Ellen, Life and Thoughts as a Female Chaplain in the Baptist Church, Hist 150H, Spring 2022, Conducted by Aidan Williamson, March 6, 2022.

Ellen [Pseudonym], (She/Her) has been a Baptist Reverend since 1996. Ellen earned a BA in economics at the College of William and Mary, and a Master of Divinity pastoral professional degree at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Ellen works as a hospice chaplain at Huntsville Hospital. She also works as a teacher, deacon, and choir member in church. Over the years,  she has been a part of many different churches, even including a Mennonite church. She currently resides in a church that she regards as politically ‘purple.’ She does not belong to the Southern Baptist Convention, and that she feels doesn’t take enough stances on issues she feels its clergy and members already agree on. She has felt called to ministry since the age of 12, and, though she faced many barriers to becoming involved with it, she persevered, and has practiced the job she has always wanted for years now.

Overview to Social Change Interview

Since the 1960s, the Southern Baptist Church has been experiencing a major resurgence of fundamentalism, including members of clergy and higher-ups in the greater Southern Baptist Convention being elected who’ve sought to stamp out any instances of what they view as “inerrancy” being practiced in the Baptist faith. This “inerrancy” tends to include stances perceived as liberalism, including being affirming of gay marriage and acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as women’s rights, most notably women’s ability to become clergy, among other issues. In this interview, Ellen delves into her experience of being a woman Baptist Reverend, including the prejudice she faced from not only other clergy she personally met, but also on a systemic level, as the increasingly fundamentalist Southern Baptist Convention fought to take away women’s rights to partake in ministry. She discusses the experience of having to move from church to church to get away from organizations that became intolerant of her life’s work, as well as some of the fundamentalist ideology that heavily contributed to the movement against women in clergy. One notable idea discussed is Complementarianism, or the belief that men and women are created for different roles, which has been utilized to argue not only that being a part of clergy is a role for men, not women, but also in some churches, that women shouldn’t even leave the home. Another topic explored is what’s been colloquially given the name “purity culture” in the Southern Baptist Church, referring to the organization’s unusual obsession with virginity, particularly in unmarried women, as well as the incredibly demoralizing and arguably abusive rhetoric that members of the Southern Baptist Faith have been known to spread regarding unmarried non-virgins. As of now, Ellen’s church is no longer a member of the Southern Baptist Convention, but rather solely affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, after being kicked out of the Convention for being supportive of women in ministry. Since childhood, Ellen has been called to ministry, but after the cultural shift discussed in this interview took place, she’s stated that she can no longer be supportive of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Research

1. In “Purity Culture and the subjugation of woman: Southern Baptist beliefs on sex and gender provide context to spa suspect’s ‘motive’” Susan M. Shaw recognizes that while the Baptist church isn’t directly at fault for the Georgia spa massacre, in which eight people were murdered, six of whom were Asian women, its culture has problems that facilitate the kind of thinking that led to it. The article discusses Baptist culture regarding its views towards women, specifically views such as complementarianism, in which some Baptists believe that while men and woman were created equal, they’re fit for different roles, i. e. men should be the head of the household, church, and larger world, and women stay at home, take care of the kids, and be dominated by men. Another view it discusses is what it calls “purity culture” in which women are held responsible for men’s inappropriate sexual behavior towards them.

Shaw, Susan M. “Purity Culture and the Subjugation of Women: Southern Baptist Beliefs on Sex and Gender Provide Context to Spa Suspect’s ‘Motive’.” The Conversation, 2 Dec. 2021, https://theconversation.com/purity-culture-and-the-subjugation-of-women-southern-baptist-beliefs-on-sex-and-gender-provide-context-to-spa-suspects-motive-157496.

2. In wake of a sexual assault scandal, “Southern Baptist Beliefs about Gender and power Contributed to the Sexual Abuse Scandal” discusses some of the problems regarding the Baptist church. It briefly mentions the complementarian view and the purity movement in the Baptist church, but also delves into the church’s “Good Ol’ Boy” mentality with regards to sexual abuse. Namely, the article addresses how the Baptist church has an ongoing problem with sexual abusers in clergy facing little to no repercussions, as well as its members being trained to use “biblical counseling” instead of any psychology-based counseling to help sexual assault survivors. It also tackles how each church has a “local church autonomy” principle, in which each church runs itself without a larger Baptist church telling it what to do, which has resulted in a lack of a registry for sexual abusers, further cementing the lack of consequences for sexual abuse.

Shaw, Susan M. “Southern Baptist Beliefs about Gender and Power Contributed to the Sexual Abuse Scandal.” Berkley Center Fo Religion, Peace and World Affairs, 25 Sept. 2019, https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/responses/southern-baptist-beliefs-about-gender-and-power-contributed-to-the-sexual-abuse-scandal.

3. “Newly leaked letter details allegations that Southern Baptist leaders mishandled sex abuse claims” details the experiences of clergy working in the Southern Baptist Church, including but not limited to clergy “covering up his own use of pastoral authority to sexually sin”, psychologically abusing survivors of sexual assault, referring to one such victim as “Potiphar’s Wife”, and eventually leaving the Southern Baptist Church over feelings of guilt for covering up everything that went down.

Bailey, Sarah Pulliam. “Newly Leaked Letter Details Allegations That Southern Baptist Leaders Mishandled Sex Abuse Claims.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 5 June 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/06/05/russell-moore-southern-baptist-sex-abuse-allegations/.

4. “Southern Baptist Convention Conservative Resurgence/Fundamentalist Takeover” details the radical conservative overhaul of the Southern Baptist Convention that began somewhere around 1960, in which liberal members of the convention were increasingly removed and replaced with more conservative members, who amended the Baptist Faith and Message (essentially the Baptist Creed) to make it more fundamentalist and take away the apparent “inerrancy” that was being practiced in the Baptist faith. It also details the multiple groups that formed to split away from the Southern Baptist Convention in reaction to this new agenda, such as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, and how, for a limited time, churches could be aligned with both organizations, before church’s stances on gay rights eventually split the two groups completely.

“Southern Baptist Convention Conservative Resurgence/Fundamentalist Takeover.” Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias, https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/6591871.

5. “Prominent Evangelical Beth Moore Announces Split from Southern Baptists” details how Beth Moore, a prominent fundamentalist Baptist writer and media influencer decided to stop identifying as Southern Baptist following a tweet she made stating she was going to be giving a speech in a Church on Mother’s Day, which ignited fierce discussions about whether or not women should be allowed to preach in the Baptist faith, a discussion which overshadowed much-needed discussion of the active investigation into a sexual assault scandal in the Southern Baptist Church that was going on at the time.

Wamsley, Laurel. “Prominent Evangelical Beth Moore Announces Split from Southern Baptists.” CapRadio, NPR, 11 Mar. 2021, https://www.capradio.org/news/npr/story?storyid=976124629.

Transcript

Aidan 0:01
So do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself?

Ellen 0:03
Sure. My name is Ellen and I am a US Baptist who has been a minister since 1994, ordained since 1996. I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, went to the College of William and Mary, and majored in economics, but I majored in economics because I’d been told by people in my church, who were seminary grads, that if I, because I’d felt called to ministry since I was 12.

