Episode 3 - Loopholes

Summary

All the Buried Women: Episode 3 - "Loopholes"

Hosted by Beth Allison Barr and Savannah Locke

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Introduction

In Episode 3 of All the Buried Women, titled "Loopholes," hosts Beth Allison Barr and Savannah Locke delve deeper into the intricate barriers faced by women within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). This episode explores the subtle yet effective methods the SBC employed to restrict women's roles in ministry while simultaneously providing alternative pathways—termed "loopholes"—for women to serve and lead within the denomination.

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Historical Context: The Conservative Resurgence

The episode begins with a recap of pivotal moments in SBC history. In 1964, Addie Davis became the first woman ordained in the SBC, signaling a potential openness to women's ordination. However, just three years later, in 1967, pivotal figures like Judge Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson began shaping a more conservative direction for the SBC. Their alliance, formed over shared concerns about the denomination's liberal drift, laid the groundwork for what would become the conservative resurgence.

Beth Allison Barr highlights the dark undercurrents of this period:

Beth Allison Barr [00:00]: "In 1964, Addie Davis became the first woman to be ordained in the SBC... planting seeds for what would ultimately become the conservative resurgence."

This resurgence was not only about theological shifts but also involved the troubling cover-ups of sexual abuse within the SBC. Savannah Locke sheds light on the allegations against Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson, emphasizing their grip over the denomination's direction under the guise of morality and biblical orthodoxy, which specifically targeted women in ministry.

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The Concept of Loopholes

As the SBC became increasingly restrictive towards women, women like Kathy Hoppe persisted in seeking ordination despite numerous obstacles. By the late 1980s, around 500 Southern Baptist women were ordained, with 18 serving as pastors. An organization named Baptist Women in Ministry emerged to support these women, meeting annually alongside the SBC's convention.

Yet, the conservative resurgence continued to limit women's roles within the church. Savannah Locke introduces the concept of "loopholes"—mechanisms that allowed women to serve in ministry roles that were generally acceptable and often celebrated by the SBC, albeit under different titles and settings.

Savannah Locke [02:37]: "Every system has loopholes, even the Southern Baptist Convention. In this episode, we are going to talk about the most visible of these loopholes..."

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Case Study: Rosalie Beck

One of the most prominent examples of utilizing loopholes is Rosalie Beck's story. As the first female professor of religion at Baylor University, Rosalie navigated the SBC's restrictions by focusing her ministry within academic settings rather than church buildings.

Rosalie recounts her experiences at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary during the height of the conservative resurgence:

Rosalie Beck [07:10]: "There were very few who were interested in making something like a conversation or discussion group. We were very isolated... he used words like couplings and universal joints. And of course, I didn't have a clue what he was talking about."

Despite facing blatant sexism from professors like Dr. Cal Guy, Rosalie excelled academically and professionally. Her refusal to seek ordination allowed her to serve as a respected professor, effectively sidestepping the SBC's ordination barriers for women.

Beth Allison Barr [05:25]: "Rosalie said, 'I could be acceptable as a church historian.' That's what these loopholes provided and still provide for women in the SBC."

Rosalie's tenure at Baylor spanned 35 years, during which she educated thousands of students, influencing both men and women in their understanding of religion, theology, and history.

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Case Study: Bertha Smith

Another significant loophole was exploited by missionaries like Bertha Smith. Olive Bertha Smith, known affectionately as Miss Bertha, served as the SBC's first missionary to Taiwan. While the SBC did not formally recognize her as a preacher or pastor, Bertha effectively served in these roles during her missionary work.

Savannah Locke shares her extensive research on Bertha, uncovering numerous instances where Bertha preached in Southern Baptist churches across the nation:

Savannah Locke [22:57]: "Bertha Smith taught men in Southern Baptist churches. If you look at the ways she is described by the SBC's website or literature, you would absolutely see her celebrated, just not as a teacher or pastor, but as a missionary."

Bertha's sermons, captured in audio recordings, demonstrate her role as a preacher:

Bertha Smith [22:10]: "He destroyed the Lord's type... Your gifts and their ministry is valid."

Her ability to preach and lead was accepted because her role was framed within the context of missionary work, allowing her to bypass the SBC's restrictions on women preaching within church buildings in America.

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The Role of the Pastor's Wife

One of the most nuanced loopholes discussed is the role of the pastor's wife. Beth Allison Barr introduces her forthcoming book, Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry, which explores how marriage became a sanctioned avenue for women to engage in ministry roles without formal ordination.

Dorothy K. Patterson, wife of Paige Patterson, serves as a central figure in this discussion. In a notable debate at the 1988 Southern Baptist Historical Society meeting, Dorothy, while outwardly adhering to the submissive pastor's wife persona, actively opposed women's ordination.

Rosalie Beck recounts the event:

Rosalie Beck [32:45]: "Dorothy Patterson postured herself as submissive to male leadership, fighting against female ordination even as she publicly exercised authority over a room full of 300 mostly male pastors and professors."

