopted a resolution favoring women's ordination. He questioned the ability of churches to think for themselves: "If the Convention were to vote to paint their steeples fire engine red they would do it. Convention actions are more authoritative than the New Testament.... The procedure is simple. A liberal pastor can persuade to blindly embrace any action of the Convention and then maneuver the Convention to endorse liberal ideas." (15) How ironic. As the 1970s-1990s would progress, Southern Baptist fundamentalist leaders would incorporate this exact strategy into their efforts to keep women in their place.

And what about The Southern Baptist Journal's 1977 editorial claiming that "liberalism, apostasy, and modernism" always take over when Baptists lose faith in biblical inerrancy and let their own opinions guide them? "One evidence of this in recent years in the Southern Baptist Convention is the rapidly expanding new movement of ordaining women." (16) That position does not represent a very high view of a key Baptist ideal: the right to private interpretation of scripture.

The 1980s-1990s were defining decades for Baptist women in the diaconate. Fundamentalist presidents presided over every SBC meeting. In 1980 the Southern Baptist Advocate, with Russell Kaemmerling as editor, emerged in Dallas, Texas, as a new fundamentalist publication that throughout the 1980s would use rigid views of biblical inerrancy to hammer against women's ordination to the diaconate and ministry. In 1984 the SBC adopted a resolution opposing women's ordination. In 1988 the SBC adopted a resolution on the priesthood of all believers that reflected a strong emphasis on pastoral authority, thus diminishing the leadership roles of ordained women in churches. In the 1980s, some Baptist associations joined the fray by voting not to seat messengers from churches with women deacons. Examples included the Redwood Empire Association in California, the Capital Baptist Association in Oklahoma, and the Calhoun Association in Alabama. Then in 1998 and 2000, SBC revisions of the Baptist Faith and Message set in concrete SBC views favoring women's submission and opposing women's ordination. As recently as 2002, the North American Mission Board announced that it would no longer endorse as chaplains women who had been ordained.

Conclusion

More and more churches are dismissing as totally non-authoritative those restrictive denominational statements of faith that are intended to affect local-church actions. As the autonomy of the local church kicks in (coupled with open-minded assessments of the spirit of Christ toward women), oppressive views of women in diaconal roles will increasingly get kicked out. Further, more and more churches are voting women into their deacon bodies, more and more deacon bodies are naming women as chair, and more and more pastors with women deacons are discovering that such women bring unparalleled advantages and insights into the serving side of deacon life.

Since 1905, participants in Baptist World Congresses have heard numerous pleas for freedom, including the freedom of women. Perhaps none was more passionate than that of Helen Barrett Montgomery at the 1923 Congress in Stockholm, Sweden. As an ex-president of the Northern Baptist Convention, she presented an address to that Congress titled "The New Opportunity for Baptist Women." In straightforward language, she declared: "Jesus Christ is the great Emancipator of women. He alone among the founders of the great religions of the world looked upon men and women with level eyes.... He alone put no barriers before women in His religious teaching.... In the mind of the Founder of Christianity there is no area of religious privilege fenced off for the exclusive use of men...." (17)

Six years later, in 1929, Ethlene Cox, president of the national Woman's Missionary Union, addressed the SBC as the first woman ever to do so. Focusing on "The Woman's Part," she made a point to describe Jesus' view of women: "The attitude of Jesus toward women is meaningful because He revealed the principles and forms of woman's service not only for His day but for every age.... From the Scriptures we get no intimation that Jesus ever treated woman other than the equal of man. Nor was woman ever released from any spiritual obligation.... Jesus never talked down to woman, rather the reverse; many of His most profound revelations were spoken to her." (18)

Helen Barrett Montgomery and Ethlene Cox left us with a noteworthy legacy: If a church wants to find out whether it should include women deacons, it needs to study the life, teachings, and spirit of Jesus Christ. Creation-account arguments for women's submission won't cut it. Defenses of biblical inerrancy won't cut it. Misreadings of the apostle Paul won't cut it. Patterns of traditional bias and cultural prejudice won't cut it. Denominational resolutions and statements of faith won't cut it. Publications committed to weeding out apostasy, liberalism, and modernism won't cut it. The insecure need for masculine dominance won't cut it. The only thing that will cut it is the life, spirit, and teachings of Jesus Christ.

Finally, as Donald F. Thomas put it in his 1969 Judson Press book The Deacon in a Changing Church, "It may be that the most important question is not whether women should hold positions in the church but whether the modern church can fulfill its ministry without them." (19)

(1.) Mike Clingenpeel, "The changing face of leadership," Religious Herald (March 23, 2000), 8.

(2.) John Yeats, e-mail to author, August 10, 2004.

(3.) Gerald Harris, e-mail to author, August 10, 2004.

(4.) For a copy of the document, see Stan Norman, "Ecclesiological Guidelines to Inform Southern Baptist Church Planters," www.namb.net/news/guidelines (September 28, 2004), accessed October 20, 2004.

(5.) Charles W. Deweese, Women Deacons and Deaconesses: 400 Years of Baptist Service (Brentwood, TN: Baptist History and Heritage Society, and Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2005).

(6.) John Smyth, "Paralleles, Censures, Observations," The Works of John Smyth, ed. William T. Whitley, vol. 2 (Cambridge: University Press, 1915), 509.

(7.) William L. Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith, rev. ed. (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1969), 122.

(8.) John Calvin, "Draft Ecclesiastical Ordinances," in Calvin: Theological Treatises, trans. J. K. S. Reid, vol. 22 of The Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), 58.

(9.) John Smyth, "A Patterne of True Prayer," in The Works of John Smyth, 1:158; John Smyth, "Principles and Inferences Concerning the Visible Church," in The Works of John Smyth, 1: 258-61.

(10.) Edward Bean Underhill, ed., The Records of a Church of Christ, Meeting in Broadmead, Bristol, 16401687 (London: The Hanserd Knollys Society, 1847), 397-98.

(11.) G. W. Paschal, "Morgan Edwards' Materials Towards History of the Baptists in the Province of North Carolina [1772]," The North Carolina Historical Review 7 (July 1930): 384-89; Morgan Edwards, "Materials Towards a History of the Baptists in the Provinces of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia," 1772 (microfilmed copy of the original handwritten manuscript, located in the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee) 5, 48, 56-84; Morgan Edwards, Materials Towards a History of the American Baptists, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Joseph Crukshank and Isaac Collins, 1770) 67.

(12.) Lansing Burrows, "Woman's Position in the Church" (Bordentown, NJ: June 1872), 28, 32; manuscript located in the Lansing Burrows Papers, AR 25, File Folder 55, Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, Nashville, TN.

(13.) "Baptist Deaconess Home," undated leaflet, 1-2, 4; located in the archives of the American Baptist Historical Society, Rochester, NY.

(14.) Lottie Moon, "Ministering Women," Religious Herald (13 April 1871): 1.

(15.) Robert M. Tonery, "The Ordination of Women," Baptists United News 3/10 (29 December 1975): 4.

(16.) "Some SBC Leaders on Ordaining Women," The Southern Baptist Journal 5/1 (January 1977): 11.

(17.) Helen Barrett Montgomery, "The New Opportunity for Baptist Women," Record of Proceedings, Third Baptist World Congress, ed. W. T. Whitley (London: Kingsgate Press, 1923) 99, 102.

(18.) Annual, Southern Baptist Convention, 1929, 229.

(19.) Donald F. Thomas, The Deacon in a Changing Church (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1969) 114.

Charles W. Deweese is the executive director-treasurer of the Baptist History and Heritage Society, Brentwood, Tennessee.