And in my church, which was a moderate Southern Baptist church, they were very encouraging. And there were women in our church that were seminary graduates, most of them were employed by the Southern Baptist, Sunday School Board, the publishing arm, but they didn’t dissuade me, because we’re in our church, you know, they called everybody to use their gifts. So, they had encouraged me, not to major in religion or anything in college, but to broaden my base and to major in something else, because if I wanted to go to seminary, I’d have enough time for plenty of biblical and theological studies there. So I majored in economics and minored, in music, because music has always been extremely important to me.

And after that, I knew I felt called to ministry, but I wasn’t sure along what lines because even though my church had been very encouraging, and the Baptist Student Union at William and Mary had been encouraging, I also had not known any women ministers who were ministers in the church, and I was trying to figure out what my strengths were and what my specific calling was. So I got a job at the Baptist Foreign Mission Board in Richmond for a while, because that’s where my grandparents and all my extended family lived.

And while I was working there, I also was very active in my church in Richmond, like I had been in my church in Nashville, and started book studies and Bible studies with some of my friends at the Foreign Mission Board, who, some of whom were Christians, and some of whom were kind of seekers, because I ended up working in the computer department. So not everybody who worked there was a Christian, and had some relationships with some folks who had severe depression, and learned how to be there for folks who are going through emotional issues and be encouraging to them. And so they encouraged me to, to go to seminary, they affirmed my calling in ministry, both teaching and they said when I was teaching, sometimes I got into a preaching voice. So they were like “You’re using your preaching voice”, but also in pastoral care. And so when I felt like that calling had been clarified in my life, not only in my heart, but with feedback from people around me, then I went off to Southern Seminary and got a master’s of divinity with a concentration in pastoral care. Do you want me to go on with the trajectory of my life?

Aidan 4:10
Sure! Yeah.

Ellen 4:11
Okay. It’s, since I’m [laughs]- so, since my last semester, at Southern Seminary, I took a course in Clinical Pastoral Education, which is basically a chaplaincy a chaplaincy internship at the local level one trauma center hospital. And I really, I mean it was, you know, that sort of experience is difficult, but also clarified that I really felt called into pastoral care, and probably specifically chaplaincy.

I got several part time jobs after that, one of them being a part time job at a local nursing home doing chaplaincy there. And about a year later, I was able to find a full-time position as a nursing home chaplain- in Louisville, and was in did that for about three to four years. So during seminary, I got married, and while I was a nursing home chaplain, I had my first child, and continued to work there until I started feeling a little bit burned out with all the death, [laughs] which happens when you’re a nursing home chaplain.

Aidan 5:40
For sure, yeah.

Ellen 5:42
So I took a step away and worked for the Center for Women and Families, which is a sexual and domestic abuse shelter in Louisville for about a year before having my second child, at which point my husband finished medical school, and we moved up to South Bend, Indiana. So I had a four year old and an infant and found out that there are-number one, I didn’t have time for chaplaincy right then. I didn’t have time to work outside the home. And if I could have, I wouldn’t have made enough to like cover childcare for two small children because chaplains are not the best paid of ministers.

Aidan 6:27
Yeah.

Ellen 6:28
But [laughs] so so I just focused on being involved in church and taking care of the kids for a long time. And then we, you know, after medical school moved to southern Indiana town where I continued to-by then we had three kids-continued to just volunteer in the church, and mainly teaching in the church and in the choir and taking care of the kids. And then we moved to southern Alabama and continued to work in the church, focus on the kids, and started wanting to get back into chaplaincy, but there weren’t very many opportunities there at that time, and then eventually moved to North Alabama at a time that the kids were old enough so that I didn’t have to be home all the time. I didn’t have to worry about childcare or how they were doing or anything and started volunteering at a local hospice and then got a part time position at the local hospital focusing on palliative care while being very involved in church, being a Sunday school teacher, choir member and deacon at my local church and then moved into hospice chaplaincy while maintaining a part time position at the hospital. And during all this time, I’ve also done preaching when at different churches when they’ve invited me or when the pastor was going to be away. Continue to do that one of my friends is a Presbyterian pastor and local small community where ever he’s out of town. I have preached at his church so that’s kind of who I am and what I’ve been doing.

Aidan 8:20
So I actually, I want to get back to-I’m going a little bit off script but just want to go back to something you were talking about earlier. With you said you worked with like a women and children, like, sexual abuse shelter. So what was that like? Like what sorts of things did you do?

Ellen 8:49
So mainly I was hired at that time because I was just looking for a job to you know, just give me a break from the chaplaincy, because I was having like 50 deaths a year at the nursing home and doing multiple funerals a week sometimes. Especially December’s were awful. So I got [what] was mainly a clerical position doing computer stuff, running reports and everything, but you got to see the work of the domestic violence shelter and support them as well as the support for victims of sexual abuse. And so I got to see a lot of what they did, but I was mainly clerical at that point.

Aidan 9:40
So, um, and I know the memory might be a little bit fuzzy because it seems like it was a while back but like what sorts of things do you remember them doing to like help the victims if you remember much at all?

Ellen 9:58
Well for sexual abuse, they had a lot of sexual abuse counselors there. And they also had legal advocates to help women through the legal system if they chose to, to try to bring the abusers to justice. And, you know, you have to do a lot of counseling to figure out whether you’re up for that or not. And then on the domestic abuse, the domestic violence side, you know, it was a shelter, you know, you could not Google it and find it. So that- and they had bulletproof glass and bars on the windows, to make sure that someone couldn’t get in. But they had counseling for the women and their children there. They tried to make sure they stayed connected to the local school systems. They had a thrift store so that people could donate to the families. And those were the kinds of things that they had there. They were starting to have some satellite shelters in southern Indiana, too, because there wasn’t a whole lot. You know, there’s never enough support or enough space in shelters for all the women who usually use or need that.

Aidan 11:30
Yeah, and these- I want to- I want to clarify so these shelters, were they like church run or church affiliated?

Ellen 11:37
Oh, no no. They were not. These were secular, not church affiliated. Because they wanted to make sure that anyone would feel like they could come to the shelter. It was definitely, you know, secular so that all would feel welcomed and saved.

Aidan 11:56
Yeah. And this, this was a job- you said you were doing clerical stuff there.

Ellen 12:02
Yeah.

Aidan 12:03
So could you, clari- harp on that a little bit?

Ellen 12:06
Well, I was part of the developmental arm, as in fundraising, keeping track of all the donors, and helping out with their, with their financial appeals, and their annual award and fundraising banquet, and all those things.

Aidan 12:28
Okay. Yeah. So rough job, but, you know, it’s certainly honorable. So, I know you said, you had a lot of- a lot of people were very encouraging with the process of getting your job. But do you think there were any barriers that you’ve personally faced in the process, whether they be systematic or social, that a man probably wouldn’t?