This duality allowed women to wield influence and authority subtly, maintaining the facade of subservience while effectively participating in leadership and teaching roles.

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Women Leaving the SBC: A Fourth Loophole

Pamela Durso introduces an additional loophole: women leaving the SBC to join more progressive denominations like the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Methodist, or Presbyterian churches. This exit strategy was not merely a workaround but an escape from a denomination that stifled their leadership aspirations.

Pamela Durso [41:23]: "Their loophole wasn't a workaround. It was an exit door, an escape from a denomination that restricted their roles and into ones that fully embraced their callings and leadership."

This exodus resulted in the SBC losing some of its most talented and dedicated women, who sought environments where their gifts and leadership could be fully realized.

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Conclusion: The Dual Nature of Loopholes

All the Buried Women Episode 3 illuminates the complex interplay between restriction and resilience within the SBC. The loopholes—professorships, missionary roles, the pastor's wife position, and denominational exits—highlight both the ingenuity of Southern Baptist women in navigating oppressive structures and the deep-seated contradictions within the denomination's approach to gender roles.

Beth Allison Barr eloquently summarizes:

Beth Allison Barr [39:36]: "They worked within the cracks and loopholes of a rigid system, crafting spaces where their voices could be heard and their gifts could flourish... But these loopholes also highlight the contradictions and inequities of the Southern Baptist Convention."

The episode underscores the necessity of recognizing these hidden pathways not only to appreciate the tenacity of these women but also to understand the systemic barriers that continue to impede gender equality within the SBC.

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Looking Ahead

As Episode 3 concludes, Beth Allison Barr and Savannah Locke tease the forthcoming focus on the SBC's sexual abuse problems, promising to shed light on the persistent struggles and ongoing efforts to seek justice within the denomination.

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Notable Quotes

• Rosalie Beck [05:58]: "I told my pastor, listen, it would be easier to be a prostitute in this church than it is to be an ordained woman."

• Beth Allison Barr [16:10]: "Ordination became a scarlet letter for women."

• Savannah Locke [37:09]: "Dorothy Patterson drew authority from her role as pastor's wife. She could and did give her permission to speak when she spoke, including during her debate with Jan Aldridge Clanton."

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Final Thoughts

Episode 3 of All the Buried Women offers a compelling examination of how language, titles, and settings were manipulated to maintain male dominance while allowing women limited avenues for leadership. Through the stories of Rosalie Beck, Bertha Smith, and the exploration of the pastor's wife role, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of the persistent gender dynamics within the SBC and the undying spirit of women who sought to lead despite systemic barriers.

Transcript

[Beth Allison Barr]

We've covered a lot of ground in two episodes, so let's recap where we've been. In 1964, Addie Davis became the first woman to be ordained in the SBC, signaling the convention's potential openness to women's ordination. Three years later, in 1967, 37 year old Judge Paul Pressler dropped by Paige Patterson's apartment while Paige was a student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. They went to Cafe Du Monde and talked until three in the morning, bonding over a shared concern for the liberal drift of the SBC and planting seeds for what would ultimately become the conservative resurgence.

[Savannah Locke]

As multiple lawsuits helped bring to light, Paul Pressler allegedly began sexually abusing boys and young men behind closed doors around that time. In the late 1970s, Paige Patterson gained momentum as an SBC leader and is alleged to have covered up the abuses committed by his mentee, Darrell Gilliard, and allegedly covered up a rape while he was president at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. After he was fired from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary when those allegations came to light. He was then accused of misappropriating confidential donor information, redirecting funds from the Harold E. Riley foundation, and stealing seminary property. All the while, Patterson and Pressler were controlling the direction of the largest Protestant denomination in North America. Under the guise of morality and biblical orthodoxy, which specifically targeted women in ministry. In 1984, five years into the conservative resurgence, the SBC passed a resolution on ordination and the role of Women in Ministry. The resolution emphasized that women belonged under male headship, that women should not assume authority over men, and because of Creation, order and the Edenic Fall, women were barred from the pastoral office.

[Beth Allison Barr]

Regardless, women like Kathy Hoppe were still going to seminary and seeking ordination despite harmful interactions and frustrating obstacles. By the late 80s, around 500 Southern Baptist women were ordained, 18 of whom served as pastors. An organization called Baptist Women in Ministry mobilized to support women in their callings, meeting every year alongside the SBC's annual convention. But the conservative resurgence also mobilized and continued to limit where and how women could serve in the church.

[Savannah Locke]

The SBC was divided, and what it meant to be a Southern Baptist woman called by God to ministry was increasingly complicated. But every system has loopholes, even the Southern Baptist Convention. In this episode, we are going to talk about the most visible of these loopholes, ways that women could serve in ministry that were generally acceptable and often celebrated by the SBC.

