Recent developments in the Southern Baptist Convention have been difficult to watch: the destructive pastoral advice issued to women in abusive situations; the authoritarian leadership structure that supported Paige Patterson, then president of a major seminary, as he used his position to “break down” a rape victim; and the judgment (to use Albert Mohler's words) that now hangs over the denomination. We may be witnessing a Baptist apocalypse, which is both tragic and necessary. All reformations begin with a great unveiling.
Now is the time to reclaim the center of evangelicalism. We must recover the role of women in spreading the gospel, in the way that some have reclaimed the connection between the gospel and social issues. This reclamation would have nothing to do with the second-wave feminism of the 1970s—and everything to do with the first-wave feminism of the late nineteenth century.
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