Ellen Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, I’m very fortunate that I grew up in a moderate Southern Baptist Church, in Nashville, where we had so many people who were graduates of seminary, including some women- that is not the case for the vast majority of- especially Baptist women, but a lot of women in general. And so, you know, the first time I personally, you know, felt that there were people around me who were discouraged, discouraging, when they may have heard about their choice in [feed cuts out, unintelligible] within the Baptist church. But I didn’t feel that because of my immediate church that I grew up in, in Nashville. But when I got to William and Mary, I’ll always remember, I mean, within the first week or two of college, talking with this young man, who was very active in the BSU, who was starting to date one of my best friends, and he let me know, you know, without a shadow [of a doubt]- and I, you know, we were talking about the kind of things we wanted to do, and I said, that I felt called to ministry, he said, “Well, women can’t be pastors.” And I said, “Oh, really?”, you know, and he was very, you know, adamant about that. And the thing about him, and I’m not gonna name who it is, because he has actually become- [laughs] become a leader in his field. People could Google it, but-

Geez.

Ellen 14:41
Later on, you know, I took four years between college and seminary, you know, trying to do that discerning and working at the Foreign Mission Board trying to figure out what I wanted to do in seminary, and he was a year ahead of me and then went straight to seminary, so, by the time I got to seminary, he went to the same seminary, but then went and did PhD work at a at a another non-Baptist very- one of the top seminaries in the nation. And while I was at seminary, he had finished his PhD, and was called back to our seminary to have a job teaching in his field. Okay? And so I had, you know, been friends with him in the BSU. But I had held a grudge against him for the way that the relationship with his best friend, but then my best friend had ended. And-

Aidan: For sure, yeah.

And then- and he knew that, and then now here he was- and I still remember that first conversation from freshman year. And so I went to him during office hours at the seminary, and decided I needed to clear the air because I don’t like carrying a grudge for years. And it had been years. [laughs] So I thought, you know, I need to confess to him that I’ve carried this grudge. And, you know, I knew his wife because she started dating her after he dated my roommate. And so, you know, I went and confessed that I held a grudge because of those two things, and we talked and, I said- You know what, I mentioned that he had said that women can’t be pastors. And he said, “I said that?” I’m like, “Yes, you did.” And he said, “Well, I was stupid back then.” And I said, “Well, I appreciate that.” You know, “What changed your mind?” And he said, “The thing that changed my mind was coming to seminary, and seeing, you know, women who were fellow students with me, and seeing their schoolwork and the things that they were doing, and that their gifts for ministry, and their calling for ministry was just as strong as most of the men around them, just seeing the fruits of their work”. Okay. When I got to that seminary, it was still very open to women in ministry, probably the most open of all the Baptist seminaries. My theology professor was a woman. And the second unit of CPE that I did, after I graduated while I was a nursing home chaplain was taught by a woman who was a professor there in pastoral care, and gotten her PhD there.

But as I was there at the seminary, the fundamentalists, who had been trying to take over the Southern Baptist Convention starting in the 70’s, had taken over the Southern Baptist Convention to the point where they had been appointing only fundamentalists who were against women in ministry to the boards of the seminaries, and had been taking those seminaries over one at a time to purge the folks that they considered to be liberal. And, you know, the one thing that you could do or say that would label you as liberal is to be supportive of women in ministry. That was one thing that they fundamentalists were definitely against. So while I was getting my MDiv [Master’s Degree of Divinity], they had taken over and the president that was there when I got there retired and the board made sure that the next president would tow the line in the fundamentalist way and would be against women in ministry. And so it was very distressing to a lot of us there at the time, especially the women students.

And so the Southern Baptist Convention had definitely made a lot of public statements and resolutions against women being ordained, and women being pastors by the time I graduated from seminary, and so while I was a chaplain at the nursing home there, during the three or four years after graduating from seminary, I did feel very isolated. Because in just about every town, there is a ministerial association that they invite all the pastors to be part of and oftentimes they’ll open it to chaplains and stuff too, and another ministers in town, and I never felt like I could seek out, you know, membership in the ministerial association, where if I did, it would be a welcoming place because of being a female Baptist minister.

And so I didn’t seek that out and felt, I think one reason that I burned out in Nursing Home Ministry after a little over three years, three and a half, almost four years was because I didn’t have any colleagues I could talk to. I did not know, another woman chaplain in town. I did not know another- or at least a[nother] nursing home chaplain, you know, and I did not know, another Baptist woman was a pastor in town at that point, I don’t think, and so, you know, maybe ministry is hard in general, and dealing with so much death as you do as a nursing home minister, it’s really good to have a support group of other ministers so that y’all can support each other, because you can’t seek out support in the place where you work, because you’re supposed to be the support for them. And ministers in churches, and chaplains all face that; that they don’t feel like they can reach out to the places where they work for support, they have to seek support outside. And as a woman in Ministry, I felt like there wasn’t a place that I could get support. Now all these years later, so I I left the chaplaincy and went to the women and children’s in about 1998.

And when I started chaplaincy, where I live now, by then, there were a lot more women in ministry around and I was welcomed in the association of pastoral care in town. And because of that, you know, I’ve been able to have a leadership role in the local association of pastoral care among fellow chaplains. We have a chaplain support group that has both men and women in it. And at this point, there are several Episcopalian pastors, Presbyterian, some Methodist pastors who are women in town. And so, you know, there’s more collegiality. One thing I should mention is that around the time I was- actually about the time I got married, in ’91, the moderates, and liberals in the Southern Baptist Convention broke off because of the women in ministry thing, and you mentioned the autonomy of the local church.

Aidan 23:24
Hey, this is the interviewer listening to the recording of the interview post-production. To give a bit of context for:

Ellen 23:31
“and you mentioned the autonomy of the local church.”

Aidan 23:34
Before the interview was conducted, I had a set of questions already laid out that I wanted to ask Ellen, and to make sure that she was comfortable discussing everything, I sent the list of questions to her beforehand. The question she’s referring to here is, “From what I’ve read, the Baptist Church has a principle of local church autonomy, in which each church essentially governs itself, instead of acting as a network, when dealing with internal affairs. Is this an accurate representation of how the church functions? If so, do you think the same principle applies to your local churches’ stances on social issues?”

Ellen 24:07
And you mentioned the autonomy of the local church, the way that our structure is supposed to be is that each church gets decide for themselves, who they call into ministry, what their policies and procedures are, what their stances are on things. But the fundamentalist wanted more control. They wanted to make sure that churches within the Southern Baptist Convention if they wanted to be a part of their local and state associations, that they did not ordain women in ministry. So associations throughout the ’80s and ’90s, the local associations and the state associations, were kicking out churches that ordained women. And so by ’91, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was started for moderate Baptists to still believed in the autonomy of the local church, including allowing churches to decide who they want to call into ministry. So, you know, not every church that joined the CBF wanted to have women in ministry, but they didn’t want to kick out other churches that did. And so, basically, since then, I’ve been either a part of churches that were either dually aligned with the SBC and the CBF, or we were a part [of], in Indiana, there are not as many Southern Baptist churches and I didn’t know of any CBF churches and we were part of an American Baptist church that had a woman as an associate pastor while we were there. I was part of the Mennonite church for a while when we were in northern Indiana. And while I was a nursing home chaplain, my husband joined a local Mennonite church just to get away from the Baptist wars. And they were more conservative, but they let me preach one time, because they said that they knew that I was under my husband’s authority. And you should have seen my husband’s face when they said, that we kind of looked at each other.

Aidan 26:27
God. Yeah.