[Beth Allison Barr]

Those loopholes are 1 become a professor. 2 become a missionary 3 become a pastor's wife. These three paths allowed women to functionally lead, preach and pastor women and men, they just weren't allowed to call themselves pastors or be ordained. In many ways, these loopholes come down to the use of language and setting. Instead of inviting a woman on stage to preach or teach, for example, she was invited instead to share. Instead of being a pastor, a woman was a director or a missionary or a prayer warrior. This is what we mean by language.

[Savannah Locke]

Loopholes, and here's what we mean by setting loopholes. While women could not teach men inside Southern Baptist churches, they were allowed to teach men in colleges, universities, and seminaries. While women missionaries funded by the SBC were preaching the gospel, pastoring and baptizing people across the world, they would not be allowed to do the same thing inside church buildings in America. And as pastors wives, women could lead, teach, and even preach as long as their husbands and churches allowed it.

[Beth Allison Barr]

Rosalie Beck, the first female professor of religion at Baylor University, an institution who at that point was in cooperation with the SBC through their affiliation with the Baptist General Convention of Texas, said she never understood that part. For her, it was just self deception and relabeling.

[Rosalie Beck]

I have actually heard staunch anti women minister type say, well, Lydia could lead the church in Philippi and Priscilla could lead the church in Ephesus because they were in their homes, in the domestic sphere. And I'm going, it's not about where you are. It's about authority. It's about the call of God. It doesn't matter if you're in a home or if you're in a cathedral. Do you have the authority given by God to do that? I think because I never sought ordination. I'm an ordained deacon in my church, but I never sought ordination for preaching ministry because that wasn't my calling. That I could be acceptable as a church historian.

[Beth Allison Barr]

The language that Rosalie uses here is important. She said, I could be acceptable as a church historian. That's what these loopholes provided and still provide for women in the sbc. Acceptable ways to follow their callings, even if their callings are functionally pastoral. In this episode, we're going to feature three women, including Rosalie Beck, and the loopholes that allowed them to serve in ministry.

[Rosalie Beck]

I told my pastor, listen, it would be easier to be a prostitute in this church than it is to be an ordained woman.

[Beth Allison Barr]

The spirit of the Lord is upon.

[Pamela Durso]

Him because God has anointed me to.

[Beth Allison Barr]

Preach good news to the poor. Women deserve to know that there are places where their gifts and their ministry is valid.

[Rosalie Beck]

I looked at him and said, Dr. Guy, you have every right to be Completely wrong.

[Savannah Locke]

Created in partnership with the Bible for normal people. This is all the Buried Women, a miniseries uncovering women's stories hidden in the Southern Baptist Convention's archives.

[Beth Allison Barr]

Hosted by me, Beth Ellison Barr, and me, Savannah Locke.

[Rosalie Beck]

Episode 3 Loopholes My name is Rosalie Beck. I was a professor at Baylor University for 35 years and I joined the faculty in 1984.

[Savannah Locke]

Rosalie went to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary to get her Master of Divinity at the height of the conservative resurgence. We asked her what her experience was like as a young seminarian at Southwestern.

[Rosalie Beck]

There were about 2100 in School of Theology. There were 50 women. There were very few who were interested in making something like a conversation or discussion group. We were very isolated. I knew the women that I knew in the dorm because I stayed in the women's dorm, were almost all education, religious education people. And they had the intention of being church workers. But they also, from the faculty, got a lot of support. I mean, I never had a faculty member re me out except once. And he didn't re me out. He tried to be smart and I took care of that. It was Dr. Cal Guy in a missions course. He was. He was old then, so I don't know when he met the Lord, but he was talking about a missiology principle that you make do with what you have. You may want the best with all the bells and whistles, but you put together what will work in the circumstances. And he used as an example a grass cutting implement that he could put on his tractor. He lived on a farm outside of Fort Worth, and he used words like couplings and universal joints. And of course, I didn't have a clue what he was talking about. And he stopped. Now, this is a missionary prep class and it was required for all the theology students. And he said, now you women. And over half the members of the class were women. You women won't be able to understand this blush, your pointy little heads. And I couldn't believe that he said that. I had never heard anything like that from a professor. And I sat right in the front and he turned after he said that and looked at me and said, isn't that right, Ms. Beck? And it was a moment of God's grace because I looked at him and said, Dr. Guy, you have every right to be completely wrong. Of course, I had the highest grade in the class.

[Beth Allison Barr]

Rosalie graduated from Southwestern with her M. Div. And to no one's surprise, received the first ever Robert A. Baker Church History Award celebrating her as an outstanding student in her field. As you can tell, Rosalee is brilliant and a bit of a rebel, which allowed her to blaze her own trail forward in academia. Knowing she wanted to be a professor, she set her eyes on Baylor for her PhD. Rosalie's experience as a PhD student at Baylor was good. She had support from her family, peers and professors. Well, most professors there were one or.

