Categories: uncategorized
Date: 04 February 2007 08:39:08
Reading through the Baptist Times can, on the odd occassion, be an enlightening experience but at other times it can be very confuddling. The article about possible sexism I have linked to under the BT heading comes under the confuddling.
According to the BT, the northern group of Mainstream ,( which for what I can gather is a networking group for church leaders), has labelled many Baptist churches as sexist due to the denominations low percentage of female ministers and says this is "a cultural sin". They argue that "The issue had been largely ignored, because church autonomy means that ‘churches can carry on regardless and call [into ministry] who they want'."
Their evidence? Well, although the Baptist denomination has had women ministers since 1922 the percentage of ministers within the denomination who are female (slightly above 10%) is much lower than the CofE or Methodists.
My personal take on this; Mainstream have taken a very second wave feminist approach to the whole thing and so have issued this statement to be provoke debate. Within it they are raising (i) the issue of possible sexism within some Baptist churches - and how the dominance of those who happen to be male (and usually white, middle-class, and hetrosexual) is justified by scripture according to some and (ii) debate around the structure and contradictions within the Baptist denomination and the tensions that sometimes exist within a denomination made up of autonomous congregations. However, the article atleast (I couldn't find the report) ignores some of the wider issues:
1. How many females are training for the ministry within the UK Baptist colleges? Could the lack of female accredited ministers within the denomination be down to the fact that women are simply not looking to go into the ministry in our denomination and so not going into the training colleges, and so in turn are not on the lists which are being circulated to churches who are in periods of pastoral vacancy?
2. What wider roles are women taking within the denomination and para-church groups which have strong links to the denomination? Could it be that women are actually being given wider opportunities to exercise their gifts within the laity?
3. Has women in ministry been almost a political issue in other denominations and so that is why at the moment they have a greater percentage of women ministers?
4. Beyond this issue what is the denominations record on "women's issues" compared to others?
5. Would it not give a clearer idea of the attitude of churches within the denomination to see what percentage have women deacons or elders?
I think that if these questions were asked you might find that at the beginning of the twenty first century the majority of Baptist churches are "good for women" and not guilty of this "cultural sin". My main concern though is that this is the type of report which leads us down the road which in some situations leads to positive discrimation and quotas, rather than allowing for the fact women might just be able to make it on their own if they want to and are good enough. It is the sort of road which might lead one to conclude that the fact we have black, female president of the denomination this year is down to tokenism rather than the fact she is excellent and has been elected on the basis of ability.