A Secret of the SBC Success in Banning Women as Preachers and Pastors

On the eve of succeeding in their quest to end women preaching and pastoring, let me tell you they couldn't have done it without getting the most influential women in the SBC on their side........

From my research trip last week inside the SBC headquarters in Nashville.

*this post blends some abridged & summarized text (in block posts) from Becoming the Pastor’s Wife with new material to help you better understand why SBC pastors’ wives were so critical to the success of the SBC’s quest to institute a male-only clergy.

*Trigger alert: I include a letter written to Dorothy Patterson that may be triggering for women who have lived in controlling relationships.

*also, for those following my feminism series, you will want to read this.

*also, too, can we stop sidelining women as less important in history than men?

I want to talk with you about a ministry job in the evangelical world that is critical to the functioning of how we have structured our churches yet is mostly sidelined by not only our churches but how we tell the history of our churches. It is a job that is everywhere, most of our churches have it, but it is without a clear description of what the work entails except for these constants: it has long, unpredictable hours; the workload vacillates from feeding large groups of people to updating the church website to subbing for teachers in nursery through adult Sunday school to being a chaperone on a youth camping trip; the job does not have a salary, much less a benefits package; and somewhere, at some time, the person in this position will be asked to play the piano.

It is a job that, for lack of a better word, is weird.

It does not require formal training, although it is possible to take classes in which students are taught how to climb in and out of cars modestly, how to brew a “good cup of tea,” and the oh-so-important skill of packing your husband’s suitcase. The job openly practices gender discrimination. The job is not based on leadership skills, ecclesiastical office,or spiritual gifting. It is generated by and dependent on a human relationship, marriage, and it is a job that does not take personal calling or preference into account. As one active practioner state, “if your husband is called, you are called, whether you want to be or not.”

The job, of course, is the subject of my most recent book, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry. For those of you who don’t know, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife connects the dots between the decline of female ordination and the rise of the role of pastor’s wife, tracing its patterns in the larger history of western Christian women’s leadership --(ancient, medieval, Reformation, and modern).

Becoming the Pastor’s Wife thus continues the work of the Making of Biblical Womanhood, albeit in a different and more targeted way—showing how reshaping the pastor’s wife role aided the meteoric rise of complementarian theology.

For the next few minutes, I am inviting you to reconsider what you think you know about the pastor’s wife, including her often overlooked significance in the course of evangelical history.

Let’s start with the Southern Baptist Convention. Now, for those tired of the SBC --and believe you me I am with you on that -- let me just impress you with their significance. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest protestant denomination in North America. It peaked at over 16 million members in 2007, it still comprises the largest percentage of US evangelical churches, which in turn form the largest percentage of Protestant churches in the US.

The SBC, whether it wants to or not, epitomizes evangelical culture. “The major players in Southern Baptist conservative life more frequently overlapped with those of the religious right, and disproportionate numbers in the religious right were also from the South,” writes historian Elizabeth Flowers. “To fully understand American evangelicalism in the postwar period . . . it is essential to cast our gaze on Southern Baptists.” In the same way, to fully understand the pastor’s wife role within American evangelicalism, we must “cast our gaze” on the conservative white culture of the SBC.

So let’s look.

In June 1965, the tenth annual Conference of Ministers Wives, an auxiliary to the Southern Baptist Pastor’s Conference, met at Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. The theme of the conference was, “The Minister’s Wife…Best of all Possible Lives?”. At the bottom of the program was two lines from the 1879 Norwegian play, “A Doll House” written by Henrik Ibsen. The first line was spoken by Helmer, a male character who reminds his wife, Nora, that “Before all else you are a wife and mother.” Nora responds: “That I no longer believe. I believe that before all else, I am a human being, just as much as you are—or at least I should try to become one.” Shocking nineteenth-century audiences, Nora ends up leaving what was probably seen as a perfect family life but to her had become empty and meaningless. As one summary of the play states, “the young wife and mother, Nora, initiates a ‘door slam heard around the world’ that still echoes today.”

I just want to pause here for a minute and let this sink in for you.

In 1965, a meeting of Southern Baptist pastors’ wives held their annual conference on a theme questioning the quality of life for pastors’ wives. The quote they included in the printed program was a quote from a play critiquing contemporary ideals of womanhood that did not allow individuality nor choice for married women and focusing on gender inequity and the importance of women not just being “dolls” in a patriarch’s home.