[Rosalie Beck]

Two that were kind of wiggly to start with, but they straightened out. John Davidson, for example, was the professor of psychology, of religion, and a really very good teacher, Very good teacher. And he taught the research seminar for the PhD students in religion. And he told the same story every semester about the same time. I was one of 12 in the seminar and the only woman. In fact, I was the first woman who, I think who actually finished the PhD program. But one of my friends had done a master's degree and she had taken the research seminar. And she said, now, at some point this semester, he's going to tell you this story. And it's all about trying to think outside the box. And the story is you're in a room with a group of people, and it's a concrete room. There's a locked metal door, and to get out of the room, you have to think outside the box. In the middle of the room, in the floor, is a tube and a watertight tube, and there's a ping pong ball in it. And on the ping pong ball is the key. How do you get out? And it's really a good thought game. But Katie, I said, I can't, I don't know, because I'm not good at thought games. And Katie said, okay, what you do is you all urinate into the hole and it'll float the ball up and you take the key and you unlock the door. The day comes where he's telling this story and he had this habit of pushing his fingers up under his glasses, so they were on top of his head by the time he finished. And he did that. And he says, now, I usually tell give you a thought game at this point, but we have a lady in the class and there are parts of this thought game that are not quite up to snuff when a lady's present. And I haven't decided really whether I'm going to tell the story or not. And he decides to tell the story. Of course he did. And so he told it. And all the guys are looking at each other and they're looking at me and I go, well, it's really quite simple, Dr. Davidson. Everybody urinates in the hole. That floats the ball up and get the key. And he blushed. But after I'd been on faculty a few years, he was walking out with a former student to the parking lot, and I came along, and he stopped me, put his arm around me, and he said to this student, I want you to meet this. This young woman. I have supported women in ministry my whole career, and she's an example of that. And I looked at him and said, you liar. Do you remember how you treated me? And the research seminar? And he blushed again, but he came out okay.

[Savannah Locke]

Rosalie, like many other women we've interviewed from this era in the SBC's history, embodies both a fiery spirit and a hilarious wit. This combination, alongside her intelligence, opened up doors for her to do what she was made for, teaching women and men, religion, theology, and history. After getting her PhD, she applied to be a professor of religion at Baylor. The board of trustees, whose president was Milton Cunningham at the time, were open to the idea as long as Rosalie could properly answer these two questions.

[Rosalie Beck]

When I was hired, Jack Flanders was the chair, and he was in conversation with Dr. Reynolds, who was the president at that time. And Reynolds was incredibly supportive of women as much as he could be of women in religion. So Jack talked with Reynolds. Reynolds went through all the rules about hiring, because this. This was way back when. It was really just an interview, and that was it, not the. Not the circus that it is now. And Dr. Reynolds decided that he could hire me as a lecturer without going to the Board of trustees. And he did call Milton Cunningham, who was the president of the Board of trustees at that time and was pastor of a big church in Houston. Cunningham asked him two questions when he said, I want to hire a woman to teach in religion. Is she ordained? Does she want to be? And if the answer was yes to either of those, my hiring would have been blocked by the chair of the Board of trustees.

[Beth Allison Barr]

Isn't this interesting? Rosalie could get hired as a professor as long as she was not and did not want to be ordained in the sbc. Ordination became a scarlet letter for women. And to be clear, getting ordained is not a magical process. Churches don't have to let you preach if you are ordained. People are not forced to listen to you if you are ordained. There's not even an established process in the SBC for ordination right now. On the SBC's website, they say this about the SBC is not a church as such. It neither ordains nor recognizes ordination. Both initial ordination and recognition of previous ordination are addressed strictly on a local church level. When a church senses that God has led a person into pastoral ministry. It is a common practice to have a council, usually of pastors, review his testimony of salvation, his pastoral calling from the Lord, and his qualifications for pastoral ministry. Based upon that interview, the church typically decides whether or not ordination would be appropriate.

[Savannah Locke]

If you took this at face value, it wouldn't seem like the SBC was too obsessed with ordination, right? They go out of their way to say the SBC is not a church and cannot ordain or recognize ordination. But in reality, as we know, ordination served as a litmus test. If Rosalie Beck said she wanted to be ordained, it would have sounded off the alarms for the Board of trustees. Not because there is something magical about ordination. It's not like God suddenly overtakes someone's body when a group of SBC pastors recognize their call to ministry. But because being ordained as a woman shattered the crystallized expectations of what it meant to be a submissive, godly woman. It also put women in a position to compete with men for jobs.

[Beth Allison Barr]

Because Rosalie didn't want to be ordained, she was allowed to functionally do the very thing the SBC said she couldn't teach women and men the Bible. Her loophole existed because of language and setting. She didn't want the title of ordination and she would teach men in classrooms, not churches. Therefore she was acceptable.

[Rosalie Beck]

It's all about the title. I don't know how many women ministers I have met who were missionaries and they were pastoring churches. They just didn't talk about it when they came back home. And they never preached at home, they just gave devotionals.

