Many of the gender issues contributed to the "conservative resurgence" of 1979, and the eventual exodus of many Baptists to the CBF have their roots in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Therefore, to better understand what led Baptists to this point, this paper chronologically examines what roles Southern Baptist women played in the home, church, and society from 1950 to 1979.

Since the mid-nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, many Protestant ministers characterized women as more pious than men and thus more receptive to religious concerns. Much of this conviction was based on the belief that women were more receptive to the Second Great Awakening than men. (1) Moreover, Victorian social norms continued in America as men believed women were their inferior in both intellect and physicality. Men were to protect the physical safety and virtue of these pious women in their charge. These norms often portrayed a woman in almost childlike terms and, thus--for her own benefit and protection--she should remain in the home where she could use her God-given abilities as a wife and/or mother in her own sphere away from the threats of the world. These tenets fit hand in glove with southern culture, and the Southern Baptist Convention readily adopted them as its own.

Fundamentalism also gained many adherents as the fears of modernism, biblical criticism, evolution, and shaky traditional gender roles began to appear as early as 1880. (2) These changes caused further anxiety in those who saw their world and culture changing for the worse all around them. In a reaction to these changes in 1909, R.A. Torrey and two like-minded scholars published the enormously influential book The Fundamentals. (3) These texts and a myriad of others helped bring the term "biblical literalism," or as it was better known in later decades "biblical inerrancy," to the forefront. Inerrancy stressed that the Bible is without error and its meaning is not dependent on differing cultures and eras. This meant Eve's submission to Adam and the Pauline prescriptions as to the role and place of women were still in place and beyond debate. Biblical literalism was also present within the SBC. Though the 1925 Baptist Faith and Message does not use the word inerrancy, it does anticipate it with phrases such as "without any mixture of error" and promotes a high view of scripture. (4) Inerrancy proved to be an excellent tool when debating those who were pressing for greater roles for women in church and society. By the mid-1980s it was a hermeneutical hallmark for conservative Southern Baptists.

In 1941 fundamentalist Baptist pastor John R. Rice published Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives, and Women Preachers. Rice went beyond inerrancy by stressing that these new women were at "the heart of all sin... rebellion against authority." (5) It was not only rebellion against the authority of God but also against God's earthly authorities. Rice wrote,

Bobbed hair is the symbol of the wicked fashion of rebellion of wives
to their husband's authority or of wicked daughters who rebel against
their fathers... Do not confuse the subject of bobbed hair with the
general subject of women's dress and use of cosmetics. The question of
whether a Christian woman bobs her hair is of infinitely more
importance than whether she paints her face or her lips or her
fingernails.... Men wear short hair as a sign that they take their
responsibilities as made in the image of God and rulers over their
households. Women are to wear long hair as symbols of their submission
to husband and father, taking their place with meekness as women
surrendered to the will of God and subject to the authority that God
places over them. (6)

Southern Baptist women did make a few gains in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1918 women became eligible to be messengers at the annual convention. This step was not, however, greeted as a positive move by all Southern Baptists. The pastor of First Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, and editor of the Western Recorder, J.W. Porter disagreed and stated in his 1923 book Feminism: Woman and Her Work (7) that the denomination showed "utter disregard of the teaching of God's word, by the feminist, concerning women speaking in mixed public assemblies..." (8)

In 1929 Ethelene Cox gave the Woman's Missionary Union (WMU) report at the annual meeting that caused a great commotion as many prominent pastors left in protest. (9) A woman speaking to a mixed assembly was improper in the eyes of many messengers. In the 1940s Baptist churches began to hire women to fill staff positions left vacant by men who were serving in World War II. (10) These women ministered in many roles often as directors but rarely as ministers and never as pastors. When the men returned from war and resumed their positions, women lost many of the small gains made earlier in the century.