Ellen 26:28
[Laughs] Like, “But we know you’re under your husband’s authority.” And he was like, oh, like, “[Awkwardly] Yeah…” but anyway, so they let me preach anyway, so I stepped into that role, because I figured that they might not have had a chance to hear a woman preach.

Aidan 26:42
And just- just to be- to be clear, did your husband have any kind of like, experience or study in the field of religion? Aside from just being Christian?

Ellen 26:54
Yeah. And that, yeah, it was interesting. He, he majored in philosophy. And, he had been a Christian all his life, assemblies of God and Baptist, and whatever he was a part of when he went to the College of the actually University of St. Andrews in Scotland. And then when he came back in the States, you know, he joined a Baptist church, he was actually taking some classes at seminary when I met him. He was feeling called into possible medical ministry, he was wanting to study to be a doctor. And so he was taking an ethics class with some close friends of mine when we met. I was looking for a place to stay and, because the place where I had been living off campus, the house was getting ready to be sold, and I needed a place to stay before I could move into another house. And so he was going to be away at National Guard boot camp over the summer. And my friend knew that because they become good friends in this ethics class, and introduced us as me needing a place to stay and him having a place. So anyway, so that’s how we met each other. I ended up living in his place, memorizing his phone number before we ever started dating, which was interesting. But, he did have a few classes of seminary, he did not go for a degree. I don’t know how many classes he ended up taking, just like a handful. But he was very open to women in ministry, and very supportive. From the moment we met. From before we met, he was supportive of women in ministry, and has been extremely supportive of me through our whole relationship.

Aidan 29:03
That’s good.

Ellen 29:05
Yeah.

Aidan 29:05
I still can’t believe the Mennonite church just was like, “Oh, yeah, you can preach but it’s because you’re under your husband’s authority.” [laughs]

Ellen 29:14
Right, so you have one of your questions about complementarianism. And the Mennonite Church, which I didn’t know till I was a part of it, if you get to know the Baptists, [you] get to know how many flavors of Baptist there are. The Southern Baptists, the American Baptists, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Freewill Baptists, the Missionary Baptists, and among African Americans, the Progressive Baptists, and the National Baptists. It’s just- they have split so many times over the years for different reasons. And there’s just like dozens of flavors of Baptist.

Aidan 29:54
And I- I do want to interrupt just for a second just so people listening know what the question is. One of the questions that I sent her is that- another phrase that I continue to come across is the idea of complementarianism, where men and women are seen as equal, but made to do different things and whether or not this sounds like a belief she’s heard thrown around a lot in the church, or if it’s something that’s more obscure, and what are her thoughts on it?

Ellen 30:30
And so, I found out that that’s that- and I’ll define complementarianism in a second. But, when I was part of the Mennonite church for a few years, I found out that they have splits within the Mennonite Church as well. There’s the main organization [which] is more moderate, including being open to women in ministry. In fact, the church that we were part of in North Indiana had a couple who were co pastors, and the husband had more administrative skills, so he was more of the administrative pastor, and she had greater preaching skills, so she was the main preacher. He preached sometimes, but she was the main preacher, which was very interesting coming from my background. I hadn’t seen many women preach.

So as a part of the fundamentalist takeover of Baptists, one of their big issues [was] whether you were biblical enough, whether you met their criteria of believing in the Bible without any error, which they they talk about inerrancy [Ellen clarified post-interview that this usually refers to liberalism] [one of the beliefs they emphasize you need to follow] is whether you hold to this concept of complementarianism. And that is a concept that they started defining and fleshing out more and more over the ’70s and ’80s, and I didn’t hear it completely defined and pushed hard, until the late ’80s and ’90s. And this is the belief that women are equal in the sight of God and in salvation, but that as part of God’s order, that we have separate, complimentary gender roles that are set up by God. That in order to be a faithful Christian, you have to stay in your roles, and over the years, different people have defined what those roles are in different ways. There were some people that believed that women could teach and occasionally preach but not be the lead pastor, not be the highest authority in the church.

And the more they have doubled down on these roles, oftentimes, the more strict they’ve been, so now for a lot of people complementarianism is a means that you couldn’t be ordained as a deacon. That you couldn’t be- well, number one, you can’t be ordained and therefore you can’t be an ordained member of staff, and that women cannot teach men or have any authority over men in the church. So maybe you could be a minister to children but not be licensed to a pastor, or, you know, in some churches, women cannot be Sunday school teachers if there are men in their classes. So being a woman who is called to ministry, I’ve never joined one of those churches. [laughs]

Aidan 34:07
Yeah, I can see why. Yeah.

Ellen 34:10
So you know, once the cooperative Baptist Fellowship became a thing in ’91, I’ve always- before I visited a Church I try to find out what their views on these things are. I’m not going to waste my time trying to check out a church that I know would be upset with who I am. You know, while I was still in Louisville, working for the nursing home is when my home church in Nashville ordained me as a minister, I got MDiv [Masters of Divinity] in ’95 And then- no, ’94. Excuse me. And then January of ’96, after I’d been working as a nursing home chaplain for a while, my church in Nashville agreed to ordain me. And that’s when I got the title of reverend, which I only use sometimes, but mostly I’m Chaplain these days, because that’s what people understand. So, you know, in places where there are cooperative Baptist fellowships, churches, or churches that are dually aligned, I will visit those churches because we moved around a lot. And then up in Indiana, I sought out an American Baptist Church knowing that as a denomination, they are okay with women in ministry. So I haven’t put myself in the position to get a lot of blowback, because [laughs] I just do my homework. And don’t try to force myself into places where I’m not wanted.

Aidan 35:58
Yeah, I- and this is- this is sort of a minor point. Going back a little bit to what you were talking about with- the Baptist Church has a principle of local church autonomy, and they’re supposed to deal with internal affairs, like, independently of each other. But then there was a fundamentalist takeover and they wanted to, like, gain more control of each of the churches. What sorts of power came out of ,like, these connections- like with these churches that- like with these like- the church associations, do they have like, shared funding, or, what is the benefit of having the churches linked? Or how does that work?

Ellen 36:48
Okay, that’s a very good question. So the way that Baptist polity has worked since the beginning of the Southern Baptist Convention, which was established in about 1840- and this is just history, you don’t have to- you can edit this out. But just so you know why. Originally Baptists cooperated in America to pool their money for home and foreign missions. And the Baptists who were pooling their money that way had a convention every three years. So they were called Triennial Convention Baptists, okay, because they got together every three years, and they pooled their money just for home and foreign missions. And in the 1830s, northern abolitionists became upset with the fact that Southern ministers were wanting to be sent overseas as foreign missionaries, to evangelize other countries, including Africa, while also owning African slaves. And the head of the mission sending agencies wanted to stop appointing missionaries who owned slaves. And the southerners were a little bit upset about that, and so they broke off from the Triennial Convention to make the Southern Baptist Convention, and I should look it up to be sure, but it was, you know, in the 18[00s], it was like 1840, 1844, around then.