[Savannah Locke]

Rosalie Beck taught her first class as a religion professor at Baylor in 1984. As previously mentioned, she was the first full time woman hired to teach in the religion department at Baylor. And as she remembers, there was concern that her gender might deter male students from signing up for her courses. Undeterred, Rosalie taught for the next 35 years, from the genesis of the conservative resurgence until her retirement in 2019. Thousands of students came through her doors and learned about religion, theology, the Bible and history. She directly impacted people like Pamela Durso, the historian we interviewed about Addie Davis in episode one, Meredith Stone, the director of Baptist Women and Ministry, who we also interviewed in episode one, and Beth Allison Barr, who taught alongside Rosalia Baylor. She was able to have a decades long impact on Baptist women and men because of a loophole in the SBC system which accepted women as professors of religion. But we have two more loopholes to discuss, starting with a missionary named Bertha Smith and One SBC pastor's surprising discovery that she, a woman, had preached at his church 40 years ago.

[Steve Besner]

Our church has, has elders. And so we said, let's, let's commission a study and decide what we need to, to do what. What our goal was was to, to say we want to draw very bright lines. So that way no woman in the congregation is ever fearful of exercising her gift because she knows exactly what our congregation believes regarding the role of women within the church. So we did. Multi year process.

[Beth Allison Barr]

This is Steve Besner, pastor of Houston Northwest Church and author of the book your Jesus is too American. He's describing a study that elders at his SBC church commissioned to determine their stance on women in ministry.

[Steve Besner]

In that process, I was asking about the concept of women preaching. Would that be allowed in our church? And one of the, the men who was part of this study said, I don't know that we've ever had a woman preach. But then one of the men who's at the time was serving as an elder and has been a member of the church, you know, basically as long as the church has been existent, said, no, no, no, that's, that's not true. We actually have had women who have preached in our congregation. I mean, this was news to me. I had not heard this, so I said, really? Okay, so who, who are these women? And he said, well, there's a woman by the name of Bertha Smith who I know preached on more than one occasion at Houston Northwest. Now, I had never heard the name Bertha Smith. And so that sent me down, you know, kind of an Internet rabbit hole, trying to find out who Bertha Smith was. And then I found out that there was this woman named Bertha Smith who had not only preached at Houston Northwest, the church that I currently pastor, but then churches not just all over Texas, but churches all over the nation. And that was how she came to be known to me.

[Beth Allison Barr]

Olive Bertha Smith, affectionately known as Miss Bertha, was born in South Carolina in 1888. She went to school to become a teacher, but sensed God calling her to become a missionary. She enrolled in the Women's Missionary Union Training School in Kentucky, and with time, it became more clear that she was meant to be a missionary in China. Appointed by the Southern Baptist Foreign mission board in 1917, she sailed to China at the age of 29 and didn't move back to the US until she was 70. During that time, she worked in China, was held in a Japanese internment camp for six months, and became the SBC's first missionary to Taiwan.

[Savannah Locke]

I spent hours going through Bertha's documents in the SBC's archives, including letters to and from her sister, private journal entries from her time in China, and invitations from pastors asking Bertha to come preach at their churches. I mean, share at their churches. If you search Bertha's name right now, you can find dozens of audio recordings of her sermons, mainly from the 70s and 80s, where she shared teachings from the Bible in front of entire congregations, men and women alike. If we took one of those recordings and made a transcript of her exact words and gave it to a regular churchgoer and asked them, what is this? They would say, it's a sermon, of course, but you can listen for yourself. Here is a clip of Bertha at an SBC church in Texas in the late 70s.

[Bertha Smith]

He destroyed the Lord's type. The Lord told Moses the first time when there was no water to go strike the rock. And Moses went with that shepherd's rod, acknowledging before God always, I'm nothing but a shepherd, but God's everything. And because he obeyed God and he struck that rock with that shepherd's rod, the water poured out. And then later on, when they were wandering around in the wilderness again, they had no water. And the Lord told Moses to go speak to the rock. Go speak to it. Why could he not strike it again? That rock represented our Lord Jesus Christ. The New Testament tells us that Jesus was that rock that was struck and he couldn't be crucified but once. And after he was crucified, we only speak to him.

[Beth Allison Barr]

Bertha spoke for 56 minutes, often reading from her giant Bible that sat on the pulpit. She did an altar call of sorts at the end, then prayed for the hearts of everyone in the room to be moved towards God. What would you call that? Sounds a lot like preaching to us. And did you catch that amen in the background? The one said by a man that shows there weren't just children or women in the room. Bertha Smith taught men in Southern Baptist churches. If you look at the ways she is described by the SBC's website or literature, you would absolutely see her celebrated, just not as a teacher or pastor, but as a missionary. That's because being a missionary is a loophole for Southern Baptist women to do a lot of things pastors do, just in different countries or with a different title. Or in Ms. Bertha's case, it gave her the leeway to do pastory things in Southern Baptist churches. And that sermon of hers was not a rare occasion.