The 1950s

By the start of the second half of the twentieth century the Southern Baptist church was the unofficial established church of the South. It was white, hierarchical, and very much in tune with southern customs such as segregation and the subservience of women. The local SBC church and its pastor held a significant position in members' lives. No pastor was more representative of the Southern Baptist Convention than First Baptist Dallas pastor W.A. Criswell. Concerning women in ministry, he stated:

A woman can teach women, a woman can teach little children, a woman can
share in the service of the Lord, in the public house of Jesus, but,
the authority of the service, the organization of the church in the Old
Testament, in the New Testament is always the same... In the New
Testament, the apostle is a man. The pastor is a man. The deacon is a
man. The authority of the house of God is always invested in the man.
(11)

In many ways Baptist homes in the 1950s mirrored those of the late Victorian Era. (12) There were highly demarcated male and female spheres of work and influence. The man's role was to go to work to support his family. He was king of his home. The woman's role was to promote her husband's career, keep a tidy and comfortahle home, and oversee the children. She served as his helpmeet/queen. Newspapers, magazines, and television shows such as Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best reinforced these gender roles. Several polls of this year showed that women and men preferred a clear division of labor at home and in the workplace. (13)

Not all 1950s Baptist women were happy to return to the Victorian era, however. While men had gone to war in the 1940s, women had stepped out of their imposed gender roles and taken traditionally male jobs. Many men did not like having their job, a traditional male job, taken by women who should--as Billy Sunday often mentioned in his sermons--stay at home. (14) Women got a taste of working outside the home, and many of them liked it. Women in full-time church work reflected this same attitude. They were no longer satisfied working only with children or missions. (15) These positions did not require ordination or leadership over men and were thus suitable for women.

A small but growing number of Baptist women were beginning to express a desire to have a greater role in the polity and service of their local church. These women wanted to do more, and to do more required ordination. To answer this call, as many as three hundred sought and received ordination as deacons in Southern Baptist churches in the 1950s. (16) Not all their neighbor churches warmly received these ordinations. Often citing 1 Timothy 2:12, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet," (17) as validation, local associations often expelled the ordaining churches.

Started in 1888 as an auxiliary organization to the SBC, the Women's Missionary Union was one of the few entities where Baptist women could lead and not be under the thumb of the male-dominated SBC boards. The WMU published several newspapers and journals that promoted not only missions but also a domestic life for women. Royal Service often reminded its readers to use their influence in the home and to leave the business world to the men. (18) One book reviewer in 1954 stated that "it is the mission of every married WMU member to have a Christian home." (19) According to historian Melody Maxwell, the WMU "writers often narrowed their focus to home and family--even re-appropriating the traditional Southern Baptist language of 'mission' to refer to domestic tasks." (20)

The WMU, however, is best known for its Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong offerings in support of foreign and home missions. These offerings are a huge part of their budgets. Perhaps that is why the WMU caught the attention of the SBC in the mid-1950s. Until 1956 the WMU raised the money and then distributed it to whatever aspects of the Foreign and Home Mission boards they believed fitting and in need. This allowed the WMU to help support single, female missionaries on the field who often did not receive as much financial support as their male colleagues. Overseeing and deciding who received money gave women power but made some men nervous. In a move of compromise or deference, the WMU in 1956 conceded power to allocate the funds to the mission boards. Now the WMU raised funds but had no say in their distribution. The following year the WMU ceded ownership of the Carver School of Missions and Social Work to the Southern Baptist Convention. These actions caused women to lose what little power they had within the SBC. As noted by historian Elizabeth Flowers, "the WMU was now a helpmate to the SBC mission boards." (21) At the close of the 1950s the nature, role, and purpose of Southern Baptist women was to be submissive to their husband, not to step out of their place in church or society, and to take care of the home and children.

The 1960s

In social, political, and religious matters the 1950s could not have been more different than the 1960s. The Leave It to Beaver decade had given way to the Vietnam War, sexual revolution, and civil rights decade. Southern traditions and beliefs entrenched for generations found significant opposition. In 1966 southern historian Samuel Hill said, "Everywhere old moorings are breaking loose, deeply entrenched attitudes are being shaken, and traditional patterns of social life are gradually giving away and being replaced by new." (22) For a denomination where change came hard, the 1960s would be difficult for the Southern Baptist Convention.

The civil rights movement dominated the 1960s, and nowhere was it more amplified than in the South. Since the colonial era, white men in the South enjoyed being on top of a well-defined and engrained racial caste system. "Separate but equal" was a preferred way of life including segregation in the churches, and many Southern Baptist pastors such as W.A. Criswell preferred it. The civil rights movement and corresponding laws ended much of the South's official white male privilege.

