Featured Fundamentalist Baptist John Roach Straton

I've often noted how so many solid Fundamentalists of years past did not hold the benighted views towards women ministers that most of today's Fundamentalists do.

 

Almost exactly a century ago:

New York Tribune, Feb. 19, 1921, p.

"CALVARY BAPTIST CHURCH
West 57th St., bet. 6th and 7th Aves.
Rev. JOHN ROACH STRATON, Pastor.
Miss Amy Lee Stockton will speak at both
morning and evening services."

 

Yes, here she is featured in the paper of Canadian Fundamentalist T.T. Shields:

Jarvis Street Baptist Church The Gospel Witness April 25, 1929 p. 14 (pdf)

"For the past month special meetings have been held in the Wealthy Street Baptist Church, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, of which Rev. Dr. Van Osdel is pastor, by Miss Stockton and Miss Gould. A large number have come forward and found Christ."

 

Also favorably reported in the GARBC's paper:

Baptist Bulletin Nov/Dec 1934, p. 4 (pdf)

"Miss Stockton with her associate Miss Rita Gould, are enjoying much blessing from the Lord. They are now in Washington D.C., for two meetings; from there they go to California and back to Michigan."

 

You can see across the page in the post above the GARBC commending the Fundamentalist Baptist mission of Lucy Peabody (founder and then chairman of the board of what is now known as ABWE).

This was 1934!

It was well into the next century before the Southern Baptist Convention would get a woman chairing the trustee board of Southeastern Seminary (2018!):

Seminary chairwoman: 'God opens the door' - Baptist Press

 

Yes, such bigotry was stronger in the South but definitely present among some in the North too.

Capitol Hill Metropolitan Baptist in DC, mentioned in the second clipping above, is the church now pastored by Mark Dever. According to it's website, it has always been doctrinally conservative. Pastor John Compton Ball invited Amy Lee Stockton to preach there multiple times, from the 1910s to the 1940s.

 

newspaper article from 1932 states Amy Lee Stockton was returning for the fourth time to Capitol Hill Metropolitan Baptist Church; in 1940 it was noted she was back there to preach for the twelfth time.

 

I have in my library:

Lucy Peabody, A Wider World for Women (Fleming Revell, 1936)

Amy Lee Stockton, God's Approval of a Woman Preacher (Stockton Gould Evangelistic Campaigns and Bible Conferences, n.d)



(Lucy Peabody was also welcomed at DC's Capitol Hill Metropolitan Baptist Church)

Washington Herald, January 09, 1915, p. 5

"11 a.m., preaching by Mrs. Lucy Waterbury Peabody"

 

Well, I think that first of all we should have a criterion of Truth only in the Word of God, and not in the authority of people from past times.
Many teachers in the Early Church were wrong and even heretics. For example, Origen or the Cappadocian fathers. We are not obliged to repeat their errors and false teachings.
Well, Evangelization or Evangelism, it's still not a service in the Church. Outside people who, without faith and trust in God, a Christian woman has the right or even the obligation to preach about Christ, but in a Christian Congregation at a divine service:
¹² But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. ¹³ For Adam was first formed, then Eve. ¹⁴ And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. ¹⁵ Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.1 Timothy 2:12-15
© Библия Онлайн, 2003-2021.

 

I find this very interesting...however, I hold to only men have the biblical authority to preach and teach the assembly. Women in the pulpit is not biblical. Just because it was done doesn't mean it was right.

 

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