[Savannah Locke]

In the archives, we found several letters from SBC pastors in America, either asking Ms. Bertha to come share at their church or thanking her for her ministry. One letter written by a pastor in 1984 thanked her for speaking to their youth group. He said, Ms. Bertha, I thank the Lord for your clear biblical teaching concerning the cross and our sins. I am maintaining an up to date sin list and am experiencing victory in the spirit controlled life. Your zeal for Christ has motivated me to yield myself totally into our gracious Father's hands. This pastor seemed extremely comfortable celebrating Bertha's sermon and its impact on him personally, not just on the students. Why was this okay? Was it okay for Bertha to preach in the presence of this pastor and for her sermon to teach him because her intended audience was youth? What is the loophole that allowed for Bertha to teach a man?

[Beth Allison Barr]

In another letter, a pastor asked Bertha to come lead a prayer event at their church like she had done at many others. Another one celebrated Bertha for her retreats. Another asked that she would organize a prayer band. One letter from a Baptist pastor in Taiwan said, I heard that you are very busy for preaching and writing. May our Lord bless your. Invitations and messages. Bertha was being invited to share or pray or have a retreat with SBC churches all across the country. But functionally she was preaching and teaching. There are dozens of audio recordings from Bertha's messages at these churches and all of them are sermons. That's why when Steve Besner's church commissioned a study on women in ministry, an elder said, a woman has preached here before. He was right. Ms. Bertha graced the pulpit of Houston Northwest Church in the early 1980s. As it turns out, Steve saw her preach when he was just a little boy.

[Steve Besner]

So our church was started in 1973 and at the time, you know, where our church sits was of more of a rural church kind of on the outskirts of Houston. Now we're definitely in the middle of the city. But so in, in, in the 80s, it was beginning that transition from rural to becoming more of a suburban urban congregation. But the, the church has always had a really big heart for missions. And so it was very common for the church to bring in mission speakers. And so as a result, they would, would bring in folks who would serve with at the time what was referred to as the Foreign Mission Board, now the International Mission Board, and they would bring people in to speak well. So as you are already aware, Ms. Bertha had been serving as a missionary for many years. And from what I gather, she was sort of seen as the modern day version of Lottie Moon and was sort of viewed with that sort of reverence and was treated as such. And so she was allowed to come into. To speak on a. On a Sunday morning from the pulpit and to, you know, to bring the word to the congregation. And apparently this was happening in churches for sure, all over Texas. And I'm not sure about what her ministry was beyond there. I can also tell you. So once, once this particular elder mentioned this to me, I suddenly had a memory stirred from my childhood. And I think. I thought. I think that Ms. Bertha preached at my home church, which would have been First Baptist Church of Gainesville, Texas. And so I went back and I asked my parents, I said, do you remember a woman by the name of Ms. Bertha or Bertha Smith coming to speak at our church? And my mom said, absolutely, I remember her coming to speak at our church. Now, I've not been able to dig up any documentation on that, but I asked, I said, so is that a Sunday morning, a Sunday night? And my mom, she said she couldn't totally remember, but her memory was. It was a Sunday night when we were doing a missions emphasis, kind of a missions dinner type thing at the congregational level. And Ms. Bertha came and spoke that Sunday night. And then we. We gathered together to kind of have a dinner to hear more about. About missions.

[Savannah Locke]

Ms. Bertha became an extremely influential woman in the SBC, connected to top figures in the convention like Charles Stanley, Andy Stanley's father, and Adrian Rogers. In fact, Adrian Rogers partly credited her with his desire to run for president of the SBC. In 1979, she told Rogers that she felt God wanted him to be nominated. Isn't it interesting that Rogers, profoundly influenced by a preaching missionary woman in the sbc, would go on to play a key role in a resurgence that limited women in their denomination. In some ways, Bertha Smith is not a buried woman. We found hundreds of documents in the archives about her. There is a library in Georgia named after her, and she is mentioned many times in Southern Baptist literature. In other ways, the fullness of her life and ministry is sanitized to align with current SBC stances on women in ministry. In title, Bertha was a missionary in practice. Bertha was a missionary teacher, preacher, and leader of women and men across the globe.

[Beth Allison Barr]

Her story highlights the contradictions within the SBC's treatment of women in ministry. You can teach as long as you call it sharing. You can preach as long as it's at mission nights or prayer events. Bertha's life reveals the power of loopholes, which allowed women to follow their callings by sidestepping the formal titles that would have barred them from ministry.

[Savannah Locke]

But there is one loophole we have yet to discuss, and this one means a lot to us because, well, it's the subject and title of Beth's new book, Becoming the Pastor's How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry. Here's a quick advertisement from our sponsor, Brazos Press.