Unofficial privilege, however, was another story. White men still held complete sway over women in the church and home. Historians such as Elizabeth Flowers posit that civil rights laws had a direct influence on Southern Baptist women. She maintains that the loss of white male privilege in the 1960s led to Southern Baptists' tightening and enforcement of their beliefs concerning the traditional roles, behaviors, and social status of women. (23)

The rise of feminism only intensified this effort. (24) Oral contraceptives first became available in 1960. Women could now control their own reproductive systems and enjoy sex without the fear of pregnancy. Betty Friedan's best-selling Feminine Mystique challenged gender-based spheres of vocation by espousing the belief that women did not have to be satisfied with being housewives. (25) This was also the era of Gloria Steinem and the birth of women's groups such as the National Organization for Women (NOW). Women were seeking jobs outside the home in record numbers and demanding equal pay with men. The popularity of television shows such as That Girl--which followed the life of a young, single, career woman--challenged traditional gender roles in the work place.

Southern Baptist women took tentative steps forward in the 1960s. WMU representatives began to speak from behind the pulpit in some local churches; of course, these women were only making announcements and certainly not preaching. (26) In 1963 the WMU president, Marie Mathis, became the first woman elected vice-president of the Southern Baptist Convention. In 1964 Addie Davis became the first Southern Baptist woman ordained to the pastorate. For some, her ordination went beyond the pale: one man, as though reading from the medieval Malleus Maleficarum, called her a "child of the devil." (27)

The purpose, role, and nature of women were in flux in the 1960s, which bothered many SBC men. Many white Baptist men felt their traditional privilege within the church and society was in danger. It was only a matter of time until enough was enough, and these men would push back. Biblical inerrancy became their tool of choice.

The 1970s

If the civil rights movement defined the 1960s, the feminist movement defined much of the 1970s. Just as moderate Baptist leaders pushed for desegregation in the 1960s, moderate Baptist leaders sought equality for women in the 1970s. Luther Copeland stated, "It was the civil rights struggle of the 1960s and 1970s that jump-started the modern feminist movement." (28) Copeland was correct. It was also the same argument. Both movements were about groups of people who no longer wanted to be second-class citizens and wanted a fair chance to pursue the American dream. It was also the same rationale from those who opposed desegregation and women stepping out of their prescribed gender roles: "inerrancy." In this regard, W.A. Criswell was once again their leader. He was adamant in his support of segregation and traditional gender roles.

Feminist leaders found inspiration in the success of the civil rights movement and hoped to find similar success as they fought for equality of their own. In many ways the two movements were closely related and had been for more than a century. This same scenario had played out in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as many women championed abolition and then pressed on for women's right to vote. While working for civil rights and integration in the 1950s and 1960s, many women noticed that they too faced discrimination. In the 1970s women shifted their focus to promoting women's issues and gender equality. With the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972, white men in the South began to view feminists in much the same manner as they had integrationists a decade earlier. They were another threat to the cultural status quo and in some ways more dangerous. Civil rights laws ended official segregation in the South, and now women were seeking equal rights in all aspects of life. If women achieved this goal, white southern men would no longer be at the top of the caste. In fact, there would be no caste. For many men, stopping feminism and keeping women in the designated sphere was a hill worth dying on.

During this time women in the Southern Baptist Convention were not silent. Some SBC entities made attempts to alleviate gender limitations in the home, workplace, and church. WMU magazines such as Contempo, Royal Service, Home Missions, and The Student began to publish articles that encouraged women to consider a career outside the home in traditionally male-dominated professions such as medicine and law. At the same time, however, these editors did remind their readership that being a full-time homemaker was a very worthy vocation and in no way made her inferior to the career woman. In 1974 Jesse Fletcher wrote in The Commission,

The current emphasis on women's potential will, it is hoped, result in
a new wave of women, both married and single, flowing into the
missionary task throughout the world. Since in Christ there is neither
male nor female (Gal. 3:28), it follows that the Holy Spirit would not
discriminate in the distribution of gifts for service. Surely God not
only calls, but also equips, all saints, male and female, for the task
of missions. (29)

