Reflections: Baptists and women's issues in the twentieth century

Baptist History and Heritage, Summer-Fall, 2000 by Carolyn DeArmond Blevins

Breathing helium produces a higher voice. Sore throats usually make one hoarse. Laryngitis leaves a person silent much to the delight of so-called friends. Anger usually results in a loud and perhaps frighteningly powerful voice. A shaky voice may indicate fear. Voices are revealing. Voices are powerful. Controlling others' voices has been and is the goal of governments around the world. Controlling the voices of others is often the mission of the power figures in families--even denominational families.

Reflecting on Baptists and women's issues in the twentieth century, it seems to me that there was one issue that dominated woman's relationship with Baptists: who controls the voice of women? One statement sums up woman's story in twentieth century Baptist life: Baptist women, black and white, in the north and in the south, spent the century trying to get a voice in the denominations they served. Recall some of the issues Baptist women faced in the last century: Can women speak in mixed audiences? Can women vote in the nation, in the convention, in the church? Will women be elected to denominational boards? And if they are, will they be elected at the same rate as men? Can women be admitted to all educational opportunities? Will women be hired into any vocation to which they are called? Can women be ordained? Will churches call women as senior pastors? Other issues confronted women as well, but you get the picture. All of these issues center around one basic question. Do women really have a voice in Baptist life?

Various voices assist us in examining this topic and understanding the struggle. First, noiseless voices reveal the problems of having speech controlled. Second, confusing voices shed light on the complexities of the issue. Third, noisy voices demonstrate a refusal to be silenced by the powerful forces around them.

Noiseless Voices

First, the effort throughout the twentieth century to control the voices of Baptist women resulted in noiseless voices, frustrated yet powerful in some cases. Although they likely had not heard of him, many Baptists in the last century seemed to agree with the philosopher Pliny the Elder. In his book Natural History Pliny insisted that women were to be quiet and inconspicuous so that when they died no one would even know they had lived. (1) Centuries later William P. Harvey, an early twentieth century Baptist minister, asked, "What kind of woman does the Bible command?" Harvey immediately ruled out the "public speaking, woman's rights, shrieking, Amazonian, man-defying woman." (2) Harvey did not want what some called a "platform woman." Many stories bare witness to that attitude among Baptists." From the early 1900s to the late 1990s, too many Baptists preferred women with silent voices--women who would unquestionably follow the authority of men.

Myrtle Morris may have been an unknowing prophet in 1904. Myrtle was truly the first noiseless voice for women in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Since Myrtle could not hear she could not speak. Myrtle was heading to Cuba to start a school for the deaf. The convention voted unanimously to "hear" Morris as she interpreted a song being sung by a man. So the first woman to address the convention was in reality a silent voice, apparently the kind of female voice Baptist conventioneers still like best.

As the century opened, American Baptists, National Baptists, and Freewill Baptists included women speakers at their meetings. But in the SBC muted women were the rule of the day at conventions, in churches, in classrooms, wherever men were present. Occasionally a woman reported to her state convention in the first quarter of the century with little stir. But a woman speaking before the convention was cause of considerable tension and debate. The first time a woman reported to the Southern Baptist Convention was through a male voice. Fannie E. S. Heck wrote a twenty-fifth anniversary report of the Woman's Missionary Union (WMU), in 1913 but the report was read by a man, W. O. Carver. (4) The rare times that women did speak even briefly before the Southern Baptist Convention are curiously missing from the minutes of the convention although newspapers and diaries reported the events. Such omissions give evidence to the growing realization that often the contributions of women have been intentionally omitted from historical records. That's one way of silencing women. B. D. Gray, the secretary of the Home Mission Board in 1916, gave thirty minutes of his time at the convention to Kathleen Mallory and Maud Reynolds McLure to raise money for the WMU Training School. And did he turn the heat up on a boiling pot! While the editor of the Western Recorder was appalled at Gray's action, the editor of The Baptist Standard, J. B. Gambrell declared that the most thrilling part of the convention was the two ladies speaking. (5) Perhaps so, but those who found it thrilling had to wait fourteen years to hear a lady again.

Because WMU was celebrating its fortieth anniversary, Ethlene Cox was invited to address the convention in 1929. Again, the issue of a woman speaking at the convention was contentious. J. W. Porter offered a resolution protesting any woman speaking at the SBC since it was not scriptural, and he added, "Eve tempted Adam. Now the SBC is tempting women. The women would do all right if the petticoated preachers would leave them alone." (6) But M. E. Dodd countered that all were one in Christ. The audience broke into applause. When Porter's resolution was defeated with a thunder of negative votes, he grabbed his hat and left. (7)