[Beth Allison Barr]

How did the role of the Pastor's wife come to be in Becoming the Pastor's How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry? Beth Allison Barr takes you on a journey, revealing little known stories of women throughout church history. Drawing from her 25 years of personal experience as a pastor's wife and her expertise as a historian, Barr explores how the role of the pastor's wife has evolved and grown over time. She uncovers the surprising history of women's ordination and how its decline intersects with the rise of the pastor's wife. Through personal anecdotes and historical analysis, Barr helps the church understand the origins and implications of this unique role. Pete Ends, host of the Bible for Normal People, endorsed the book, calling it an amazing book that exposes the grays disenfranchisement of women to the gospel ministry and sets the record straight for all to see.

[Savannah Locke]

Published by Brazos Press. You can order Becoming the Pastor's Wife now wherever books, ebooks or audiobooks are sold. As a thanks for listening to the podcast, we've got a promo code for you. Use the code PODCAST40 to get 40% off of becoming the Pastor's Wife. This is valid once the book releases until April 30th. You can check out our show notes for more information.

[Beth Allison Barr]

Nine years after the start of the conservative resurgence, an SBC ordained pastor named Jan Aldrich Clanton delivered a paper in support of women's ordination at the 1988 Southern Baptist Historical Society meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. Her debate partner, who spoke against women's ordination, was a pastor's wife. Let that sink in for a minute. The significance of a pastor's wife leading the charge in the SBC against women's ordination. And it wasn't just a pastor's wife either. It was Dorothy K. Patterson, the wife of Paige Patterson, who was, as you now know, a pastor and architect of the conservative resurgence. She isn't an invisible woman, but her story is important for understanding the potential power and very real limitations of the pastor's wife role. Oh, and guess who attended this debate? Rosalie Beck. Let's listen to her describe her experience of the event.

[Rosalie Beck]

Okay. I was a new faculty member and the Department of Religion has been absolutely wonderful about providing travel funds and Support for conferences. And I think there were like eight of us that went to the Baptist History and Heritage Society meeting, it was in Nashville. And Jane Clanton, who was an ordained minister, she died a couple of weeks ago of cancer, presented the pro women minister's position and Dorothy Patterson presented the anti women minister's position. And it was ridiculous. It was the most. Now, Dorothy Patterson is a heck of a lot smarter than her husband Paige Patterson is. But anyway, but she's super. And you ask anybody who knew them at New Orleans Seminary and they'll tell you that she danced circles around her husband academically, but she realized her real power lay behind him and she chose the role that she played very, very seriously. Each of the debaters had prepared a document and because it would be published, there were very specific limits to size and topic and all that sort of stu. And I think it was like a 10 page document. Well, she had a 28 page document and she wasn't going to cut it down. She ended up cutting it down. But she had her hat on, which was a symbol of her subservience to the male's presence. She always wore a hat when she was in a group, unless it was all women. And she didn't wear a hat that was to show her subservience. And it was, it was funny. I mean, I was just a newbie at the whole gender thing, at trying to look at the biblical record and the biblical story of women, but I just thought was the most ludicrous thing I'd ever seen. Now she's smart and she's a good debater. I would probably enjoy just having a conversation with her about tons of different kinds of things. But I don't know how a really bright woman could take the positions that she did because they were, for one thing was bad interpretation of scripture, bad sociology, bad physiology. And she would say things like, now this is a group of 300 mostly men in suits who are professors, preachers who have an interest in history. Some of the leaders from the Sunday School board were there. There were a lot of different SPC agencies in Nashville and a lot of them came to the meeting and she pretended to be the subservient woman. And she was anything but subservient because she was calling the men down and telling them they were wrong and all that when they asked questions. And at one point there was a guy from. It was the church in Memphis that was disfellowshipped and they had been kicked out of the Shelby, I think is the name of the Association. And he at the Q and A time, he said, you're standing in front of a crowd of 300 scholars and pastors and executives, the vast majority of whom are men. I didn't think women were supposed to teach men. And she said, well, I'm sharing, I'm not teaching, I'm sharing. And he looked at her and he kind of went, well, I'm a man and I'm a pastor and I consider myself taught. You didn't share, you talked.

[Savannah Locke]

Isn't it interesting how Dorothy Patterson postured herself as submissive to male leadership, fighting against female ordination even as she publicly exercised authority over a room full of around 300 mostly male pastors and professors? Did you hear how she relabeled herself, how she was sharing, not teaching? Dorothy Patterson drew authority from her role as pastor's wife. Sharing the authority of her husband. He could and did give her permission to speak when she spoke, including during her debate with Jan Aldridge Clanton. She wore a hat as a symbol of her submission to Paige. This allowed for her to publicly teach and lead rooms full of men while maintaining the facade of male authority.