And they would first pool their money into their local associations, usually by by like county, or, you know, or several counties together. And then to support education and cooperation among the local churches. And then most of that money would also be funneled into the state convention, the state association, and part of that money would be would go to mission stuff and in [to] support within the state, but the largest portion of that would be funneled up into what they called the cooperative program. This is all part of what’s called the cooperative program, and your church giving money through your local association to the state and then to the National Cooperative Program, and the cooperative program funded fun foreign missions and home missions. And the what used to be called the Sunday school board for the teaching literature, which became known as Lifeway stores for for all of the the literature for Sunday school and training unions, and and all of that sort of stuff. And then they had the Christian life Commission, which eventually morphed into the Ethics and Religious Liberty board. And they, you know, cooperation of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, so all these different associations, and that’s through the cooperative program.

So that was the reason for cooperation in the the way Baptists cooperate, and they had started having conventions every year to, to talk about what they were doing, and to make resolutions and have reports from all the different agencies and all of that sort of stuff. And they didn’t really ex[ert]- the only way they exert power over the different churches that cooperate- you just become a member by sending money through the cooperative program. And giving and kind of recognizing in like 1963, they passed a statement called the Baptist Faith and Message which kind of outlined the basic beliefs that they would assent to, but it wasn’t policed in any way. And so it was just kind of, “We’re Baptists, this is the closest thing we have to a, a creed, it’s kind of a general statement of our beliefs”, okay?

Now, as the fundamentalists took over, they wanted to make people sign and assent to every part of the Baptist faith and message and if you disagreed with any part of it, you know, they may not appoint you as a missionary, they wouldn’t let you work at the convention things. And then once they changed the Baptist faith and message to make sure that they said that women could not be ordained ministers, and that women could not be pastors, because Eve was the first in the fall, and led Adam to sin. And therefore, that’s why women could not be ministers. And then, added a part about complementarianism and stuff. So they had a mechanism for kicking churches out of their local and state conventions if they did not tow the line. So that’s how they’ve exerted control, is by kicking churches out. Now, it’s interesting how money works with that, because it’s all- I mean, the basis of cooperation is the money, the cooperative program.

Aidan 42:55
Right.

Ellen 42:56
And here in my town, some of the largest churches in our county started ordaining women as deacons in the ’80s or ’90s. And because those churches were some of the biggest funders of the local association, there was grumbling about that, but they did not kick those churches out of the local association, even when they started ordaining women to other ministerial positions like associate pastor. I don’t think there’s one in town that’s had a lead pastor, that was still cooperating with the Southern Baptists and the thing about the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is, you could be dually aligned, they did not require you to disavow your Southern Baptist Convention support in order to also support the cooperative Baptist Fellowship. It was a looser- well, they doubled down on the autonomy of the local church. So they let the local churches decide who they want it to be associated with, and didn’t require it to be exclusive. Okay?

So our church and many churches continued to be dually aligned because they liked sending money for the foreign and home missionaries and to support some of the other things that Southern Baptist Convention was still doing. But [in] many places around the country they would kick you out if you started supporting women in ministry. In this county, they didn’t, because some of the best funders of the whole Association have women deacons and have had women associate pastors and stuff. The church that I’ve been a part of since 2013, since we moved here finally got kicked out of the local- we were dually aligned, CBF and SBC, [then we] got kicked out of our local association and then therefore the state association, and then the national.

When one of the women who had been ordained by our church but did not have a staff position, and at the time wasn’t even a deacon, but she took part in what was billed in our town, as wedding week, after the Supreme Court made same sex marriage legal. Because so many churches in our town would not marry same sex couples, some activists around town got local ministers who would together to have wedding week at our local park, any same sex couples who wanted to be married, could come to the park and these ministers would marry them, okay? Would officiate their marriage. And so a friend of mine at our church agreed to be one of the officiants, in fact, she was the first to perform a same sex marriage in our town, maybe in Alabama, but at least in our town.

And so when she was interviewed for the local news, and it got broadcast nationally, that she was a Baptist minister, they wanted to know what church she went to. And she mentioned our church, even though she wasn’t on staff, and she wasn’t a deacon our church. But immediately, the church started getting a lot of phone calls, and blowback, and our church hadn’t taken a stand on same sex marriage at that point. We hadn’t had any vote on that one way or the other. And we had people in our church that are conservative, and people in our church that are liberal, and a lot of people in our church that are moderate. And there were a lot of people very upset that all of a sudden, we were in the national news for a stance that our church as a whole had never voted on, or discussed voting on.

And so because our pastor, you know, was supportive of same sex marriage, even though he had not performed one at that point, and was not going to kick out my friend because of what she did, and said that our church doesn’t have a stance on that right now, But, you know, “I have preached sermons saying that I don’t see anything wrong with same sex marriage”, then that’s when they kicked us out. And our church still has not taken a stand, one way or the other. I think it’s going to happen within the next few years. We’re going through a, you know, kind of identity sort of- defining time in our church right now is we decide how to brand ourselves within our own community. And I think part of that is going to be finally taking a stand for being completely affirming of LGBTQ folks. And I hope it’ll include taking a stand being okay with same sex marriage. We’ll see. We’re still in the process. But in there are a few folks that are upset that we have been dragging our feet too much, including my oldest child, but anyway. [laughs]

Aidan 48:50
Yeah.

Ellen 48:53
So anyway, that’s how it works and how they have had more- they’ve tried to double down on control by changing the Baptist Faith and Message to delineate these things, making it a bigger thing that people have to assent to have any denominational influence or jobs, and then also encouraging local associations to kick out churches that don’t tow the line.

Aidan 49:27
So you talked a lot about how, as the- yeah, as the fundamentalist takeover took place. They tried to make things more, like, fundamentalist and they tried to get rid of women and clergy more. In terms of- and you can make the distinction in terms of with your local church and then the Baptist faith as a whole, do you think the view on women not only in clergy, but also in general, has moved forward or backward at this point, than [as opposed to] what it was a couple years ago or when you- or when you started?

Ellen 50:20
The Southern Baptist Convention has moved farther and farther back. They keep on delineating more and more things that are not acceptable. You know, they used to say, well, you know, “women can’t be lead pastors”, then “women can’t be ordained at all” women- in a lot of places, women can’t teach men and they’ve had a brouhaha over the last couple of years over the most popular- okay, there- they have different, you know, video Bible studies, and, you know, popular authors who have Bible study series. And one of the the most popular women Bible study leaders, who had a lot of books and video Bible Studies, and conferences was Beth Moore. And you can google her later. But she was the one of the very best selling- had been best selling women’s Bible Study leader since the ’90s. Okay.

And when she was invited to speak at a Southern Baptist Church on Mother’s Day, a couple of years ago, or may have even been last year time flies, I don’t know. But [laughs] recently in the last couple of years, it was huge that she was being “disobedient to God”, that she was a “harlot”, that she was a “Jezebel” and “heretic”, and that she was “leading people astray”. And even though she was one of the best selling authors of books and videos with Lifeway, there was enough of a backlash that they stopped, they broke their contract with her and stopped selling her stuff.

She was pushed out of the Southern Baptist Convention she has joined. And see the thing is we talked about complementarianism. She considers herself to be a complementarianism- I mean- to abide by complementarianism, and, you know, has never tried to be a pastor. I don’t think she’s ordained. She’s never sought an ordination. She has followed the line that the fundamentalists set for her all these years, until she crossed a line when when she said yes to speaking from a pulpit on Sunday. The same sort of stuff she does all the time in her ministry as a Bible Study leader. And she joined the North American Anglican church or whatever, which actually is a break away from the Episcopal Church, when the Episcopal Church became more affirming of women in ministry and more affirming of LGBTQ folks. So she joined the conservative complementarian side of former Episcopals known as the North American Anglican Church, because the Southern Baptists became too inhospitable. For her, even though she’s a very conservative person.

