GA Women in Ministry group moves meeting amid restrictions                               

by   ABP staff                                                                                                                                          Vol. XV, No.10, Nov/Dec 2001

Georgia's Baptist Women in Ministry organization moved its Oct. 26-27 meeting from a Georgia Baptist Convention conference center after being advised the gathering would be monitored for content and shut down if deemed offensive by convention officials. According to a letter to the meeting's coordinator from the GBC's executive director, the group would be allowed to meet at the Georgia Baptist Conference Center only if it met guidelines including no criticism of the Southern Baptist Convention or support for the SBC breakaway group Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Specifically forbidden, according to a letter dated Sept. 12 from GBC Executive Director Robert White were:

-- Mentioning or promoting CBF.

-- Distributing materials aimed at raising funds for CBF.

-- Any "tone of sympathy or general support" of the Atlanta-based CBF.

-- Negative remarks about the Georgia Baptist Convention or Southern Baptist Convention.

-- Promotion of women serving as senior pastors, in deference to the "Baptist Faith and Message" adopted by the SBC in 2000. To promote views contrary to the doctrinal statement "would be a frontal attack" on the state and national conventions," White wrote.

-- "Strange communication" involving the use of feminist terms in worship.

The last directive, White said, related to an article that appeared last summer in Baptist Press about a national Women in Ministry meeting. "I find it difficult to believe that anyone from our tradition would refer to 'Mother God' or 'Goddess Sophia' and such," White wrote conference planner Laura Willis. "I certainly do not believe that you ... would tolerate such activity. However, the administration committee was gravely concerned and even angered about our hosting this conference at Norman Park."

White said the administration committee, which discussed the matter at a recent meeting, also objected to the primary speaker for the meeting, theology professor Molly Marshall from Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Kansas. Marshall, a former professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, resigned several years ago over conflict with the school's conservative president, Albert Mohler.

White said he had instructed observers that "should anything untoward occur in the meeting, they are to shut the meeting down immediately."

After receiving White's letter, the group eventually moved the meeting to First Baptist Church of Morrow, GA. A Georgia Woman's Missionary Union camp was considered as an alternate site but abandoned after White reportedly advised Georgia WMU leader Barbara Curnutt that it "would not be in the best interest of WMU" to host the event. [ABP]