Other articles discussed and promoted the idea that women seek ordination as deacons and as full-time ministers. Biblical arguments appeared more often demonstrating the acceptability of these new opportunities for women while at the same time trying to disavow any extreme feminism. (30) Fletcher commented that the ordination of Baptist women was gaining momentum until 1979. (31)

In her article "Of Words and Women: Southern Baptist Publications and the Progress of Women in the 1970s," Susan Shaw reported that in the early 1970s women were becoming more prominent within the SBC denominational structure. In 1972 messengers to the annual SBC nominated WMU president Marie Mathis for the office of SBC president. Mathis did not win, but her nomination signaled that even within the male-dominated SBC things might be changing. In 1974 members of the Association of Southern Baptist Colleges resolved that there would be no gender discrimination in hiring policies at any level including that of governance and administration. (32) In 1976 Marian Grant became the chair of the SBC's Committee on Order of Business. In doing so, she became the first woman to chair a major SBC committee. (33) At the 1977 SBC annual meeting in Kansas City, SBC president Jimmy Allen gave hope to women who desired ordination when he said, "I'm not as excited in the ordination of women as in freeing them for useful service. The question is, Are they allowed to be decision makers?'" (34)

By the late 1970s, women had served on the SBC Executive Committee and as state convention vice-presidents. (35) In Women in Baptist Life, Leon McBeth stated that in 1977 women comprised more than 20 percent of the trustees of the Home and Foreign Mission boards, Christian Life Commission, and Historical Commission. (36) The highest rate of female convention leadership occurred at the end of the decade: about 13 percent. (37) On September 20-22, 1978, a "Consultation on Women in Church-Related Vocations" conference sponsored by several SBC agencies was held in Nashville, Tennessee. (38) The nearly three hundred people who attended the conference celebrated the advances made by women and made plans to develop a women-in-ministry network. Many of those in attendance fully anticipated that gender equality and women's ordination were just around the corner. Moreover, the momentum of this conference gave hope to many throughout the SBC who wanted to advance women's vocational roles within the denomination. (39) Through 1978 it looked as if those opportunities were on the verge of becoming a reality.

Not all the SBC annual meetings, resolutions, and actions were victories for Southern Baptist women who wanted gender equality. At the 1973 Convention in Portland, pastor's wife Jesse Sappington proposed a resolution against women's lib. The Committee on Resolutions altered it to the point that it appeared to promote women's ordination, which was not even mentioned in the original resolution and certainly not her intent. Sappington provided a replacement resolution that decried the women's liberation movement and promoted distinct gender roles and declared that the man is the head of the woman. (40) The SBC passed and adopted this new resolution. After her victory, Sappington became the female face of Southern Baptist anti-feminism and played prominent roles in several conventions throughout the remainder of the 1970s. No one stoked the fires against feminism, the ERA, and blurring gender roles more than Sappington. She constantly kept these issues in front of the Southern Baptist Convention.

At the 1974 annual convention in Dallas the role of women dominated discussions and resolutions. Christian Life Commission Executive Director Foy Valentine proposed a resolution called "Concerning Freedom for Women" that promoted women's liberation. Leon McBeth said that it led to "several exciting confrontations" (41) and, with Sappington's aid, it was tabled and failed. The next year the CLC tried to pass resolutions that favored gender equality, but none passed. In 1978 national political activist and opponent of the ERA Anita Bryant ran for first vice-president of the Southern Baptist Convention. She lost the election, but an anti-ERA resolution did pass. These losses, however, were believed to be just minor setbacks for the inevitable step toward gender equality within the SBC.