[Beth Allison Barr]

In my new book, Becoming the Pastor's Wife, I tell the history of what happened to women's ordination in the context of the rise of the pastor's wife role. I also tell how pastors wives perceived their own authority. I examined 150 Books written by and for women married to ministers, including one written by Dorothy Patterson herself. You know what I found? I found that even in churches who do not ordain women, women married to ordained men could serve and be celebrated as leaders, teachers, preachers, as long as they recognize the authority of their husbands. As I wrote at the end of my seventh chapter, the pastor's wife was literally defined by her relationship to and dependence on a man. Just as Dorothy Patterson's trademark hats covered her hair, serving as an outward symbol of submission to male authority, the model of the pastor's wife covered the absence of female pastors, serving as a visible symbol that women could still be active and visible in ministry, even in churches that wouldn't ordain them.

[Savannah Locke]

The pastor's wife role, like that of missionary and professor, has played an important role throughout Baptist history. Pastors wives like Willie Dawson preached internationally, helped lead the Women's Missionary Union, and was even nominated to be vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention itself. Weptonoma Carter taught seminary, preached a popular weekly radio show, and led alongside her pastor husband. Ruth Bobo served in her church and won the respect of her congregation. So much so they nominated her for the SBC annual Pastor's wife Award in 1959.

[Beth Allison Barr]

Yet the loophole of the pastor's wife, regardless of how much authority and influence women wield through it, can never be more than a mediated role. Dorothy Patterson's trademark hats are a perfect symbol for what the pastor's wife role has become. In white evangelical traditions like the sbc, women can lead as long as they stay within the boundaries set by men. Becoming a pastor's wife, while it can be a loophole, is always defined by her dependent relationship to her husband's job.

[Savannah Locke]

We have a sticky note with a few goals written down for this podcast. One of them is to complicate the history of the SBC by using the SBC's own archives. When it comes to women's ordination or women in leadership, many Southern Baptist leaders try to claim implicitly or explicitly, that this is simply the way it's always been. Like women have never been allowed to get ordained before, or women have never preached in SBC churches, or women have never taught Southern Baptist men the Bible. They act like to deviate from this stance, which limits women in ministry, would be to deviate from orthodox Christianity. But the SBC's own history shows this isn't true. Southern Baptist women have been leading preaching, teaching, and getting ordained, finding ways to live out their callings with or without support. What stands out in each of these stories is the ingenuity, resilience, and faith of women who refused to be silenced. They worked within the cracks and loopholes of a rigid system, crafting spaces where their voices could be heard and their gifts could flourish, whether in a classroom, on the mission field, or through the role of a pastor's wife. But these loopholes also highlight the contradictions and inequities of the Southern Baptist Convention. They expose how deeply language, titles, and settings have been weaponized to maintain control while still benefiting from the labor of women. As much as these loopholes allowed women to lead and serve, they also reinforced the barriers the SBC placed in their way. When we told Pamela Durso, who we interviewed in episode one about Addie Davis, about our work on loopholes, she was quick to add in a fourth one.

[Pamela Durso]

So if, if I'm going to be honest about loopholes, the other loopholes for Southern Baptist women is they left and became Methodist and Presbyterian and disciples in ucc. I went, I took students once to when I was teaching at Campbell Divinity School. We did a denominationalism class and I took them to various churches in the Raleigh Durham area And when we got to the Methodist church, the pastor was going to tell us about being Methodist and what that meant. And he stood up and he looked at me and he said, thank you for sending us all your women. And I said, well, you're welcome. Because so many Southern Baptist women left and I think they're that. I see that in, in my own world. I now affiliate with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, and I am, I'll be 63 on Saturday. There aren't women my age. There's a whole generation missing from CBF because they became, they moved to other denominations and found a place they could serve. And I think that's, to me, we lost the best and brightest of our women because they were not allowed to use their gift and be fully authentically themselves.

[Beth Allison Barr]

We are so grateful that Pamela brought this up because it rings true. For many women, leaving the SBC was the only viable path forward. Their loophole wasn't a workaround. It was an exit door, an escape from a denomination that restricted their roles and into ones that fully embraced their callings and and leadership. These women are not buried in the SBC's archives because they could never be planted there in the first place. While this miniseries is focused on women inside the sbc, we also want to honor the many women who left and continue to leave in order to find spaces that openly recognize their leadership talents and gifts. In the next episode, we'll turn our focus to a deeply troubling issue, the Southern Baptist Convention's sexual abuse problem. In it, we speak with one incredible woman who has spent decades fighting for justice, working tirelessly to bring survivors voices to the forefront and hold the church accountable.

[Savannah Locke]

But I'm bearing wounds from the Church of Celebrity. All the Buried Women is hosted and written by Beth Allison Barr and Savannah Locke. It was edited by Savannah Locke and the music was done by Todd Locke. The song you hear in the intro and outro is called Jaded by, you guessed it, Savannah Locke. And for more detailed credits, be sure to check out the show notes. We're so thankful to everyone who worked behind the scenes to make this possible. We reached out to the sbc, Paige Patterson, Darrell Gilliard, Tommy Gilmore, and the Council for National Policy for comment and did not hear.