By a narrow 51 to 49 percent margin, Texas baptists elected Joy Fenner president of their convention.
Meeting in the conservative west Texas city of Amarillo, Baptists showed that they are overcoming decades of opposition to women in positions of key leadership within the denomination.
More later.
1 comment:
Better late than never. The BGCT election of Fenner comes nearly a century after the Northern Baptist Convention (now known as the American Baptist Churches, USA) elected Helen Barrett Montgomery president in 1911. With that election, Montgomery, a missions leader and the only woman to publish a translation of the Greek NT into English, became the first woman to head ANY Protestant denomination in the U.S.A.
At the time (1911), leaders of the WMU could not even speak at the annual Southern Baptist Convention, but had to have a man read their annual report! Women did not have the electoral franchise in all 50 states until 1920.
In the meantime, the American Baptist Churches, the Alliance of Baptists, and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship have all elected women to leadership roles--though nowhere close to reflecting their numbers in churches. It's good to see the BGCT enter the 20th C. 7 years into the 21st C. When the Southern Baptist Convention will follow suit is anyone's guess.
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