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With the acquisition of education and support, Baptist ministers tended more and more to preside over their congregations, even to control the diaconate. The church's women did not escape the pastor's charm and power, but looked to him for assignments, validation, and direction as they formerly had assisted the deacons. Whether or not women participated actively within a church depended largely upon the attitude of the pastor. He was the focus of the denomination's dictum to
help those women,particularly in forming missions organizations, the one who stood accused of
crippling more than half the numerical strength of his churchwhen he discouraged women's working in it, whether by his
open opposition or silent indifference.BS , March 8, 1900, p. 4. A female who charged pastors of neglecting the women indicated that
it [was]. . . his business to see that his women worked efficiently. . .BS , January 22, 1914, p. 30. The relationship had its symbiotic elements, however, and women had an impact on the pastor's job security. A state convention board report of 1898 stated that women were insisting that their churches become enthusiastic about missions or that uncooperative ministers move on;
and they surely ought to move or be moved,the board concurred. Carroll, p. 782-783.
The alliance of Southern Baptist women and pastors was not the combining of two disestablished groups as described by Ann Douglas in The Feminization of American Culture , Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977). but that of the protector/teacher (clergy) directing and supporting his dependents/assistants (women). In Douglas's analysis, the biblical pattern of church women's link to power existing through their husbands was altered; women were largely influenced by and sought to influence one dominant male—the pastor. Fannie B. Davis, in bemoaning the passivity of too many women toward their religious duty, claimed that they had
formed habits of depending upon our pastors for information about all gospel workinstead of reading and thinking for themselves. BS , February 22, 1894, p. 7. Although Baptist women were attached to their pastors, they did not go so far as to assign him a superhuman power of mediation on their behalf with God; they felt a personal, unfettered relationship with the Godhead themselves. They and ministers were co-workers—often a woman was referred to as being
a friend to her pastorand sympathetic ministers were called
friends of the women's cause.BS , August 28, 1902, p. 6; BS, January 7, 1915, p. 4. The linking of pastors and women as distinct groups was most frequently encountered in reference to the prohibition cause:
the temperance movement began with preachers and Christian women and they have made all that we have of progress in temperance possible,BS , November 5, 1914, p. 4. although they were also mentioned together in missions and local projects of every sort:
The Baptists at Mt. Pleasant, led by the sisters and pastor Jenkins, have just finished and dedicated a good house.BS , June 14, 1892, p. 2.
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