Religion professor pushes back on SBC ruling

Furman University’s Helen Lee Turner, a professor of religion who was ordained in a Southern Baptist congregation in 1975, writes an opinion piece in The Post and Courier about the role of women in the Southern Baptist Convention and its congregations. She pushes back on a recent move by the SBC to further restrict women in ministry, disallowing them from serving as a pastor of any kind.

This latest ruling by the SBC amends the very constitution of the organization, unlike earlier nonbinding resolutions seeking to effect the same. Turner notes that while many might find it surprising that women have a history of being ordained in the SBC, she reminds readers as many as 250 were ordained before a previous ordination-restricting, nonbinding resolution was handed down by the SBC 1984. She was one of the 250.

Instead of allowing “rhetoric to bury their memory” of Baptist history, Turner urges readers to focus on what ordination is about. “Baptist ordination is less about rules … than about discernment,” she writes. “Is this person called to the ministry?

“Sometimes persuasive voices lead us to forget who we are. Perhaps it is time for our people to look again at their history and at least for a moment stop listening to those who hold the power in the Southern Baptist Convention. Doing so might allow us to recover the Baptist wisdom that in the past influenced not only our mission efforts but also national statements on religious liberty,” she adds.

Helen Lee Turner is the Reuben B. Pitts Professor of Religion at Furman University. She remains a Baptist but is no longer a member of a Southern Baptist Convention church.