As a student, I lived through the crisis in Southern Baptist life around the ordination of women for pastoral ministry. It was that time as a student at Carson-Newman that I came face-to-face with the reality that the SBC wasn't the ecclesial home to which God had called me. (If you're not aware of those days and that struggle, I recommend this documentary as well as Bill Leonard's book, God's Last and Best Hope .) At that time, one of the driving questions -- though it was more a symptom of the cancer of biblical literalism as the only theological authority in the Church and that horrible idea of biblical innerancy -- this issue was one of the big ones ripping apart the fellowship of Christians as well as tearing at the souls of very gifted, called women I happened to know as a student. So I never took the question lightly: Does the Bible really affirm women's full ordination to the role of pastor-teacher-pri...
A "restless" theologian in service to the church of Jesus Christ