Though Southern Baptist women were making advances regarding equality, by the mid-1970s an ever-increasing number of those who disagreed with these changes could no longer remain silent. In their eyes the SBC had embraced too much of the women's liberation movement and liberal theology, and had taken the denomination too far to the left. In response they tied the arguments over feminism and assigned gender roles to biblical inerrancy. In a 1974 sermon WA. Criswell said,

How the woman's lib movement will ever get away from [woman's role in
the Garden of Eden and Original Sin] I do not know. I think of it. I
read about it. I look at it and I can easily see how the government can
make an employer pay as much to a woman as he does a man. And I can see
how the opportunity for economic amelioration, advancement, could say,
"Now you got to give this woman as much opportunity to be president of
the bank as this man here." And I can see all of that, how by law they
can make that sort of a thing come to pass. But inwardly, how the thing
is put together, I don't see how in the earth you're ever going to make
the man and the woman just alike, just the same. I don't see it. I
cannot see it. There is something about the way the man is made, how he
looks, how he is, and there's something about the way the woman is
made, how she is, how she looks; that makes it impossible for them to
be other than what God made here. You have a weak, weak situation when
the man does not lead. If the woman leads--that may be better than no
leadership at all--but it is not according to the Word of the Lord.
When a woman takes the name of her husband, she thereby shows that the
whole order of society is in that keeping of the arrangement of God.
(42)

Another group to advance this agenda was a group of conservative Southern Baptists who formed the Baptist Faith and Message Fellowship in 1973. Within the pages of its monthly tabloid the Southern Baptist Journal, conservative Baptist contributors attacked perceived liberal professors and advocates of feminism. (43) This journal was also a valuable aid in helping take the Southern Baptist Convention for the conservative faction in 1979. In her 2014 dissertation, "The Spiritual Is Political: The Modern Women's Movement and the Transformation of the Southern Baptist Convention," Laura Foxworth noted that "issues of the Southern Baptist Journal closely tracked, and noted with ire, each time a woman was ordained in a Southern Baptist church." (44) Authors often followed the announcement of an ordination with a notation that if these women and their host churches really read their Bibles, they would realize they were acting against God's will. Members could simply, from then on out, discuss opposition to increase women's roles in Southern Baptist churches under the coded mantra of biblical inerrancy.

Southern Baptist women were some of the most successful promoters of female submission and what became known as biblical womanhood. During the 1970s Joyce Rogers, wife of the conservative and popular pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Adrian Rogers, may have been the most influential of these women. This began the era when powerful pastors who wanted to promote more traditional roles for women employed their wives to press on their points. In 1974 Joyce Rogers penned a short and popular pamphlet titled God's Chief Assignment to Women in which she wrote, "To women God has given one very special assignment. It was given at the beginning--in the Garden of Eden. Eve was to be a help--fitting for her husband." Moreover, she stated, "as a result of Eve's sin she was further instructed in Genesis 3:16 that her desire would be to her husband and that he would rule over her." In the Pauline epistles she affirmed inerrancy and that woman was created for man (1 Cor. 11:9), that the head of the woman was man (1 Cor. 11:13), that wives should submit to their husbands (Eph. 5:22), and that the husband is the head of the wife (Eph. 5:23). Joyce Rogers' popularity grew throughout the 1970s, and in 1980 she attracted four thousand women to her Women's Concerns Conference at Mid-America Seminary. (45) Adrian Rogers became president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1979. There can be little doubt that her popularity among conservative women helped deliver the election to her husband.

Dorothy Patterson also made her first foray into the feminist and gender role debates with her 1976 book Sensuous Woman Reborn. The wife of Paige Patterson, Dorothy claims to have written the book at her husband's urging. In it she gives guidance to women who want to master the role of the traditional wife. She held a strong disdain for advocates of modern feminism who wanted to "[erase] the winsome femininity of God's perfect 'building'--a creature of limitless beauty and influence." She claimed that traditional relationships had been "marred by the vociferous battle cry for personal rights and universal equality--the unisexual Utopia of a new generation." In his foreword W.A. Criswell wrote, "Girl--if you want to know all about how to be attractive, beautiful, successful, happy and to keep the man of your choice, just peruse these pages. There is nothing like it in the English language." (46) Dorothy Patterson became a champion of traditional female roles within the church, home, and society. Her role in the birth of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood in 1987 was crucial in winning over many women to the complementarian position.