If this isn’t surprising enough, the SBC conference that quoted Nora from A Doll House also hosted a debate among the pastors’ wives over the theme—is being a pastor’s wife the best possible life. “It was a very clever program,” wrote one of the attendees. “Would you believe that the debate was won by the negative?”

Now, before you get too distracted by the fact that pastors’ wives voted against recommending their lives as pastors’ wives, let me tell you one more important piece of evidence—which is why that quote from A Doll House was included on the program. The women at the 1965 event seem to have been influenced by what has become known as second wave feminism—especially by the now famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, written by the National Organization for Women founder Betty Friedan. A tribute article in the Smithsonian summarizes the legacy of this book, “a landmark bestseller, translated into at least a dozen languages with more than three million copies sold in the author’s lifetime, rebukes the pervasive post-World War II belief that stipulated women would find the greatest fulfillment in the routine of domestic life, performing chores and taking care of children.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/powerful-complicated-legacy-betty-friedans-feminine-mystique-180976931/

In the third chapter of The Feminine Mystique, Friedan quotes Nora’s line from A Doll House that appeared on the 1965 Southern Baptist pastor’s wife program. Friedan also explains that the play had been televised in 1960, which is why so many women—including herself—were familiar with it.

So let’s sum up what we have heard.

In 1965, Southern Baptist pastors’ wives recognized gender inequity, encouraged women to see their identity as more than a wife and mom, and concluded that being a pastor’s wife was “not the best of all possible lives.” They had misgivings about their role; they questioned if it was a calling; and they had concerns about inequalities in their homes and places of work. They were not just familiar with feminist writings like Betty Friedan and Henrik Ibsen, they resonated with them, too.

Can you imagine?

Are you rethinking your image of the pastor’s wife yet?

Let me give you another example.
This one is from the 1930s, a time that technically falls between the first and second waves of feminism. There isn’t a pastors’ wives conference yet; that doesn’t get started for another couple of decades. But pastors’ wives in the Southern Baptist Convention still make their presence known in the regular program, especially through their work with the WMU—the Women’s Missionary Union.

Take for example Mrs. J.M. Dawson—she was the wife of one of the most prominent Texas pastors (JM Dawson who served for 40 years I think as pastor of FBC Waco). She also achieved her own prominence within the SBC, including receiving a nomination to be the Vice President of the entire convention. She also helped deliver a fascinating address to the convention in 1933 on behalf of the WMU. I am particularly fond of Mrs. J.M. Dawson, better known as Willie Dawson, as she is the namesake of the residence hall on Baylor campus that I lived in as a faculty-in-residence for 6 years.

The WMU address begins by reminding everyone who is present about the prominent role women played as leaders in the Bible and early Baptist world. Following in the footsteps of these women, it states, “the women of the Southern Baptist Convention have rapidly passed from the archaic “Ladies’ Aid Society” to creative missionary endeavor. They are no longer satisfied to sell candy, make ice cream, bake turkeys, and collect flopped hats, run-down shoes and worn-out clothes for rummage sales. Their souls have been penetrated more deeply with genuine Christian religion and they have been moved with nobler impulses.”

Let me just remind you, here, that these are the words of Southern Baptist women in the 1930s. They are frustrated with domestic expectations, especially regarding their work in the church, and want to do “nobler” things.

The address continues, reminding the convention of how women have financially carried the cooperative program by providing almost half of its entire budget.

Southern Baptist women in the 1930s expressed that they were tired of being relegated to issues of food and clothing; their place was in the trenches of evangelism alongside the men; and they demanded that the convention recognize the significance of their contributions.

Are you seeing the pastors’ wife differently yet?

If you aren’t, let me tell you about one more pastor’s wife.

Her name is Minette Drumwright. She was in attendance at the 1965 meeting and later became a recipient of the SBC ministers’ wife of the year award. In 1977, she wrote a curriculum for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Seminary Extension course titled, “Women in the Church: College-Level Curriculum Series.” In it, Drumwright –a Southern Baptist pastor’s wife -- made an argument for women’s ordination. As she explained in the introduction,. “I do not recall ever having been taught the concept, but somehow I grew up with the idea that women were on a lesser level than men. Somehow, women had a secondary status and role—men’s time was more valuable than women’s; men’s judgement was sounder than women’s; women’s primary task in life was to please men; women should take all the responsibility for keeping ‘things’ smooth, and accept the blame when they went wrong.” She writes that a study of scripture and history helped her to realize that women’s subjugation was a consequence of sin and that God’s dream for humanity had always been “unity and partnership between men and women as they accomplished God’s purposes together.”

