His support for women’s leadership, however, has drawn praise. “He made some missteps, but on the woman issue he is on the right side of history,” said Weems, former academic dean at American Baptist College, an NBCUSA-affiliated institution in Nashville, Tennessee. “I have to take my wig off to him.”
Brown’s sermon, which lasted about 30 minutes, focused mostly on recent changes in the church. Though she misses some of the traditions lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, she noted that the church has benefited from being forced to adapt.
The Rev. Tracey L. Brown preaches at the National Baptist Convention U.S.A. Inc.’s annual session, Sept. 9, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (Photo by Derrick K. Hammonds)
“The pandemic showed us what took maybe two and a half, three hours could be done meaningfully in less time with the Spirit still having his way and without being quenched,” she said. “The pandemic taught us that good church did not mean all-day church. Amen, somebody.”
She turned briefly to what she called the “cruel” Trump administration immigration policies being carried out by U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents, saying, “We are witnessing the legalization of criminal activities by the Ku Klux Klan, which has changed their name to ICE.”
But she expressed faith in a better future. “Even now, in the turbulence of today, we declare that the same God who brought us this far is the same God that will bring us and carry us forward,” she said.
Brown, who has served as a city councilwoman in Plainfield and has led her predominantly Black congregation for more than a quarter century, has achieved other firsts as a woman: She was the first woman elected moderator of the Middlesex Central Baptist Association of New Jersey and the first African American woman to serve as a New Jersey state police chaplain.
The Rev. Tracey L. Brown preaches during the evening service of the National Baptist Convention U.S.A. Inc.’s annual session, Sept. 9, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (Video screen grab)
The Rev. Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, professor emerita of African American studies and sociology at Colby College who now teaches at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, said Brown’s preaching at the NBCUSA annual session is another marker in a gradual prominence for Black women ministers affiliated with denominations such as the NBCUSA and the Progressive National Baptist Convention Inc.
“When a door is open, for Black women preaching, whether it be at the Hampton University Ministers’ Conference or the joint board meeting of various National Baptist associations, such as NBC or PNBC, or as will happen tonight at the National Baptist Convention, when those doors are open, they are usually not shut,” she said in an interview hours before Brown’s sermon.
“The other problem for Black women preachers is they have to be twice as good to get half as far. So, women who are the first very often are beyond the best.”
This article originally appeared here.