In the mid-1970s discussions over female ordination were also being argued at the Southern Baptist Convention's state and associational levels. (47) As early as 1972 an article in the Baptist Messenger of Oklahoma stated, "The Bible's teaching on the subject is so plain that it would seem unnecessary and a useless waste of time to discuss ordaining women as preachers or deacons in churches." (48) In 1976 the executive board of the Black River Association in Arkansas sent a letter to Charles H. Ashcraft, executive director of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, expressing their disapproval of his recent articles that favored women's ordination and his claim that most Southern Baptists agree with him. On November 10, 1977, the Arkansas Baptist State Convention passed a resolution stating,

WHEREAS, It has come to our attention that the Home Mission Board is
giving financial support to an ordained woman; and
WHEREAS, This is contradictory to the past practice of the Home Mission
Board; and now be it
THEREFORE RESOLVED, That the Arkansas Baptist State Convention... go on
record as looking with disfavor toward this practice; and be it
FURTHER RESOLVED, That a copy of this resolution be sent to the Home
Mission Board." (49)

In his 1981 article "The Ordination of Women," Leon McBeth described several squabbles that occurred over the matter in the 1970s. In 1977 Beech Fork Baptist Church in the South District Association of Kentucky ordained Suzanne M. Coyle. A graduate of Southern Seminary, she had already been serving as a pastor/chaplain in Philadelphia in a ministry somewhat supported by the SBC Home Mission Board. Coyle's ordination was most certainly an issue at the Arkansas State Convention in November of 1977. The Association at once threatened to remove the church from fellowship if it did not rescind her ordination. Beech Fork refused to cave in to the pressure, so the Association voted to exclude the church by a 94-64 vote. Despite agreeing to follow Roberts' Rules of Order that requires a two-thirds majority vote to exclude, the Association still disfellowshipped the Beech Fork church at its 1977 annual meeting. (50) At the Kentucky Baptist Convention in 1978 a messenger brought forward a "Resolution on the Ordination of Women." Other messengers changed the title to a "Resolution on Ordination." The convention then took the opportunity to support the autonomy of the local church. The convention concluded, "Churches ordain. Conventions do not." (51)

As the 1970s ended, the Southern Baptist Convention had been fighting over feminism for most of the decade. Those who supported gender equality seemed to be winning--or at least they believed they had the upper hand. They had good reasons for their optimism. It appeared the convention boards, seminaries, and many of their previous presidents were with them. It seemed the 1980s would be the decade when women would achieve gender equality.

Not everyone was in favor of such a dramatic change in the Southern Baptist Convention, however. Some opposers decided it was time to act against liberal theology, those who denied biblical inerrancy, those who supported a woman's right to choose, and those who supported women's ordination and gender equality. For most of the decade they had been garnering support at the state level, and the efforts of pastors' wives such as Joyce Rogers and Dorothy Patterson were about to pay dividends. Moreover, popular, national evangelical leaders such as Harold Lindsell, Jerry Falwell, and James Dobson had been speaking out against these same issues. A perfect storm had gathered, and it reached critical mass at the 1979 SBC annual meeting. Adrian Rogers represented the conservative faction. At the pastor's conference prior to the annual convention, Rogers lashed out against the ERA and those who were against traditional gender roles. He stated,

I see these women demonstrating for what they call equal rights. They
don't understand that they already have equal rights in the Lord Jesus
Christ. But when some of them get what they want, they will not want
what they get. You mark it down. When they get what they want they will
not want what they get. A woman is suited for having babies and not for
fighting wars. A woman is suited for certain things and not for other
things. Oh, I know there are some women who may temporarily prosper and
make other women envious as they go out in the world of business and
they're having their say, and so forth. But I want you to know there
are some people who prosper when we have a war, but war is not
necessarily good. And some women may prosper in this thing, but there
will be, you mark it down, when ladies get this thing that they are
crusading for, which includes not only equal pay, but daycare centers,
legalized and free abortion, and all of the other things that go with
this mess, when they get it, and when they continue more and more to go
out in the work-a-day world, there will be as we are already seeing,
that corresponding lack of respect that God has wanted gentlemen to
give to ladies. (52)

Rogers went on to win the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1979. Presidents with similar theological understandings of women's nature, role, and purpose have won every successive SBC presidency. Each year more resolutions limiting their role in the home, church, and society reached the convention floor and passed. Gender roles consistently became more rigid and defined as "biblical manhood and womanhood." Southern Baptist gender theology would not change and upset the hierarchal status quo. It would match traditional southern culture. Those who had opposed feminism had successfully turned back women's clock to the 1950s.