Can you imagine?

Can you imagine how different the evangelical world might be if Drumwright’s vision for SBC women had been realized?

Can you imagine if the conviction of pastors’ wives in 1965 that women should be regarded as human first and that their role wasn’t the highest calling for women, had prevailed?

Can you imagine if pastors’ wives had continued to fight for female pastors instead of turning against them?

But that isn’t the history we know.

The pastors’ wives I just told you about, whose stories are easily accessible within Southern Baptist archives, represent a history that much of the evangelical church no longer remembers.

Historically speaking, the role of pastor’s wife was born in the Reformation era, but it isn’t until the second half of the twentieth century that it became elevated as the highest calling for evangelical women, waxing in importance as more independently authoritative roles for women waned.

I think it is no accident that the same moment the evangelical world began pushing against women pastor’s was the same moment it began reshaping the pastor’s wife role and elevating it as the primary ministry calling for women.

The SBC provides a clear example of this fortuitous timing.

When the 1970s saw an explosion in the number of denominations supporting women’s ordination, leading to more women attending seminaries and becoming ordained, the Southern Baptists initially expanded opportunities for women too, ordaining Addie Davis in 1964 (the first SBC woman ordained into ministry) and witnessing an increase in women studying theology at the SBC’s six seminaries. Remarking on this trend, Baptist historian H. Leon McBeth wrote in 1977, “One may no longer assume that women seminarians are preparing for the traditionally ‘feminine’ church jobs. Many of them are preparing and planning to be ministers; some are frankly aiming at the pastorate.”

By 1984, twenty years after the ordination of Davis, the number of ordained women in the SBC had increased to around 200—a “twenty- fold increase in less than a decade,” which placed the SBC “on the same trajectory as the mainline, liberal denominations.”

It is at this exact moment that the SBC did an about face and began taking steps to actively prohibit women’s ordination.

On July 13, 1984, at the national convention in Kansas City, the SBC passed a resolution that asked “local Baptist churches to cease ordaining women ministers since ‘the Bible excludes women from pastoral leadership because the man was first in creation and the woman was first in the Edenic fall.’”

It was also at this exact moment that literature and curriculum geared toward controlling and elevating the pastors’ wife role began to proliferate.

Take for example Betty J. Coble—a well- known SBC pastor’s wife and educator. She published a book titled The Private Life of the Minister’s Wife with an SBC press in 1981. Listen to what she wrote: “In marriage the man is assigned leadership. The husband’s God- given assignment is to make the final decision, which becomes the marriage decision.”Submission, which she described as a “followship role” is God’s assignment for wives, including the minister’s wife.

Her book was a harbinger; a clear example of how the pastor’s wife role began to be strategically used to combat women’s leadership.

Let me show you what happened.

Becoming the Pastor’s Wife is built on evidence from 150 pastors’ wife books. Forty- three were published between 1950 and 1989. The message of these books reflects a diversity of pastors’ wives— like Willie Dawson and the women at the 1965 convention. These books urged women to resist the pastor’s wife mold (i.e.,you don’t have to play the piano if you don’t want to) and to find their own calling. Some of these earlier books made it clear that the authors weren’t against the idea of “ministers’ husbands,” but simply chose to focus on ministers’ wives, because they comprised the majority of ministry relationships. The Minister’s Mate— Two for the Price of One? explains, “We make no apology for having ministers’ wives as the primary target for this resource. This is not to say that we believe males are the only suitable ministers, and therefore females are only suited as mates to the minister. It is to say that the current reality is that the vast majority of ministerial couples in our Convention are aligned in this more traditional way.” Published in 1986, The Minister’s Mate is an SBC publication from the SBC Sunday School Board. In 1986, then, this recognition of men as potential ministry spouses indicates the SBC’s awareness, even approval, of female pastors. In short, similar themes appear within books from the 1950s to the 1980s, themes such as resisting stereotypes, finding one’s unique spiritual gifts, prioritizing family time, and raising pastors’ kids (PKs). To be sure, there are discussion about pastors’ wives as hostesses, the importance of maintaining the appearance of one’s home and body, and whether the role was a “calling.” There are also discussions about the submission of wives and the headship of husbands— but they are less frequent and less rigid. An emphasis on female submission and male headship has long been part of the pastor’s wife story, but it was a less visible, less consistent, and less critical part before the last two decades of the twentieth century.

