Into the Pulpit: Southern Baptist Women and Power Since World War II

by Elizabeth H. Flowers

From Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Into-Pulpit-Sou...

The debate over women's roles in the Southern Baptist Convention's conservative ascendance is often seen as secondary to theological and biblical concerns. Elizabeth Flowers argues, however, that for both moderate and conservative Baptist women--all of whom had much at stake--disagreements that touched on their familial roles and ecclesial authority have always been primary. And, in the turbulent postwar era, debate over their roles caused fierce internal controversy. While the legacy of race and civil rights lingered well into the 1990s, views on women's submission to male authority provided the most salient test by which moderates were identified and expelled in a process that led to significant splits in the Church. In Flowers's expansive history of Southern Baptist women, the "woman question" is integral to almost every area of Southern Baptist concern: hermeneutics, ecclesial polity, missionary work, church-state relations, and denominational history.
Flowers's analysis, part of the expanding survey of America's religious and cultural landscape after World War II, points to the South's changing identity and connects religious and regional issues to the complicated relationship between race and gender during and after the civil rights movement. She also shows how feminism and shifting women's roles, behaviors, and practices played a significant part in debates that simmer among Baptists and evangelicals throughout the nation today.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Religion, Theology

288 pages, Hardcover

First published April 9, 2012

Reviews

[Faith Steele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Flowers’s book is excellent! Clear writing and great story telling. She emphasizes a group often overlooked—women on both sides of the Controversy. She handles this topic and the stories of many Baptist women with nuance, high quality research, and compassion. If you’ve ever wondered, “where are the women in Baptist life after WWII?,” (first of all: you’re weird like us, and) this is a must read!

[Sarah Greene · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was everything I hoped it would be. If you need to read one book on the history of women in the SBC and the conservative resurgence, this is the one

[Aaron Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating story. Flowers argues that women’s issues were not marginal but rather central to the conservative “takeover” or “resurgence” of the SBC in the latter half of the twentieth century. She helpfully highlights internal contradictions and tensions held by Southern Baptist moderates. I appreciated her attempt to present women from both sides fairly— especially her discussions on Molly Marshall and Dorothy Patterson. Read in the fall of 2023… must say, reading this felt like déjà vu.

[Karly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Flowers takes a quasi-ethnographic approach to examine narratives of gender within the specific confines of the Southern Baptist publics, privates, and counterpublics. Flowers writes with exceptional clarity and respect towards their participants' voices. This is a great example for those of us who research conservative religious rhetorics and narratives.

[Tanner Watson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extraordinarily informative. Flowers gives a detailed description of everything she mentions in this book. Hard for me to get through because it was so dense with detail. Excellent for research!