So the Southern Baptist Convention continues to double down more and more. They set up in the late ’80s or ’90s, the [mockingly] Center for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Yeah, and they have been pushing out, you know, according to them, women shouldn’t even work outside the home. And they have been pushing that, you know, that’s what complementarianism means for them. They’ve been pushing a hard patriarchy that women can never say no to their husbands, or they have to- yeah, they can’t. The husband has to completely lead and rule over his household. Have you ever seen the the umbrella diagram?

Aidan 54:54
I have, but just to reiterate, for those listening.

Ellen 55:00
Okay, so God is over all, okay? So there’s this big umbrella, okay? Of protection for people, that God is over all, but then the pastor is God’s protection over the rest of Christian people. And under that is the men, under the pastor, are the protection for their families. And then there is a smaller umbrella of women being protection over their children, okay. And so that’s how the authority- they see it as a protection thing, of course, you know, children need to be protected by their mothers and they and the women and children need to be protected by their- the husband, father figure. And they need to be the under the protection and guidance of their pastor who is under the protection and guidance of God, sort of thing. And it’s been very interesting over the years, as these churches have been kind of, doubled down on the patriarchy, on this complementarianism thing, which they consider to be you know, that women and men are equal in the sight of God, and they’re equally called by God into their individual roles, okay. And this is for the protection of women, and children.

Aidan 56:32
[sarcastically] Uh-huh.

Ellen 56:32
The sex abuse scandals that we have seen have been primarily in these patriarchal, authoritarian, fundamentalist churches. Haven’t seen them so much in the egalitarian churches that encourage women to be whatever they want to be, and to serve God in whatever way they feel called. And so the CBF churches are more egalitarian. They have not had, at this point, any sex abuse scandal things, whereas the Catholic Church, which is very patriarchal, and the Southern Baptist Convention, have been going through their own sexual abuse scandals, where they find that when men, especially who have some sort of authority in their local churches, whether it be senior pastor or youth, pastor or whatever, are accused of sexual abuse, they try to protect the church by handling it within the church, they try to keep the women or children silent, and if they don’t want to be silent, they try to discourage them from going to the law, and they try to discourage them from speaking out. And if they do, they malign them and try to silence them and discredit them. And so the women who become victims of any men in those churches, very rarely feel protected, experience any protection. The protection always flows to those in power. And they protect the power of  the men and the power of the institution over the women and children.

Aidan 58:27
Yeah, I, I have actually read a little- a little bit about that. One of the things I’ve read is that, like- I probably- I probably shouldn’t say too much, because I don’t want to, like say something that isn’t entirely right. But yeah, I, I’ve heard that like, with- when it comes to sexual abuse, Southern Baptist churches sometimes will just kind of coun- give the abuse survivors, quote-unquote, “biblical counseling”, but then, like, not ever have any kind of like- legal counseling there or like, any, like, psychology based-

Ellen 59:23
Therapy?

h. 59:24
In that area. Yeah.

Ellen 59:26
Right. And that- you know, I’ve been following a lot of survivors of sexual abuse within the Southern Baptist Convention on Twitter over the last year or two. I remember when I was in seminary, in the I got to seminary in ’89, and took a year off in the middle and everything, and was working my way through and graduated in ’94. That was when it was beginning to be- the survivors of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church was beginning to come out, and finding out the ways that the Roman Catholic Church had protected the priests instead of protecting the children and/or the women or whoever was sexually abused. And I began to hear from women at the seminary that they were trying to start raising raise those issues, even back then in the ’90s, within the Southern Baptists context. And the Southern Baptists have always said starting then, that is up to the local church, we cannot, we cannot police those things. It’s a denomination because of our autonomy of the local church, it is up to the local church to handle those things. And we don’t have a say over who at Church calls, or who at church, you know, throws out of the ministry that is a local church matter. And so we can’t have any say over it.

So they won’t disfellowship a church that has kept someone on staff who is accused of sexual abuse. But they will disfellowship a church that has called a woman to minister ordained a woman. So there have been several things that survivors started speaking out [about] more in the last few years. And there was one woman who actually had a staff position at one of the seminaries. And while she was at the seminary, she was groomed into an abusive relationship by one of the professors at the seminary. And she, you know- there’s so much psychological grooming that it’s hard for people to come out of that abuse-

Aidan 1:01:50
Yeah.

Ellen 1:01:50
And to speak about what they’re going through. Especially- well, I mean, it’s hard for children because they don’t think they’re going to be, and they’re told they’re not going to be believed, and it’s hard for women, because they’re guilted into feeling like they’re responsible, even though it’s someone who has authority over them, you know, Professor over student.

Aidan 1:02:08
Yeah, I do want to-

Ellen 1:02:10
Mhm?

Aidan 1:02:10
I do want to just, real quick, to throw this out there, what you’re- what you’re getting into- so, what you’re describing now, I’ve- in my research I’ve continually seen this idea of purity culture, where-

Ellen 1:02:30
Mm yeah.

Aidan 1:02:30
Did you want to go ahead and describe that?

Ellen 1:02:33
Yeah, and see, this is something that I’m fortunate because I grew up in a moderate Baptist Church. And because this purity culture started becoming a big thing, mainly in the ’80s, while I was in semin[ary]- while I was in college, and then going into seminary, so it wasn’t, during my time in youth group. I was in a youth group, mainly in the ’70s. And it hadn’t become a big thing then but as the fundamentalists were taking over, part of that was promoting purity culture. And for those-

Aidan
Did you want to- sorry, did you want to go ahead and give like a definition? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And so the program that Southern Baptist had was called True Love Waits. So they felt like they and it arose out of the horror of the Sexual Revolution of the ’60s, and how that was, excuse me, playing out in the ’70s in the ’80s. And, basically, you know, they wanted to make sure that, that youth knew that sex outside of marriage was always wrong. And that, you know, youth needed to keep themselves pure for marriage. But a lot of that responsibility tended to fall on the girls and the women to maintain their purity, make sure they were not wearing anything, or in any situation that would tempt the young boys or men around them. Because the girls are temptresses, and if you are not watching what you’re wearing, that you will cause the boys or the men around you to sin. And there were a lot of books that came out about this and that they, in order to to enforce this, that they needed to recognize they were under their Father’s authority, until he turned them over to their husband’s authority whenever they got ready to marry.

And so they would have Purity Balls where pre-pubescent or pubescent young girls would have dances with their father, with their father as their date and they would get purity rings- their rings from their fathers showing that they were going to be under his authority and be pure until they got married. And it’s- to me, it was just- it’s [a] very creepy sort of thing.

Aidan 1:05:16
Yeah.