Diane Langberg’s 1988 Counsel for Pastors’ Wives helps us see the emerging shift in pastor’s wife books. “Scripture is very clear that our first loyalty is, without question, to God himself,” she writes. “Our relationship to him and our obedience to his Word are to be above any other priority in our lives. When anyone or anything would lead us to disobey him, we must obey God and not man— even if that man is one’s husband.” Almost fifteen years later, Dorothy Kelley Patterson’s –who you might recognize—wrote her Handbook for Ministers’ Wives. In it, she modifies Langberg’s advice. Just listen:

“In matters of conscience in which you have a word from God, you will obey the Lord rather than any man; but in the inevitable choices of life, you will learn to give and take, to cooperate with each other, and ultimately to defer to your husband as the divinely appointed head of your household, for better or worse.”

Women should submit to God rather than man— unless that man happens to be their divinely appointed husband.

I have to add in here a real life example of the impact of Dorothy’s teachings. Just last May I had the opportunity to read her personal papers held at Harvard’s Schlesinger Library—which included correspondence regarding her early publications. In the 1970s, Dorothy Patterson began to formulate her theology about women’s roles in the church, including pastors’ wives. Her first book is called the sensuous woman reborn, and in it she argued that the number one requirement for godly women was submission to their husbands. A young woman who read her an advanced review copy of her book wrote her a letter. Listen to what she said:

“It was very hard for me to apply several things I learned in the book. The major thing was being in subjection to my husband in everything even when he was wrong…My husband and I had just had the biggest battle thus far in our marriage, and all I knew was that he was asking me to do something that I would have to be a hypocrite to do. After realizing my failure to submit, even when he is wrong, and correcting it with the Lord, the clouds lifted and even doing what he was asking didn’t seem so hard.”

By the early 2000s, Patterson’s teachings on this issue had become mainstream in the SBC world, enshrined in the modifications to the Baptist Faith & message in 1998.

It also became enshrined in pastors’ wife publications.

By the early 2000s, it is fair to say that books published for the evangelical pastor’s wife mostly support complementarian teachings. This finding fits with Melody Maxwell’s description of evangelical women’s ministries, which were growing rapidly in the 1980s and ’90s. “Instead of urging women to consider issues of gender equality that had previously been significant to a number of evangelicals, most women’s ministries propagated conservative views about gender.”

The pastor’s wife epitomized biblical womanhood, and by turning her into a model of biblical womanhood, her very existence helped change evangelical culture.

Beverly Hyles, wife of Jack Hyles, provides an example outside of the SBC world. She weaves male headship and female submission throughout her entire 1990 book Life as Viewed from the Goldfish Bowl. “Are you pleasing your husband?” she asks her reader. “‘Do you know what He [sic] wants? Do you periodically stop and ask him if there is something he would like to have changed or if you have become perhaps something other than he wants?’ You should know what pleases him, and you should do everything you can to do whatpleases him.” This includes, she continues, making him your “top priority,” “accepting him unconditionally,” and always being ready to “satisfy your husband’s physical needs. I mean all the time.”

While people have hotly debated female ordination, historians and lay leaders have overlooked the connection between the decline of female ordination and the attendant rise in the visibility and the increasingly submissive posture of the pastor’s wife role.

The role of pastor’s wife authorized ministry opportunities for women, sometimes opening new doors. It offered ways for women to exercise leadership. It legitimized the spiritual significance of women’s roles as wives and mothers.

But it also helped deauthorize women’s independent leadership, emphasizing that the highest calling for women was to submit to and support male leadership.

The gradual aligning of the pastor’s wife role with the conservative ideal of biblical womanhood (as happened within the Southern Baptist tradition) obscured women’s independent leadership in evangelical spaces. As one young woman said to me in 2018, “When I told my youth pastor I felt called into ministry, he said it meant I would marry a pastor.”

The old adage says that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

But if you look at the cover of Becoming the Pastor’s Wife, you will literally see my thesis. The ordination of women, including their functioning in pastoral ministry positions, is a part of Christian history stretching all the way back to the bible. But today, when I make that statement, I am often met with skepticism. Do you know why you are skeptical? Just look at my cover. The image of the pastor’s wife, as the domestic goddess who serves in the background of her husband’s ministry, stands front and center as not only what a pastor’s wife should be, but what all godly women should become.

As for the woman in ordained ministry?

She has faded into the background.

My thanks as always to Dr. Taffey Hall and the SBHLA. The minister’s wives documents can be found in: The Southern Baptist Convention Ministers’ Wives Conference Collection, AR 369, Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, Nashville, TN. The SBC programs can be found online at the SBHLA digital resources.