A PROJECT named after the primary woman to check at a university for Baptist ministry, greater than 100 years ago, has produced 57 “requests for change” after a three-year study of the “theological, missional, and structural obstacles” that ladies ministers face within the Baptist community in England and Wales.
Project Violet, launched in 2021, is called after Violet Hedger, who became the primary woman to check at a university for Baptist ministry, when she entered Regent’s Park College, Oxford, in 1919. By 1926, three women had been received as accredited Baptist ministers, however it was not until the Eighties that their numbers grew significantly, a project podcast records. Today, there are greater than 2000 Baptist women ministers.
The project has been co-led by the Revd Jane Day, centenary development enabler for Baptists Together, and Dr Helen Cameron, Research Fellow on the Centre for Baptist Studies at Regent’s Park College, Oxford. Over the past three years, 16 pieces of research have been undertaken by Baptist women ministers
Last month, they met at Laude Abbey to agree the requests for change. These, and the research findings, were released on 2 May.
The requests include a call for male ministers to be “allies in private and public”, including “noticing after they are in an area where women are absent or silent and pause to ask why”. The creation of a guide on inclusive language is requested, as is a brief video for local churches on supporting the training of ministers financially. The report notes that “not all women are ready to take out personal loans to pay for his or her training and never all churches are ready to assist with the training costs of Ministers-in-Training on placement with them”.
The report observes that “the decision to ministry experienced by women is commonly preceded by a whisper that could be drowned out by other voices with out a protected space by which to debate what they’re hearing from God”, and suggests the exploration of women-only discernment events.
The research includes reflections on the Anglican experience, including its approach to holding together disparate theological views on the ministry of ladies. Local Baptist churches retain the liberty under the Declaration of Principle to interpret scripture under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and this includes the liberty to adopt a complementarian and headship theology that restricts ministry positions for girls.
In her report, the Revd Claire Nicholls, Minister of New Addington Baptist Church and a lead for gender justice on the London Baptists Women’s Justice Hub, calls for: “Some reflection and theological pondering on how complementarian views affect Baptist life and values, particularly with reference to women in leadership, and a few work on how much of this comes from institutionalised and historical patriarchy and sexism moderately than theology, whilst recognising that we will hold each complementarian and egalitarian views throughout the union and still work together.”
The advocacy part played by the C of E’s diocesan advisers in women’s ministry could possibly be “ mirrored” by the ladies’s-justice subgroup of London Baptists, she suggests.
When the co-researchers met last month to agree the requests for change, they were “overwhelmed with sadness in any respect that they had read in one another’s research”, the report says. “They are calling for a season of lament to enable the broader Baptist family to acknowledge all that has been shared.”
All of the research is obtainable online, and a final report, following responses, will likely be discussed on the Baptist Union Council on 23 October.