Ellen 1:05:17
And so, women were taught that number one they had, they had to acquiesce to their Father’s authority until they had a husband and they had to acquiesce to his authority, and that they had to constantly monitor everything they did, and said and wore, so that they would not lead a male around them to lustful thoughts or temptation. And the basic way that that played out was any girl who, who was felt pressured, or groomed into a sexual relationship by their boyfriend, or by an authority figure, that they must be at least partially or mostly responsible for the sin that they fell into. Because if they had not, you know, they must have done something to have led to that. And in that made it harder for, for girls and women who, who were victims of sexual abuse to come forward. Because there was that guilt in that in part of the purity culture.

And a lot of it was in absence training that was popular during the Bush years, it had been popular before then, but then federal money went into it, starting during the Bush years, they would talk about a Kleenex or a piece of gum, okay? That a girl who would- you know, have sexual experiences before marriage was like a used Kleenex, or a piece of gum, that had been passed around and chewed by different people and that, who would want that used Kleenex or that piece of gum, you know, that’s only good to be thrown away, sort of thing, would never be good enough to actually be a wife at that point. And that kind of imagery was taught to middle school and high school girls, not only in churches, but in schools. And so the Southern Baptist purity culture was part of the the fundamentalist and evangelical culture in general, they got actual federal funding for the for the absence training in schools. And so anyway, yeah.

Aidan 1:07:54
Yeah, I definitely heard about the movement. I don’t know exactly when it started, or exactly when it stopped. But of just or e[even]-, or even if it has- I don’t think it really has stopped at this point. But the movement to just- instead of giving sexual education, just telling kids “Don’t have sex. And also if you have sex, you are a very terrible monster, and you should feel like crap about it.”

Ellen 1:08:25
Right. “You’re like, you’re like a used Kleenex” or-

Aidan 1:08:29
Yeah.

Ellen 1:08:30
“a used piece of gum.” And yeah, you’re basically trash. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, once you have given up your virginity, then you’re no longer worthy of- being married, or- you know, it’ll ruin you for the rest of your life sort of thing. Yeah.

Aidan 1:08:57
Yeah.

Ellen 1:08:59
Yeah. So that- yeah, that’s purity, and there’s a lot of groups now that help people heal from those messages. And I see a lot of people online that are kind of supporting each other trying to get out of the feelings that and the baggage that they’ve carried from those messages, growing up with those messages, but I am thankful. I mean, you know, I was taught not to have sex before marriage, but it wasn’t that heavy handed and that, you know, making you feel like you would be like you said a monster, a terrible person if you didn’t live up to that ideal that scarred me for life. I didn’t have that in [my childhood]- but that’s because of the kind of church I grew up in. They were not heavy handed or felt like that was important to to hammer into to young people, but there were a lot of churches, especially in the ’80s and ’90s and probably 2000s, and even now in a lot of the churches that have that heavy handed culture, yeah.

Aidan 1:10:10
For sure, yeah. So- so you were talking earlier about how you worked, sort of giving, like sort of helping out various people in need with the job as a nursing- what was the word? I forgot.

Ellen 1:10:32
Well, I was a nursing home chaplain, and then a hospital chaplain and now a hospice chaplain.

Aidan 1:10:39
Yeah. So in terms of- what sort of- is your training for that? Because I know that like, When you’re training for helping people sorts of jobs, sometimes there are like guidelines that you can generally use, but how would you describe like, what the training was?

Ellen 1:11:07
So while I was in seminary, you know, you could- I mean there were certain, you know, classes you had to take, just like in college, you’ve got some classes you have to take. And then there were a lot of electives. And I chose a path for pastoral care. And that’s what we talked about where you’re helping people in need, one on one with spiritual distress with, you know, all these different issues that people go through. And, that was my focus when I got at seminary. And so I took all those extra classes of how to provide pastoral care, [a] class on anger, [a] class on, you know, the different issues that people go through and studied, you know, helping people who have had a loved one die to suicide, and all of those different things.

So I had those classes in seminary, then, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, my last semester, I had a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), which is a chaplain intern program. And in order to be a board certified chaplain, with the Association of Professional Chaplains, you have to have at least four units, like four semesters of CPE, and then go through a lot of paper writing about your different views on things, you have to do some research and you have to go through all these interview processes to be board certified.

I am not board certified, I have two units of CPE, to have that extra training. But at that time, I didn’t have the opportunity or the money to have- unfortunately, a lot of the CPE programs around me were volunteer programs. So you would have to pay to be part of the program and not be paid while you were a chaplain. And so, you know, I was not being supported by my parents at that point, my husband was also a student. And so I couldn’t just take off and not be paid at all for a while. And so I only took two units. And the second unit was while I was a full time chaplain in a nursing home, and then started having kids and focused on that.

Since then, here in North Alabama, I found that being a board certified Chaplain is not valued in North Alabama. And so I’ve done some extra training, while I’ve been a hospital and hospice chaplain, but I haven’t gone for all four units in board certification, because it’s money and a lot of work, and it would not, in this area of the country, open any more doors for me, or increase the how much I’m paid as a chaplain. It’d be nice. If it would, I think this area would be much better served if they valued Chaplain education, but but they don’t. [laughs.] So-

Aidan 1:14:36
Yeah.

Ellen 1:14:37
So the the training should be classes in seminary that are specific for pastoral care. And then having one or two units of Clinical Pastoral Education. More is better.

Aidan 1:14:58
Yeah.

Ellen 1:14:58
And yeah. But there are a lot of chaplains in this area where I live right now, who are just part time or retired pastors who may not have taken pastoral care classes while they were in seminary because they were focusing on being preachers. But because they are pastors and are ordained, the hospices, the hospitals around them feel like that should be enough to be a chaplain, and they don’t understand the difference. And- do you mind me talking about the difference between a pastor and chaplain?

Aidan 1:15:41
Oh, yeah, for sure!

Ellen 1:15:43
Okay. So pastors, you know, work for a particular church in a particular denomination, under the theological umbrella of what that church or that denomination believes, and to build up that church or denomination. And as part of what they do- they’re there for people in crisis within their church who have spiritual distress or emotional distress, but they don’t usually have training in counseling so they should, when they see somebody really needs therapy, if, you know, to practice within their scope, they should encourage people to get therapy. In fundamentalist churches, oftentimes they don’t. They do the biblical counseling thing, where- oftentimes, they’re not trained in therapy. So it’s not usually the best thing, I don’t think.

And then chaplains are ministers who are employed by an organization that’s not a church. So that is either the military or, you know, sometimes you’d see police chaplains, chaplains to the fire department, a lot of health care chaplains, hospital, you know, hospices and nursing homes that are there to meet the spiritual needs of the people in that organization. They also have workplace chaplains these days, we have a couple of different organizations in our area that supply chaplains to different factories and workplaces that are there for people who are in spiritual distress or are going through difficult times there. Now chaplains that are trained well as chaplains and went through CPE learned how to put our own specific beliefs and our own specific backgrounds to the side so that we can be there for the emotional and spiritual needs of the person in front of us. And a well trained professional Chaplain should be able to address and help with the needs of a person, no matter what their faith background is, even if they’re atheists, to be able to meet them where they are.

