(AP) – Emily Snook is the daughter of a Southern Baptist pastor. She met her husband, also a pastor, while they attended a Southern Baptist university Yet the 39-year-old Oklahoma woman now finds herself wondering if it’s time to leave the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, in part because of practices and attitudes that limit women’s roles.
“Every day I ask that,” Snook said. “I don’t know what the right answer is.” She’s not alone. Among the millions of women belonging to churches of the Southern Baptist Convention, there are many who have questioned the faith’s gender-role doctrine and more recently urged a stronger response to disclosures of sexual abuse perpetrated by SBC clergy.
For many SBC women, even those committed to staying, the topic of gender became more volatile this month when popular Bible teacher Beth Moore said she no longer considered herself Southern Baptist.
Moore, perhaps the best-known evangelical woman in the world, had drawn the ire of some SBC conservatives for speaking out against Donald Trump in 2016 and suggesting the denomination had problems with sexism. Karen Swallow Prior, a professor of English and Christianity and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, has belonged to an SBC megachurch and wrote a passionate article in February explaining why she remains Southern Baptist. READ MORE