Conclusion

There are several reasons why women's equality suffered a shocking defeat in 1979. First, prominent pastors' wives played a major role. Through books and conferences, women such as Joyce Rogers and Dorothy Patterson convinced many women that being a complementarian housewife fit the biblical picture of womanhood better than women who supported the ERA and egalitarianism. Their efforts proved invaluable and, as more pastors' wives took up this role, their influence became even greater in the following decades.

Second, those in favor of women's gender equality and the right to ordination were winning the debate at the seminary and agency level but not necessarily at the state, associational, and local church level. Many perceived victories at the annual Southern Baptist Convention and events such as the 1978 Consultation Conference were taken as signs that women's causes were in the ascendency. This proved not to be the case, and many messengers were not prepared to make this step. Female ordination was often the litmus test. Churches that did ordain women often found themselves removed from fellowship in their state and associational conventions. When mobilized at the national level in 1979, those who were against these women's causes became a powerful voting block that those who had been working at the annual conventions, agencies, and seminaries for gender equality never saw coming. This oversight or even perhaps their arrogance in ignoring these entities played a critical role in the defeat of gender equality in 1979.

Third, Southern Baptists do not like change. Traditional southern culture had taken a serious blow with the end of legalized segregation in the 1960s. For many southern men integration was a cultural crisis that threatened their place in the caste system. When Southern Baptist women began to push for gender equality, ordination, and the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s many men saw it as another theological and cultural crisis. Male headship and clearly defined spheres of male and female influences were the status quo in the South for generations. These changes shook many Southern Baptist men as they saw their influence and way of life further diminishing. Several of these men took up the mantle of attempting to keep women in their customary theological and cultural role of submissive helpmeets. This desire and effort proved fruitful and has continued well into the twenty-first century.

Fourth, Southern Baptist women's desire for gender equality became a part of the inerrancy debates that encompassed the entire SBC. For this reason, owning the word inerrancy was critical. No one wanted to be seen as not believing the Bible, and those who supported these new women's issues did not own the word. Therefore, in the eyes of many, those who supported gender equality could not have as high a view of scriptures as their opponents. Those who opposed women's gender equality used the word inerrancy whenever possible in arguments against perceived liberality. This influenced many rank-and-file Baptists who came to believe that those who supported gender equality and women's ordination were going against what the Bible explicitly said. The ownership of this word was critical to the events of 1979 and the demise of women's gender equality within the Southern Baptist Convention.

Joseph Early Jr. is an associate professor of theology at Campbellsville University.

Notes

(1) Susan Lindley, "You Have Stept Out of Your Place": A History of Women and Religion in America (Louisville: Westminster Press, 1996), 60.

(2) Laura J. Foxworth, "The Spiritual Is Political: The Modern Women's Movement and the Transformation of the Southern Baptist Convention" (Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 2014), 8.

(3) A.C. Dixon, Louis Meyer, and Reuben Archer Torrey, The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth (Chicago: Testimony Publishing Company, 1910-1915).

(4) 1925 Baptist Faith and Message, cited in Joseph Early, Readings in Baptist History: Four Centuries of Selected Documents (Nashville: Broadman and Holman Publishing Group, 2008), 236.

(5) John R. Rice, Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives, and Women Preachers (Wheaton, IL: Sword of the Lord Publisher, 1941), 13.

(6) Ibid., 15, 66, 71.

(7) J.W. Porter, Feminism: Woman and Her Work (Louisville, KY: Baptist Book Concern, 1923). This book contains articles from prominent past Southern Baptists who opposed women's leadership. These include John A. Broadus, J.B. Hawthorne, T.T. Eaton, and B.H. Carroll.

(8) Ibid.,40.

(9) Pamela R. and Keith E. Durso, The Story of Baptists in the United States (Brentwood, TN: Baptist History and Heritage Society, 2006), 183.

(10) Sarah Frances Anders, "Baptist Women Walking Together in America, 1950-2000," Baptist History and Heritage, xxxx, no. 2 (June 2005): 10.

