Strength for the Journey: Feminist Theology and Baptist Women Pastors.

Campbell-Reed, Eileen R.

Strength for the Journey: Feminist Theology and Baptist Women Pastors. By Judith Anne Bledsoe Bailey. Richmond, VA: Center for Baptist Heritage & Studies, 2015. 244 pp.

In Strength for the Journey Judith Anne Bledsoe Bailey presents the results of her doctoral dissertation interviews with twenty Baptist women who serve as pastor of churches coming out of the Southern Baptist Convention over the last three decades.

In the project she asked what supported women in their ministries and service as pastors, and set out to explore how the contributions of now-classical feminist theology texts from the 1970s and 80s were (or were not) significant sources of support. In questioning female pastors about their understandings of calling, God, authority, leadership, feminist theology, and biblical interpretation, she found that most of her interviewees read and embraced the early publications of (mostly white) feminist biblical interpretation and theological reflection in their college and seminary coursework.

The Baptist clergywomen included in the study continue to find support from the writings of Roman Catholic authors such as Mary Daly, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, and Elizabeth Johnson and Protestant writers such as Letty Russell and Phyllis Trible. Nevertheless, a few of the pastors prefer not to adopt the language or moniker "feminist" in their preaching and everyday language for ministry.

Bledsoe Bailey begins the book with two chapters of historical background. In chapter one she ploughs through a history of Baptists from 1609 to 1970 focusing on three main periods:

1. Pre-SBC tensions between Southern patriarchy and evangelical equality

2. The missions period and the founding of Woman's Missionary Union (WMU), focusing on subsequent changes to women's role in SBC politics and leadership

3. The 1950s and 1960s upheavals to authority along with new pursuits for women ushered in by the civil rights and women's ordination movements

Chapter two explores the post-1970s growth of women in ministry among Baptists and the subsequent disruptions to Baptist life as they disputed women's ordination. Bledsoe Bailey also notes the responses by organizations of Baptist women in Virginia and other Southern states. She surveyed pastors for their understandings of basic theological doctrines and for ways they make use of feminist theology in their ministry and personal spirituality.

The third and fourth chapters present a series of stories about calling, ordination, and leadership style among the pastors. Many of the stories ring out with clarity, although the women don't emerge as distinct characters in the book. The author tells the stories with minimum context, rendering them as a series of brief vignettes. Together the snapshots gathered in her interviews compose a picture of pastors taking a new approach to leadership, worship, and teaching inspired by the egalitarian commitments of twentieth-century feminist thought.

Because little has been written about the experience and contributions of Baptist women serving as pastors, Bledsoe Bailey's take on how the women engage pastorally and personally and with feminist theology adds more ballast to the growing number of scholarly voices trying to right an interpretive boat still decades out of kilter.--Reviewed by Eileen R. Campbell-Reed, associate professor of practical theology, Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Nashville, Tennessee