0.4 1.1 introduction to "hidden work: baptist women in texas 1880  (Page 7/10)

Chapter topics

Through both commands and examples, the Bible offers a variety of instructions to and impressions of the female sex. Chapter II contains a discussion of the content of that material, dividing it under four general headings: 1) the narratives of creation and the fall of Adam and Eve, 2) Jewish law and tradition, 3) the life and teachings of Jesus, and 4) the literature of the early church. During the span of this study, Texas Baptists altered their use of these materials. They moved from an emphasis on the restrictive nature of woman's role to an emphasis on her freedom "in Christ." They also shifted their hermeneutical method somewhat, in favor of principles over legalities, but they did not change their basic stance on the authoritative nature of the Bible, nor were biblical directives uniformly reinterpreted. The patriarchal basis of the Judeo-Christian tradition was retained in males' exclusive right to certain spheres of privilege and responsibility.

As defensive as they were about believing the entire Bible and only the Bible, Texas Baptists were inheritors of other intellectual strains that shaped the direction and limits of change in women's roles. Most important among these were democratic, egalitarian thought; hierarchical, paternalistic traditionalism; and a merchandising mentality. In their thinking, these ideas were inextricably bound up with biblical truth, not just an ideological blend distinctive of the nineteenth-century American frontier. These extra-biblical perceptions are briefly discussed in Chapter II to complete a description of the intellectual climate imbibed by Southern Baptists in Texas.

The most effective expression of Baptist women's assumption of power was their organization of women and children to support missionary causes. Their efforts were part—perhaps, during the period of this study, the most successful part—of a general denomination movement toward consolidation to assure the success of broader goals than single congregations could achieve. Chapter III details the formation and growth of Baptist women's groups in Texas, but it begins by outlining the context of general denominational expansion in which the women's movement took place.

Prior to the Civil War, the story of Baptists in Texas is one of few members and struggling institutions, centered mainly in the south-central part of the state around Independence. After Reconstruction Baptists experienced growth and a haphazard proliferation of overlapping organizations that they pulled into a unified state convention 1886. The effort to effect this consolidation produced strong leaders, as well as resistance and backlash from separatist elements in the 1890s, but the organizing forces won the day. The denomination grew in membership, wealth, and acumen in the early twentieth century; a new power structure, built of a state newspaper, universities and a seminary, urban ministers, and denominational officers, assured the burgeoning bureaucracy of success. At the same time, there was ambiguity regarding new bases of power, resulting in vague theological formulations and a strong nostalgia for simpler times and solutions.