Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 12:2 (Fall 2007)
Article: Neanderthals Chasing Bigfoot? The State of the Gender Debate in the Southern Baptist Convention
Author: Jason G. Duesing

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JBMW 12:2 (Fall 2007) p. 5

Neanderthals Chasing Bigfoot? The State of the Gender Debate in the Southern Baptist Convention

Jason G. Duesing

Chief of Staff, Office of the President

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas

Thomas White

Vice President for Student Services,

Southwesetern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas

At the annual meeting of the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) in November 1999, messengers overwhelmingly supported a motion to affirm the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message. This effort was in opposition to the recently amended 1998 version of the same document by the national Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The 1998 SBC revision contained a new article entitled “The Family” and advocated among other things that “a wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband” (see Eph 5:22). Commenting after the BGCT vote, Fort Worth pastor and then president of the BGCT, Clyde Glazener, said that the 1998 article on the family was “Neanderthal.”1

The amendment, adopted officially in June 1998, also drew criticism from those outside the Baptist community and had been the subject of discussion in several media venues since the announcement of its proposed adoption in May of the same year. 2 After the statement’s adoption, the story continued to make headlines even in a southern California regional paper, Santa Clarita’s The Signal. Columnist John Boston wrote an opinion piece satirizing the actions of the Southern Baptist Convention, stating that he has “yet to meet a woman who ‘submits graciously.’”3 Boston opined,

Is there actually a woman out there who could be so completely—and graciously—submissive that you could just reach out and pass your hand through the light vesper of her essence? If there is, they ought to issue postcards.... They ought to capture one of these rare Baptist ladies as if she were the North American yeti. After all. A graciously submitting woman is a rare and legendary entity indeed.4

JBMW 12:2 (Fall 2007) p. 6

When it comes to seeking the biblical teaching about the complementary differences between men and women, are Southern Baptists really antiquarians pursuing myth and legend? On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the 1998 amendment on the family—the precursor to the fully revised 2000 Baptist Faith and Message—it seems appropr...

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