War Stories

The vast majority of what is published concerning Christian disagreements about gender, at least in academic writing, are logical explications in various spheres of study, such as theology, sociology, history, etc. An awful lot of this writing is rather dry and difficult to wade through, although bits of examples and stories about the affects of sexism on women and men occasionally salt the writing. I’ve been amazed, in fact, at how little of published personal experiences I’ve come across. I’m probably looking in the wrong places, but a wonderful academic exception is the following book: Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles by Julie Ingersoll, published by New York University Press, c2003.

In June 2000, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to restrict women from serving as pastors. Ingersoll spends a full chapter discussing the precedent changes at Southern Seminary, where Diana Garland, dean of the Carver School of Social Work, was fired over the same gender issue as it became a new criterian for hiring around February 1995. Shortly thereafter, in June 1995, Ingersoll conducted interviews with the major players at the seminary. Keeping the denomination pure and away from slippery slopes used to be done by the issue of Biblical inerrancy, but the conservatives (the good guys) were convinced that moderates (bad guys) were slipping through denominational leadership cracks, so a new issue was uncovered as a new litmus test: gender and church leadership.

Ingersoll has this to say about the costs of “purity”: “Southern Seminary has been willing to pay a very high price to secure agreement on gender-related social issues. While specific reports vary, in 1996, the year following this controversy, the seminary lost approximately one-third of its faculty and one-half of its student body. The Carver School of Social Work was the only school of its kind (i.e., a school of social work attached to a seminary). The air of pain and grief that hung over the campus was as heavy as the summer humidity. Several people spoke of having moved to Louisville in the previous few years to teach at Southern, only to face uprooting their families again because they anticipated leaving or being forced to leave…. Several [people] spoke to me only on the condition of anonymity. An atmosphere of intimidation and secrecy pervaded the campus…. People talked in hushed tones when referring to the controversial issues at hand…. Student[s] had been given a directive to refrain from talking about ‘internal matters….’ Students referred to [it] as the ‘gag rule.’”

More on this book later.