I'll Be the One in the Pulpit

I wasn’t going to write anything about THIS.

Even though I’m a woman in ministry and a pastor who finds herself in a pulpit on a regular basis, the truth is the weekend’s social media explosion didn’t really affect me. For 19 years, it’s just not been an issue. Actually even for the 10 years before Park Road, I had found myself in places of inclusion and acceptance. Oh sure, there are the occasional comment and infrequent attitude that stirs me up. In those moments, I can quickly be transported to moments in seminary and in various ministry positions during the early years when I was lectured and man-splained about how God did not call women into ministry. Once I was even called an abomination — to my face! I guess the truth is one never truly gets over being called an abomination.

On Sunday afternoon, I got the following text from a church member: “Did you hear the John MacArthur’s audio of his talk about Beth Moore and women in ministry? It’ll get you fired up, so don’t do it today.” I guess she thought it best not to ruin a perfectly good Sunday. I had just climbed down out of the pulpit where I had preached the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I had preached about Jesus’ love of the little children and his call that in our lives we are to take care of ALL the children; not just our own but also the poor ones and the at-risk ones and the hungry ones and the homeless ones and the ones living in cages on our border.

So I determined to follow my friend’s advice and just not listen. I was in the mood for a nap, not for getting fired up. But my Facebook and Twitter feed wouldn’t let me miss THIS.

People were posting and blogging about it. People started sharing pictures of women in the pulpit. People started testifying to the power of women in the Gospel story reminding everyone that the very first preachers were women who told their experience of that first brush with Resurrection. I broke down and listened to the audio.

John MacArthur is a pastor and author, and he has an internationally syndicated radio program. He was speaking at a celebration of his fifty years of pulpit ministry when he weighed in on the ongoing debate in the Southern Baptist Convention over women preachers. (We are obviously not THAT kind of Baptist!) He claimed the SBC had taken a “headlong plunge” toward allowing women preachers at its annual meeting this past summer. That, he said, was a sign the denomination no longer believed in biblical authority.

Then he was asked for his gut reaction to a few words or phrases. The name Beth Moore, was thrown out. (She is a well known, conservative, evangelical Southern Baptist teacher/writer/ speaker.) When John heard the name Beth Moore, his quick response was “Go home.” The audience erupted in laughter and applause and cheers.

I can honestly say it did not get me fired up.

I was not surprised. This reaction is exactly what I have come to expect from that particular crowd. I was too profoundly sad to be fired up. All I could picture were the daughters of all those men laughing and making fun of women preachers. All I could picture were all the young girls sitting in those congregations listening to only men preach the Good News. All I could picture were all the women kept silent with shame and guilt, many of whom have a fire for the Gospel story in their bones and no place to share it and proclaim it and preach it.

Beth Moore and I really don’t have a ton in common, theologically speaking, but we share a home in the pulpit. John MacArthur told her (and me and countless other women preachers) to “Go home.”

Will do, sir, will do. See you in church — I’ll be the one in the robe, standing in the pulpit – right at home at Park Road Baptist Church, preaching the Good News.

May it be so … and it is.

Is It Time to Part Ways?

“It’s difficult for me to imagine the Left and the Right of American Christianity ever meaningfully reconciling.”

It’s been a gripe of mine for some years now that our kind of Baptists have to explain and defend and qualify who we are to nearly everyone else: “Well, we’re not that kind of Baptist!”

This in a day when many of those churches who have given the name “Baptist” a black eye have decided to remove the B word from their name and church sign – leaving us who remain to suffer the indignities of being narrow-minded and judgmental, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-immigrant, pro-torture, self-righteous Bible thumpers – since that’s pretty uniformly what the word means to people on the street.

Every year or so, one of my church’s leaders, as a response to the most recent well-publicized “Baptist” soundbite and the latest embarrassment to real Baptists everywhere, says, “We should really talk about this ‘Baptist’ name. It’s doing us a lot of harm.”

Yes, but the issue is bigger than denominational identity.

More than 20 years ago a friend of mine, who had spent most of his career serving in “foreign missions” (as they called it those days) for the Southern Baptist Convention, said to me that he rarely called himself a Christian anymore; he preferred the term “Christ-follower.” Through his many relationships with Christians and leaders from the other major world religions, literally around the world, he had learned that “the word ‘Christian’ has become a political word.”

So, what does the word “Christian” even mean, if a Southern Baptist missionary can no longer use it?

The more time I spend as a Baptist Christian pastor in a world divided by angry religious differences, the more I wonder if “we” and “they” are actually part of the same religion.

The words and pronouncements I hear from many Christians in no way represent my theology (nor mine theirs). We clearly have different beliefs about our shared Book. Our approach to science-and-religion is incompatible. We have contradictory views of humanity and sexuality.

Regarding the role of the Church, we want to talk about what “evangelism” means and should entail; on “social justice” they will never talk at all! Interfaith relations means to them an opportunity for conversion; to us, it means the beauty of diversity and growth through dialogue. Nearly all of our common words have different meanings: creation, sin, salvation, redemption, heaven, hell….

The historical Jesus and the Christ of faith often represent different, often opposing, theological convictions. Even our basic concepts of God are frequently irreconcilable.

I don’t think I am overstating the case. When I listen to many Christians speak, more and more I respond with the thought, “Is it honestly fair to call what they believe and what I believe the same religion?”

I believe in reconciliation. I believe Christ’s life was a testimony to “breaking down every dividing wall between us,” as our scripture says. I also know some sectarian divisions cannot be healed. Maybe they should not be. In my active relationships with Muslim and Jews, Unitarians and Baha’is, we are able to work together despite our differences (and without the animosity that exists between some Christian groups).

Maybe, because we don’t pretend to hold the same views, we can appreciate our differences more, and more easily agree to work for a common good.

In her groundbreaking 2008 book, The Great Emergence, Phyllis Tickle makes the case that every 500 years there is a major revolution in the Church. There was the Christian emergence from Judaism, the creation of orthodoxy, the great schism between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, the Protestant Reformation. It’s been another 500 years, and we’re in the midst of a volatile “culture war.” The crosshairs are on the Christian Church. What will come of us?

Is it time?

“So broken is our fellowship, so divergent our views, perhaps the name ‘Christian’ has ceased to mean anything helpful to the cause of Christ.”

Would it be easier for “us” and “them” to get along if we officially named our differences and amicably parted ways? It’s difficult for me to imagine the Left and the Right of American Christianity ever meaningfully reconciling. Maybe, like Paul and Barnabas, there comes a time when we must face the reality that we can do more and better things if we are not fighting each other for control of the name “Christian.”

As to the process and procedure, I don’t know who would “leave” or what it would mean to “stay.” As to the name, I have no idea who would become what. But, within the Christian Church and (especially) outside the Church, so broken is our fellowship, so divergent our views, perhaps the name “Christian” has ceased to mean anything helpful to the cause of Christ.

For the sake of Christ, the harmony of his church and the peace of our world, even if it meant someone abandoning the name “Christian,” maybe it’s time we had the conversation.

Photo by Vladislav Babienko on Unsplash