0.17 4.2 local church  (Page 7/19)

The issue of women's role in worship, aside from the ordained ministry, had become a social issue, but the Baptist social milieu still reinforced strict limitations. This was primarily accomplished in two ways: the movement toward formalized, less-spontaneous services, especially in large urban churches where women were most likely to be trained for public roles, and the restriction of church administration to males. In the increasingly well-planned services (particularly the Sunday-morning worship hour), prayers and officiating were no longer left to chance or to the minister, but were assigned to the officers and leading men of the church; therefore, since women were not officers, they rarely had speaking parts in "formal" worship services. The deacons (all men) traditionally administered the Lord's Supper and assisted the pastor with respondents to the "invitation." Even when congregational size and foresight increased the need for worship assistants with no particular scriptural qualifications—ushers and persons who passed collection plates or made announcements—social propriety dictated that men take the roles. Black Baptist churches established the tradition of women making announcements related to community life, even though they sometimes made them from the floor rather than from the pulpit. Order and respectability kept women silenced and seated in worship nearly as effectively in the twentieth century as scriptural prohibitions did in the nineteenth.

Despite the restrictions that manners and tradition continued to place on women's leadership in worship, there was a definite change after the turn of the century in favor of her theoretical right to participate vocally and in her actually exercising that privilege at all-female meetings and informal gatherings of the church. As described in Chapter Two, a hermaneutical shift from the legalistic application of Bible verses favoring feminine repression to an emphasis on the egalitarian principles behind New Testament theology justified the change. This did not mean, however, that Baptist males either relinquished their authority or shared it equally with women. They maintained their exclusive position on the powerful end of the denominational spectrum by insisting that Christian liberty did not include women's ordination to the ministry.

Throughout the period of this study, nearly every discussion of change in "woman's sphere" included a denial that women wanted to or could serve as pastors. When men discussed the subject, they usually used a biblical basis for their objection:

Paul wrote: 'But I suffer not a woman to be a bishop or pastor of a church.'

BS , October 22, 1903, p. 3.

Our own view of the matter is that our women are not to be licensed or ordained as preachers, since the Scriptures furnish us neither precept nor example for such procedure.