4.1 4.2 local church  (Page 3/19)

I do not see how a statement could be plainer or more direct: "Let your women keep silence in the churches." Is not this sufficiently explicit? Does God mean what he here says? If you, reader, were going to teach that women should keep silence in the churches, how would you express it more plainly and explicitly? . . .

Women have not all the privileges or responsibilities that men have in any department of life. Neither have men all the privileges or responsibilities that women have. God lays burdens upon his creatures according to their capacity to bear them and employs them in pursuits to which they are adapted. On men he imposes the rougher tasks of life, for which their strength, courage and powers of physical endurance fits them; on women the lighter, but not less needful tasks to which their superior skill, tenderness, gentleness and modesty adapt them. In the church, men teach, preach the gospel, exhort, lead in public prayer, administer ordinances, preside over business meetings, make and second motions, engage in debate and take the vote. None of these duties or rights. . .belong to women. Baptist Standard (Waco), February 18, 1897, p. 3. Hereinafter in these notes this publication will be referred to as "BS."

For woman was reserved a quiet, supportive role, one that did not call for her to

make a public exhibition of herself in the church.

woman's greatest happiness in this life [arose] from a consciousness of being tenderly loved

repulsively bold and masculine,

In most cases, Baptist women in the early period of this study (1880-90) also believed that their sphere was distinctly separate from men's and did not include a leading role in public worship. They acknowledged the authority of men; even when they argued for wider participation for themselves, they conceived that permission for such had to be granted by men. Lost from their tradition were the examples of women who were free to obey the impulses of the Spirit in worship. Their version of

the good old days of our mothers

keeping a home, nursing the sick, and attending church.

[Woman's] life in the kingdom is not to construct thoughts, theories, dogma, and distinctions, but to execute in the name of the Lord the will of the Lord in simple faith and loving obedience.

Despite the emphasis on women's submission—even silence—during worship, there was general acknowledgement that their presence at church was essential, that they assumed an importance beyond serving as followers and pew-fillers. This recognition was often couched in patronizing language, depicting the repression of women as if it were, in fact, elevation, but it also conveyed a real conviction that the church could not exist without women: