How the Southern Baptist Convention is Complementarian

Posted on May 29, 2026 by bwebaptistwomenforequality

The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 (BF&M 2000) placed strict limitations on women in the church and in their own homes. It is these restrictions that Rev. Al Mohler wants to heavy-handedly enforce, because some SBC churches have allowed a tiny number of women to serve as Pastors, and also such as Children’s Pastor which is mostly led by women, and Women’s Pastor, which is mostly led by women, etc.

The Baptist Faith and Message 2000:
V1 The church. “… in such a congregation each member is responsible and accountable to Christ as Lord. Its two scriptural offices are that of pastor/elder/overseer and deacon. While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”

XVIII The Family. “… The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.

Twenty-three years ago, in May 2003, more than 77 SBC missionaries left the SBC International Mission field of their own free will, or were fired, because they could not in good conscience sign the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. Missionaries, both men and women, had to either sign the document or give up their call to missions and go home. Many went home because they could not sign it, and if they desired to continue in Baptist ministries, they had to seek employment where signing the document was not a requirement. This severely limited the employment opportunities for those former Southern Baptist missionaries.

Surprisingly, there are many Southern Baptist women missionaries on the mission field today, even though they, too, have signed the document that says “the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”

All six Southern Baptist Convention seminaries and many of their 49 affiliated satellite campuses require their faculties to sign the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. So, too, the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention (SBTC) requires that their affiliated churches sign the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. The SBTC broke away from Baptist General Convention of Texas in 1998 to form a competing and more fundamental state convention. The largest churches in Texas either helped form or have affiliated with this fundamental group.

In August 2015, the Hispanic Baptist Pastors Alliance aligned behind the BF&M2000 with their 42 Southern Baptist churches in 15 states, Canada and Puerto Rico.

Paige Patterson, one of the founders of the CBMW who also helped compose the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, was president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary until he was booted out in 2018 because of his mishandling of an alleged rape of a student on his campus in 2003.

On October 27, 2011, Patterson officiated at the signing of the BF&M 2000 at Truett-McConnell College in Tennessee. The importance of this document to Southern Baptists can be found in his remarks as he presided over the signing of the BF&M 2000, “Better be dead, better never to be remembered on this earth, than to fail to be true to that document which you have signed.”

What Patterson said is a heavy load to place on anyone. Additionally, it gives the importance of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 a far greater eternal significance than any document – with the exception of the Bible – should have.

Next Subject: SBC Seminaraies are complementarian

Shirley Taylor Books (available on Amazon in print and on Kindle)
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal: No Buts
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition
From Wife to Widow: What I Know Now
Beyond the Grave: A Christian Dilemma

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The Dirty Truth of Complementarianism

Posted on May 28, 2026 by bwebaptistwomenforequality

Rev Al Mohler has jumped into this war against women and will make a motion to the SBC when they meet in June to ban Baptists from calling any woman “pastor” or even giving her the responsibilities of pastor to children or women.

Rev Al Mohler is the epitome of male headship and wants all Baptists to fall into line.

Al Mohler’s proposed “Truth and Unity Amendment” to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Constitution aims to permanently cement the denomination’s ban on women serving as pastors. The proposal amends the SBC Constitution to add an enumerated clause specifying that cooperating churches cannot “act to affirm, appoint, or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor/elder/overseer, such as preaching to the assembled congregation.” (Baptist Standard)

As stated previously, male headship means that all males have authority over all females all of the time. It is commonly referred to as leadership, because even complementarians realize how ridiculous male headship sounds.

Remember that, among Christians, there are two generally accepted views on how women are to be treated in the church and also in the home. Each view has variations as some adherents are more restrictive than others. The majority of Christians have never considered themselves to be either complementarian or egalitarian. However, whichever teaching a church or denomination subscribes to, one of those terms would apply.

Women are either equal or they are not

Even in society at large, women fit into one of these categories. There cannot be a half-way measure. Either women are equal or they are not. Most of the world has decided that women are not equal. We cannot change the whole world, but Christians have a responsibility to be like Jesus, and that means treating women with love as equals instead of with contempt and superiority.

As previously explained, complementarian is a word coined by the writers of the Danvers Statement to describe their teaching which they believe sets the guidelines for how men and women best complete or complement each other. It means that men and women have certain roles which they claim define manhood and womanhood.

A man’s role is to have authority over his wife and to have authority in the home and church. A woman’s role is to be submissive to, and supportive of, her husband. She must follow her husband’s leadership in everything. Because of this teaching about the family, women cannot have authority over men in church.

Some complementarians insist that women are to refrain from assuming authority over men even in the workplace.

The wife’s “role” of submission is praised and glorified. She is told that she is equal-but. Equal, but according to something they call God’s grand design, she is to have a lesser position in the church, in her own home, and even before her children. Men and women who are unmarried must also adhere to the roles prescribed for their gender, which consist of leadership and authority for males, and submissiveness for females. This teaching keeps women in a permanent subordinate role.

So, let’s talk about churches, entities, people, and complementarianism.

Our next subject is: How the SBC is complementarian

Shirley Taylor Books (available on Amazon in print and on Kindle)
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal: No Buts
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition
From Wife to Widow: What I Know Now
Beyond the Grave: A Christian Dilemma

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Jesus Had Something to Say to Religious Leaders

Posted on May 26, 2026 by bwebaptistwomenforequality

So, while I can understand religious leaders wanting to preserve the Christianity they grew up with, they have ignored the people who have to live with their restrictions.

Complementarian (male headship) teaching is completely outside anything that Jesus said or did. Jesus held individuals responsible for their own actions. In no way did Jesus hold women accountable for the deeds of men. Likewise, Jesus did not hold men accountable for the deeds of women.

It was not wives whom Jesus held responsible for the destruction of worship and family. It was the religious leaders – the ones who stood before the people – that he held responsible.

Consider this:

  • We have a dark secret that we keep at home. We, too, keep women in submission.
  • It is not qualifications nor is it spirituality that makes men desirable as leaders in the church. It is the male body. What is not explained is how this adoration of the male body translates into worship of God.
  • Look to the seminaries for the answer to where the church went wrong.
  • Remember, it is always up to the husband to determine to what degree he demands submission from his wife.
  • When you accept that translation, you have accepted divinity for human males.
  • The greater problem when women refuse to accept the equality they were given at creation is that they are abdicating their own responsibility to serve.

Yes, at times we must laugh (some of the sentences you will read in my books)

  • If Adam had been a male headship kind of guy, he would have knocked that apple out of Eve’s hand and picked up a stick and killed that snake. Alas! Male headship ate the apple.
  • His loving, humble headship did not rise to the occasion.
  • If that doesn’t make you queasy, then I don’t know what will!
  • If you believe that, then you need to get yourself a real Bible.
  • If you do not think that makes a woman feel inferior, then you need to rethink your definition of inferior.

This a time for action

  • It is a testimony to their love of God that women go to church at all considering the way they are demeaned in most churches. A church’s legal documents tell women what they cannot do in church.
  • Pastors are deciding now if they want to continue to be part of the problem – holding back women’s equality – or if they want to follow Christ and be part of the solution.
  • At some point, women will have to decide if they want freedom or if they want to be bound by restrictions.

Shirley Taylor Books (available on Amazon in print and on Kindle)
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal: No Buts
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition

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The Radicalization of Christianity Towards Women

Posted on May 25, 2026 by bwebaptistwomenforequality

My father was a Baptist lay minister, the pianist, deacon and Sunday school teacher in our small country Baptist church.

My mother had become involved in the Pentecostal church. I remember when I saw the hypocrisy of their male headship teaching. They had women evangelists, but the same woman who preached a revival could not then go into a Sunday school room and teach a mixed group of men and women. I was eight years old and knew that did not make any sense.

For 50 years I was so proud to be a Baptist. I believed in their Great Commission and their missionaries. Don and I married in the early 1960s at my church, and I promised to honor and obey. It never occurred to me that I was vowing to honor and obey him, and I am sure it did not to most women. It was just what we were supposed to say. In later years when I realized what I had repeated in the vows, I thought it meant I was honoring our marriage, never even thinking that he was not asked to promise the same thing. We were married 55 years until his death. My life still honors our marriage because I want it to.

Much of my time was spent in our Baptist church. I taught Sunday school, was on all committees and raised our two sons in church. I was very happy and felt I was serving God the best I could.

It was in the midst of the Hippie Movement when things really began to change for young people in the United States, and all across the world. I married right out of high school which is what many young people did. The Hippie Movement changed that during the 1960s and 1970s. Suddenly girls were going off to college, having “free sex” (the boys always did), but that fact was now out in the open. The drug culture began.

At this time 70% of women did not work outside the home. Only 34% of college graduates were women in 1964.

These changes were having an effect upon religion. Up until that time, religion was still very strong in families. Mom and Dad went to church and their children went to Youth camps. For Baptist families, church meant Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night and week-long revivals in the Spring and Fall. We were immersed in church, while the Hippies went about doing their thing, we did our own thing, and that was church.

In 2006, I became employed by Baptist General Convention of Texas. My husband began telling me that Baptists were not fair to women. I was doing everything I wanted to do in church and never even considered that other women were being denied the privilege of serving as a deacon, or even preaching. Our church sent many women to the mission field and we thought that was exactly what they wanted to do. We did not understand that that was all they were going to be allowed to do.

These changes in society caused much consternation among religious leaders. They thought they had to do something about it. Like many young Christian people in the sixties through the seventies, I thought so too.

They went too far and held on too long

Religious leaders, pastors, seminary presidents, and professors went too far. And they have become even more radicalized. It is this radicalization that my book The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling draws your attention to.

The CBMW and SBC, and others, have made marriage the focus of Christianity. They have marginalized a wife to the point that she must submit to her husband, or else the Devil will come into their home. In this way, they have brought witchcraft into the marriage, and are actually calling women witches, because the only way the Devil can influence the wife, is to whisper in her ear, by telling her to work outside the home, and to quit submitting to her husband in all things. By doing so, she is acting out the scheme of the Devil, as Ralph Drollinger says in his White House Bible Study that was sent out to all governmental leaders on September 4, 202.

Wives are to obey their husbands in the real definition of the word. Young girls and wives are told they should not work outside the home. They should have many children and homeschool those children.

They want us to go back. What they do not acknowledge is that there is no perfect time in history, and it certainly was not perfect in 1950.

Shirley Taylor Books (available on Amazon in print and on Kindle)
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal: No Buts
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition

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Woe unto you, pastors, preachers, seminary presidents who deny women their calling

Posted on May 23, 2026 by bwebaptistwomenforequality

Woe unto you, pastors, preachers, seminary presidents and professors, CBMW, SBC (Southern Baptist Convention), and Others

  • You have placed an awful burden on the shoulders of a young man who marries the woman he loves, by telling him he has authority over her.
  • You have made the husband a little man-god.
  • You have denied the wife the joy of a loving partnership.
  • You have made a living hell of marriage and have not considered the wife may actually be living with the devil in the flesh.
  • You have become the devil she should avoid in church, in Seminaries, in certain Christian movies, in books, blogs, and in sermons.
  • You have threatened her home with an unseen devil and require her to put up with everything her husband demands of her and their many children, or else her children will become druggies, and the whole nation and the world will be at stake.
  • You have blamed her for problems within society.
  • You have denied her the joy of helping the family financially because, by doing so, you tell her she is destroying her family.
  • You have not allowed her to use her God-given gifts, talents, education, and abilities, in the church or in society.
  • You have stuck a husband between a wife and God.
  • You tell her that her salvation depends upon a human male.
  • You have denied her the full grace of her salvation.
  • You have made husbands stand-ins for Christ in bed.

You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

Shirley Taylor’s Books
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal: No Buts
Dethroning Male Headship: Second Edition
From Wife to Widow: What I Know Now
Beyond the Grave: A Christian Dilemma

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Let Freedom Ring. Conclusion

Posted on July 25, 2025 by bwebaptistwomenforequality

Will you speak up with me and claim your newbirth right?

It was in Jerusalem in 2006 that I made a stand for my own equality. Don and I were on vacation in Israel and equality was the farthest thing from my mind. But later, I realized that what happened there was the beginning of my journey that has led to writing this blog, and publishing my books advocating for women’s equality in the church and home.

The story begins this way:

Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon lay in a coma in a room near where Don and I stood at the Hadassah Ein Keremin Hospital in Jerusalem. We were standing at the same spot that Shepherd Smith of Fox News had stood just a few days before while he sent back a news report of the Prime Minister’s condition. But we were not there to see Ariel Sharon. We were there to see the synagogue where the famous artist Marc Chagall had created the 12 stained glass windows of the 12 Tribes of Israel.

As we prepared to enter the synagogue, Don was told to put a small hat on his head so his head would be covered before he entered the synagogue. He picked up a homemade hat made of black construction paper that had been stapled together to form a hat. This gave compliance to the head covering rule. A young man of 14 or so who was entering the synagogue for a brief visit, raised his arm and spread his hand over his head to form a cover for his head. I did not have to cover my head.

Don sat on one side of the synagogue while I sat on the other side. Our tour group consisted of Brenda who was our female tour guide, Don, another man, and me. We four were the only ones there, two men and two women, sitting on opposite sides of each other.

Another day we went to see the tomb of King David. It was in a small room, separated down the middle by a curtain. Men go through the main entrance, so my husband Don entered on one side while I had to enter on the opposite side which was the woman’s entrance. Men enter the “tomb” while women see the covered box through an opening in the wall, over which a curtain hangs. There was a woman under the table-covering lying prostrate on the floor, praying. I could see her feet moving under the ornate tablecloth.

Our next visit was to the Wailing Wall, a place of prayer, and a must-see for tourists when they are in Jerusalem. There is a courtyard where people mill around; down at the end is the Wall. We could see many men lined up against the wall praying, and rocking back and forth as they often do. Many were Orthodox Jews dressed in traditional black clothes and black hats. There was a section screened off which we learned was the women’s section. I was told that I had to go over there to a separate entrance if I wanted to stand by the Wall and pray. It was on a slight decline, and I could see chairs up against the screen barricade. Those chairs were placed there so the women could climb up on them to see.

“No!”

Thus began my protest. I stayed in the courtyard, refusing to be separated from the Prayer Wall. Proud. All alone. I was a Christian woman, and this is the 21st century. I will not be treated as if I am a Jewish woman. I have been saved by grace and given the freedom through Christ that He gave all his children, male and female.

Will you join me in standing—alone if necessary—in protest against the separation of men and women? Will you stand with me against assigned roles that men want to give women? Will you stand with me against the separate entrances where women are allowed to go only so far, and where women do not have the full relationship with God that many men feel is their “birthright?”

Will you speak up with me and claim your newbirth right?

I hope that as you read, you did not become too comfortable because you will likely see separate leadership roles in your church.

It is my hope that this will give you insight as to how prevalent this teaching is, how it is done, and how it affects your church. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. You will be encouraged—no, you will be commanded—to get up and do something about it.

See Shirley Taylor in Baptizing Feminism Documentary Trailer.

Books by Shirley Taylor available in Print and Kindle on Amazon

The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
From Wife to Widow: What I know Now
Beyond the Grave: A Christian Dilemma
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition

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Let Freedom Ring. Part 5

Posted on July 22, 2025 by bwebaptistwomenforequality

People have asked me “what does women’s equality look like for you?” Since churches and denominations have their own set of restrictions against women in ministry, each person’s picture would look differently. We have seen how the Southern Baptist Convention has responded to the threat of women’s equality.

As promised in Part 1, we are now going back to the story of the stolen birthright.

This is what I envision women’s equality to look like, so it is actually the end result. Let’s go back and begin with the similarity of the Old Testament story of Jacob, aided by their mother, who stole the birthright from Esau. The story begins in Genesis 25.

Jacob, through deception and opportunity, stole the birthright of his twin brother Esau. Esau was guilty of dismissing the importance of his birthright. This analogy has Jacob representing Christian men who pushed women aside even though men and women were both firstborn in the New Creation, and set to inherit the goods and possessions of the Father. Esau represents Christian women who now realize that they gave up their most valuable inheritance.

Birthright – are you ready to unleash your harness

Esau said to his father, “Do you really have only one blessing, Father? Bless me too, my father!” And Esau wept loudly.

His father Isaac responded and said to him, “Now, you will make a home far away from the olive groves of the earth, far away from the showers of the sky above. You will live by your sword; you will serve your brother. But when you grow restless, you will tear away his harness from your neck.” Genesis 27:38:40

The story in the Bible moves from Esau to Jacob. It leaves us wondering what happened in Esau’s life? At what point did he “grow restless” and how did he tear away the harness from his neck?

We do not know, but we do know that Esau eventually found his strength and became mature in those twenty years that Jacob was gone. It is that strength and maturity that women have found also. We have begun building up our own herds and gathering our army, not to do harm, but as a witness of whom we have become.

Esau gathered his gifts and his army of 400 men and went to meet his brother. He wanted reconciliation between him and his twin brother.

However, Jacob heard Esau was coming and he was afraid his brother was coming to claim what was rightfully his. Jacob and his father-in-law didn’t trust each other, each taking advantage of the other. So, Jacob, too, had a large herd of animals. He set out to meet Esau and brought his herd of animals to give as a gift to his brother (to appease him).

Esau said, “What’s the meaning of this entire group of animals that I met?”

Jacob said, “To ask for my master’s kindness.”

Esau said, “I already have plenty, my brother. Keep what’s yours.”

Jacob said, “No, please, do me the kindness of accepting my gift. Seeing your face is like seeing God’s face, since you’ve accepted me so warmly. Take this present that I’ve brought because God has been generous to me, and I have everything I need.” So Jacob persuaded him, and he took it.

Esau said, “Let’s break camp and set out, and I’ll go with you.” Genesis 33:8-12 Common English Bible (CEB)

Esau who had allowed his birthright to be stolen, met his brother with his own set of gifts and forgiveness. Women, all of whom have had their Newbirth-right stolen, can do the same.

They were twin brothers – children of the same mother and father. Did it really matter which one came out of the womb first? Only in their culture did it matter. It did not matter to God. Just like men and women. We are twins, born of the same Father/Mother – giver of life. That birthright is reinforced in the New Creation, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

We have grown restless. This is our wealth. These are our gifts.

  1. Begin the journey
  2. Gather your gifts
  3. Bring along your army of supporters
  4. Go with forgiveness
  5. Offer reconciliation

If you, too, are restless, and are ready to tear away the harness of male headship from your neck, speak up! Now is the time!

We have no malice and we are willing to meet our brothers halfway. We, too, have gifts to bring. With your family and my family together again, we will be able to do many things for the Lord. Will you start the journey?

See Shirley Taylor in Baptizing Feminism Documentary Trailer.

Books by Shirley Taylor available in Print and Kindle on Amazon

The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
From Wife to Widow: What I know Now
Beyond the Grave: A Christian Dilemma
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition

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Let Freedom Ring. Part 4

Posted on July 18, 2025 by bwebaptistwomenforequality

Before the fundamentalists takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, Baptists believed in the priesthood of the believer.  Those words are not spoken in Baptist churches anymore. It was a foundational belief that Christians did not need any go-between to come before God.  It originally had to do with the Catholic Church and priests who acted as the mediator between the person and God.  Protestants said that no priest was needed, and in fact, did not have the power to be a go-between.

Below is what Baptists say they believe, but do not talk about openly anymore:

Every believer takes part in the New Testament doctrine regarding priesthood.  Direct access to God, through Christ, was granted the moment the rebirth took place.  We need no intervention by any other human being on our behalf, “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ (1st Timothy 2:5)?”  Although, all believers need and appreciate the prayers of others (intercessory prayer), being able to go to God in prayer and approach Him directly is assured by the Word of God. 

There are also contrasts to be seen in Scripture regarding how believers mirror their Old Testament counterparts who were priests.  We, like them, are set aside as, “A holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:4).”  What we are to offer up is indeed ourselves.  That is the best sacrifice God wants of us.  Paul told the believers in first century Rome to, “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service (Romans 12:1).”

Why don’t Baptist mention this anymore? You see, they can’t. Because SBC Baptists have decided that they will teach that the husband is his wife’s leader, her spiritual leader, and the spiritual head of his family, and she is under his authority.

You cannot believe or teach priesthood of the believer when you give a husband spiritual leadership, or headship, over his wife.

Remember what Dr. Dorothy Patterson, one of the founders of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Biblical Womanhood, said “As a woman standing under the authority of Scripture, even when it comes to submitting to my husband when I know he’s wrong, I just have to do it and then HE stands accountable at the judgment.”   (Christianity Today 1998).

The Drs. Patterson (Paige and Dorothy) along with her brother, helped craft the Danver’s Statement on Biblical Manhood and Biblical Womanhood, and then in 1998, crafted the Baptist Faith and Message 1998 which inserted the section about a wife ‘graciously’ submitting to her husband, and then in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, told everybody that women can’t be senior pastors. 

Priesthood of the believer is not talked about in Baptist churches anymore.  Now you know why.

See Shirley Taylor in Baptizing Feminism Documentary Trailer.

Books by Shirley Taylor available in Print and Kindle on Amazon

The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
From Wife to Widow: What I know Now
Beyond the Grave: A Christian Dilemma
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition

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Let Freedom Ring Part 3

Posted on July 14, 2025 by bwebaptistwomenforequality

In the past 30 years, churches that traditionally had women pastors, Assemblies of God and United Pentecostal, are now dominated by male pastors.  They, too, have resorted to teaching that the husband has authority over his wife.  As one Pentecostal wife told me “My husband is the ruler in our home.” Their children were grown, but she still need a ruler over her. I see this as a direct influence of the Southern Baptist Convention fundamentalist takeover.

The non-denominational churches that have a husband/wife pastor team say that they allow women to preach (and we see they do because the wife preaches), but those churches do not have a woman as a senior pastor.  In many of those husband/wife pastored churches they teach that wives are to submit to their husbands. Equality just flew out the window.

A Methodist minister in England emailed me that the complementarian view is prevalent in their churches.  He said that they watch what we do over here, and are influenced by it. In our own country, even though Methodists embrace women as pastors, not all are on board with women’s equality in the home.  I attended a wedding where the Methodist minister of a very large church near here told the husband, “James, remember that you have the greater responsibility in the marriage. If she wants to go shopping, even though you would rather go to a ballgame, you must go with her.”  In those words, he gave the couple’s marriage to the husband.

There are a handful of religious denominations that accept women as equals, but ultimately, they have become the stumbling block against women pastors instead of being the standard.  These churches that have accepted women as pastors have also recognized that within their congregations there might be homosexuals. Of course there are homosexuals in other churches, but they are closeted.

Fundamentalists tell us that churches will be full of homosexuals if they allow women as pastors. They lead us to believe that any woman who feels called to preach is a homosexual. So, with that reasoning, both the pulpits and the pews will be filled up with homosexuals. Fundamentalists have bound themselves to homosexuality and many have bought into it. United Methodists split in 2020 over this issue and the new denomination is Global Methodists which was formed on the basis of being against homosexuality.

But, look at the Catholic Church. They do not accept women as priests, and yet we have been made aware that there are many priests who are homosexual. What is the connection there? They officially do not accept homosexuality.  In 2019, The New York Times estimated that as many as 75 percent of Catholics priests may be gay, with only ten of them formally “out.” And those who do come out – or are rooted out – may lose their livelihood, their housing, and their community.  (The Disappearance of the Closeted Clergyman by Kimberly Winston, April 15, 2025.) https://arcmag.org/the-disappearance-of-the-closeted-clergyman

Evangelicals completely ignore what Catholics do because in many minds, Catholics worship graven images, and eat the flesh of Christ and drink his blood, and do other strange things. So, is it just the Protestant denominations that accept women pastors that will have women lesbians as pastors? Why does that reasoning apply only to women? Why wouldn’t the same reasoning apply to men and make it a possibility that we would have male homosexuals as pastors? In other words, if you allow women to preach and it opens the doors to women homosexual preachers, wouldn’t it stand to reason that it would also open the door to male homosexual preachers?

Because if evangelicals taught that, there would be NO pastors.

Personally, I do not know a homosexual woman pastor. But what about the male pastors who are adulterers, homosexuals, pedophiles, child molesters, wife beaters, murderers, abusers, and sexual deviants? One of my SBC pastors molested his grandchildren and died in prison. Another one of my SBC pastors was heavily into porn and now has a website “helping other pastors turn from porn.”

Much has recently been uncovered about male sex abusers within the leadership of Southern Baptist Convention churches. Nobody says that because some men are these things that we should deny all men from service in the church.

These churches that have allowed women equality in the pulpit and leadership positions cannot carry enough weight to pull women into equality. As I said, they have become a de facto deterrent.

See Shirley Taylor in Baptizing Feminism Documentary Trailer.

Books by Shirley Taylor available in Print and Kindle on Amazon

The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
From Wife to Widow: What I know Now
Beyond the Grave:  A Christian Dilemma
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition

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Let Freedom Ring Part 2

Posted on July 12, 2025 by bwebaptistwomenforequality

This is where women lost their birthright in the Southern Baptist Convention, which has influenced non-denominational churches, Christian Nationalists, and has kept any real progress for women’s equality squashed down, rolled over, dejected, and denied.

How did we get to this point? As many of you know, my background is Southern Baptist. I worked for Baptist General Convention of Texas for almost 15 years. I was a Baptist for over 53 years.

The Café Du Monde in New Orleans was the site of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention.  Their plan was written on a paper napkin in 1967.  Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler were the architects of the plan, and they used their unique knowledge of the inner workings of the SBC to systematically put their people in key positions.  This stacked the dominoes in a certain way, and when they started to fall, they continued in the orderly fashion set forth on a table in a café.

Paul Pressler died in 2024 with his reputation tarnished as the unvarnished story came out that he was a pedophile and had sexually molested a young man for many years. Paige Patterson was also dethroned as President as Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Dallas and it is extremely likely that he knew what was going on in the hot tub between Pressler and the young man.

What began in 1967 was finalized in 1990 “This eleventh election (of a fundamentalist president of the SBC) seals the fundamentalist victory, and they celebrate at Café Du Monde in the French Quarter, where Judge Pressler and Paige Patterson had first conceived the whole plan for the takeover, many years prior.” (The fundamentalist takeover in the Southern Baptist Convention).

The story is outlined in “The Fundamentalist Takeover in the Southern Baptist Convention. A Brief History” by Rob James and Gary Leaser with James Shoopman, produced by Mainstream Missouri Baptists in 1999.  They didn’t know the rest of the story.  Here we are today in 2025, and what the fundamentalists sowed, we have reaped.

They earnestly believed that reigning in knowledge, cultural changes, and binding the scriptures to inerrancy would bring about a stronger SBC and growth.  They were successful, but they were wrong. (Read a 2025 news article about Christian Nationalism and see if you don’t see that is exactly what they continue to want for you and me – but likely not for themselves.)

SBC Membership Declines, so says the Baptist Standard, June 25, 2012, for the 5th straight year.  The record year for baptisms was in 1972. As I post this anew today in 2025, baptisms have never reached this record high again. The SBC continues to decline, but their hold on culture, churches, marriages, and state and national government has increased.

So what?  What does this mean? Why should you be concerned if you are not a Baptist? Perhaps you don’t even like Baptists, and think this has no meaning for you.

It affects you because Southern Baptists are the second largest denomination (behind Catholics) in the United States.

They have the seminaries that your pastor went to, and the seminaries that your youth minister who teaches your kids will learn in.  They give power to, and hold in esteem, such people as non-Baptists Wayne Grudem, Mark Driscoll, and a multitude of others outside the Baptist denomination, in believing that the pastor (who must be male) is in control of his church, and that women are to be eternally submissive to all males, forever. Wayne Grudem is co-author of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Biblical Womanhood with John Piper and this is a bible of sorts in Baptist seminaries.  His Systematic Theology is the teaching book at these same Baptist Seminaries and he, along with others, have devoted their theology around women’s lower status to man’s status before God and all males. These men listed have gotten old, but newcomers are still proclaiming their filth against women.

It affects you because the Danvers Statement on Biblical Manhood and Biblical Womanhood (1987) came out of this family group – Paige Patterson, Dorothy Patterson, and her brother Chuck Kelly (past president of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary). The Danvers Statement shares some of the same language of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. The Danvers Statement was adopted in 2009 as the Statement of Faith in Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary where Paige Patterson is president.

Churches do not remain static.  They are constantly changing and these changes are brought on by influences of larger churches. Just as hell-fire and brimstone is not the hot topic today as it was 50 years ago, the new hot topic is the bedroom and the husband’s authority throughout the home and in the church.  This came from somewhere and it is my belief that it was conceived on the paper napkin at Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans in 1967.

As we continue this discussion, we will see how a decision made 58 years ago has affected other Christian denominations.

See Shirley Taylor in Baptizing Feminism Documentary Trailer.

Books by Shirley Taylor available in Print and Kindle on Amazon

The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
From Wife to Widow: What I know Now
Beyond the Grave: A Christian Dilemma
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition

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