Bible scholar and retired professor Renita Weems said she’s witnessed past incidents of women being cheered and criticized when taking new steps in their established preaching careers. She cited the example of Bishop Yvette Flunder, a Black lesbian whom Weems and others invited to speak during an annual lecture series in 2015 at American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee.
Weems said not much has changed in almost a decade at the denominational level of Baptist life.
“The needle has not moved,” she said, “at all as it relates to sexism and gender discrimination in the Baptist church.”
Young, who has led a Jackson, Mississippi, church for 40 years that has never had women pastors, said the autonomy of the churches can be viewed as a strength and sometimes a weakness.
“The National Baptist Convention has no authority to instruct a particular local church as to how it will or will not deal with that issue,” he said. “It’s a local church issue.”
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