(11) W.A. Criswell, "All About Women," 13 July 1958, sermon delivered at First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, transcription available at http://www.wacriswell.com.

(12) Elizabeth H. Flowers, Into the Pulpit: Southern Baptist Women and Power Since World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 42.

(13) William H. Chafe, "The Paradox of Progress," in Our American Sisters: Women in American Thought and Life, ed. Jean E. Friedman and William G. Shade (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1982), 567.

(14) William G. McLoughlin, "Billy Sunday and the Working Girl of 1915," Journal of Presbyterian History (1962-1985) vol. 54, no. 3 (fall 1976): 376-384.

(15) Anders, "Baptist Women Walking Together, 10.

(16) Ibid., 11.

(17) New International Version.

(18) Melody Maxwell, The Woman I Am: Southern Baptist Women's Writings, 1906-2006 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2014), 102.

(19) Anne Crittendon Martin, "The Recovery of Family Life by Elton and Pauline Trueblood," new books to read, RS, April 1954, 13; Mrs. J Winston Pearce, "Our Witness Begins at Home," RS, May 1966, 13.

(20) Maxwell, The Woman I Am, 104-105.

(21) Flowers, Into the Pulpit, 46.

(22) Samuel Hill, cited in Flowers, Into the Pulpit, 38.

(23) Flowers, Into the Pulpit, 41.

(24) Ibid.

(25) Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: WW Norton, 1963)

(26) Flowers, Into the Pulpit, 47.

(27) Pamela R. Durso, "She-Preachers, Bossy Women, and Children of the Devil: Women Ministers in the Baptist Tradition, 1609-1612," Review and Expositor, vol. 110 (winter 2013): 39.

(28) Luther Copeland, The Southern Baptist Convention and the Judgment of History (Lanham: University Press of America, 1995), 96.

(29) Jesse C. Fletcher, "The Women in Foreign Missions," The Commission 37 (November 1974), 1.

(30) Susan Shaw, "Of Words and Women: Southern Baptist Publications and the Progress of Women in the 1970s," Baptist History and Heritage, xxxxii, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 70-73, 75.

(31) Jesse C. Fletcher, The Southern Baptist Convention: A Sesquicentennial History (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1994), 249.

(32) "Educators Encourage Equal Rights for Women," Theological Educator 38 (July/August 1974), 7.

(33) Harry Leon McBeth, Women in Baptist Life (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1979), 135.

(34) Baptist Messenger, 23 June 1977, 1.

(35) Anders, "Baptist Women Walking Together, 12.

(36) McBeth, Women in Baptist Life, 122.

(37) Ibid.

(38) Flowers, Into the Pulpit, 68.

(39) McBeth, Women in Baptist Life, 181-185.

(40) "Resolution on the Place of Women in Christian Service," Southern Baptist Convention Annual, 1973, 87.

(41) McBeth, Women in Baptist Life, 133.

(42) Criswell, "All About Women."

(43) Maxwell, The Woman I Am, 138-139.

(44) Foxworth, "The Spiritual Is Political," 86.

(45) Flowers, Into the Pulpit, 77.

(46) Dot Patterson, The Sensuous Woman Reborn (Dallas: Crescendo Publications, 1976), vii, 115, 132-133.

(47) Mark Chaves and James Cavendish, "Recent Changes in Women's Ordination Conflicts: The Effect of a Social Movement on Intraorganizational Controversy," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, vol. 36, no. 4 (December 1997): 581.

(48) Baptist Messenger, 4 May 1972, 2.

(49) Annual, 1977, Arkansas Baptist State Convention, 44.

(50) McBeth, Women in Baptist Life, 161.

(51) As reported in Western Recorder, 23 November 1978, 6.

(52) For Rogers' Pastor's Conference sermon, see "The Great Deceiver," 10 June 1979, in Walter Shurden and Randy Shepley, eds., Going for the Jugular: A Documentary History of the SBC Holy War (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996), 14-23. Adrian Rogers also iterated this same theme in "Satan's Fib about Women's Lib," sermon, undated, audio available at Discipleship Library, http://turret2.discipleshiplibrary.com/6897A.mp3.