A lot of pastors who have not had CPE, even if they have been chaplains for years may not fully understand that. And so, one reason areas like North Alabama don’t value Chaplain education as much is because they haven’t seen the difference. And there are some hospitals that are very reticent to have chaplains, because they’ve had the pastors without training, come in as chaplains. And what they mainly do is proselytize and berate people for not believing like they do, or tell them they have to believe what they do. And when you’re in a medical crisis, having somebody come in and tell you that you have to believe like they do, then you could get very upset and you could complain to the hospital. And the hospitals don’t like complaints. So they say, “Well, let’s get rid of the chaplains.” And the problem was they didn’t understand when they hired that person or allowed that person to volunteer, they didn’t understand how to screen for professional chaplains as opposed to local pastors.

Aidan 1:19:31
Yeah.

Ellen 1:19:32
Anyway, that’s, you know, that’s my- and one of the things I LOVE about being a chaplain is that I’m not tied to just the stated beliefs of my church. And I can meet people where they are without judgment, and just, you know, help them where they are. Yeah. So I try to be a conduit of God’s love, and comfort and peace in whatever way I can, without tying it too having to see, having to believe in God, or having to see God in a particular way.

Aidan 1:20:19
Yeah. Because one of the questions I was going to ask you was if there was a time where you were sort of expected to give, like, a certain kind of- like to sell someone in grief, something that you disagreed with, but it seems more like your training is very much more spiritual, but also just adapt to the situation and meet the person in the

Ellen 1:20:52
Right, because I am trained to meet people where they are within their context. So I will give comfort to folks who are concerned about whether their loved one is going to hell or not. And I try to do that within their context. You know, my beliefs about that may be one thing, but I try to, to comfort them according to their beliefs while trying to, you know, if they believe in the Bible to give them biblical basis, for, you know, some comfort. So sometimes like in the hospital, or even in hospice, people will come to me and say, you know, “my brother’s dying”, okay? “And he’s here in the hospital. And I’m really concerned that he’s not saved.” So I know what they want me to do is to go into that room and say, you know, “John, Have you accepted Jesus Christ as Savior? And Lord, do you want to say that sinners prayer with me,” okay? But as a professional chaplain, what I do instead, is, I’ll go and say, “John, you know, your family members love you very much. And they are concerned about whether you feel peace with God at this point, if you feel peace, with death, and about what’s happening to you, after you die if you have peace with God. And so they’re concerned about that, tell me how you feel.” And John will say to me, you know, God and I are good. I feel at peace with God.” And, then I can tell the family, you know, “John feels at peace with God.” And I have not asked him to give a doctrinal statement, and have to sign up to a certain, you know, ideology, even though that’s probably what the family would have liked. But I’ve tried to meet John where he is because I’m there to minister to him. And I allow him to define, and if he does say, you know, “I don’t believe in life after death. And I’m like, and I’m at peace with that.” And I’m like, “Okay”, or if he says, you know, “I’m really scared, I don’t know what’s gonna happen to me afterwards. And I am afraid of going to hell”, then, you know, I could ask him what his feelings are about that. And then knowing their background and whatever he says is his background, I can use scripture, to lead him to a place of feeling accepted, forgiven and accepted by God and feel at peace with God. So that make sense?

Aidan 1:23:53
Yeah.

Ellen 1:23:54
And, you know, I am completely affirming of LGBTQ folks. And so as a chaplain, I can be with people where they are, I will listen to people who are not, but I’m not going to berate a person for being part of the LGBTQ community, because of somebody else’s belief. I’m going to be with that person. I will listen to someone express their difficulty, or, you know, angst about loved ones who may be gay or whatever. And I will affirm their feelings in their difficulty with but I’m not gonna agree with that. And, you know, if they have a family member who is part of that, you know, I’m going to affirm that person, for who they are.

Aidan 1:24:45
Right.

Ellen 1:24:46
And the thing is, I don’t have to answer to my church about that. [laughs]

Aidan 1:24:51
Yeah.

Ellen 1:24:51
One of the blessings of being a chaplain is I don’t have to answer my church. Now, of course, I know that the ministers of my church are fully affirming. Not everybody in my church is, but I still don’t have to answer them.

Aidan 1:25:05
Yeah. So, just like a last- little things. So you think- so do you think- like- are there any stances that your local church- I know- I know, it’s, it’s a little difficult when it comes to, like voting on certain stances, but are there any, like, stances that you- you feel like some people or a lot of people in your church have that- like your church just kind of passively agrees with, that you really don’t?

Ellen 1:25:59
You know, the Southern Baptist Convention has become more and more politicized, and they will preach about specific policy issues and come down usually against accepting LGBTQ folks against, like, abortion, and all these other issues that they have. Our church, my individual Church, which used to be dually aligned which is now CBF, chooses not to be political, and- sometimes to a fault.

I really wish our pastor would speak more to these issues. You know, not in a dogmatic way. But in a, you know, wrestling with- where is justice here? And especially how can we best support people who are going through difficult times, whether it’s with an unplanned pregnancy, or whether it’s with gender or sexual orientation issues? You know, I really wish- that my pastor in the justice issues around immigration, and things like that. I have very strong feelings about that. But the thing is, our church is a politically purple church. Okay? Which you don’t find very much these days. You have either liberal churches or conservative churches, and our church is still pretty purple. But the- new people who come to our church are more and more coming to our church because our church is more open, and our LGBTQ issues [unofficial stances]. And our church has had an English as a Second Language Program for many years that is open to everyone, no matter what their documentation status is. And so our people in our church have been active on social justice issues, but it hasn’t been advocated from the pulpit.

Aidan 1:28:14
Mhm.

Ellen 1:28:14
Personally, and as our church tries to decide our branding, and how to help people understand what kind of church we are to get more folks to come to our church without coming thinking that we’re a Southern Baptist Church, and then leaving disappointed. [laughs]

Aidan 1:28:34
Yeah.

Ellen 1:28:35
Because we don’t fit that mold anymore. I think we need to start defining who we are on social justice issues. And, you know, my oldest child, she’s like, “I can’t”, after seeing how many people in our church were upset after with my friend for officiating, same sex marriages during wedding week, and some of the really hurtful things that some people in our church said about that, and [how] we chose not to vote on what our feelings were about that at our church, we kind of swept it under the rug and allowed everybody to have their own views but not have to have a stance as a church. My my oldest said she could never feel fully at home at the church anymore, that they wouldn’t take a stand of completely affirming LGBTQ folks.

And so you know, we lose some folks by by not taking courageous stands that go against the grain of what people consider Baptist. But I imagine at this point if our church were to vote on these different things that- it would be more on the supporting immigrants, supporting LGBTQ folks, they are very supportive of women in ministry. Our associate pastor right now is female, and they’ve been ordaining women for many years. So, you know. Yeah, it’s uncomfortable that there are some folks that- you know. But- I do appreciate a church that can not be political. But I still wish that we would stand up for some justice that I think is very biblical. So that’s me. But yeah, I could never be a part of the Southern Baptist Church anymore because they have been very political and taking stances that, from my view of the the life, teachings and work of Jesus Christ are antithetical to what I believe Jesus Christ stood for. So I could not be a part of those churches.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

 

Interviewing Process

This interview was conducted over Zoom, which worked decently well. The interview attached and transcribed above is almost completely replicated from the original Zoom interview, with a few edits. The interviewee wanted to maintain anonymity, and at certain points during the interview, she accidentally gave revealing information about herself, so those were omitted from the recording above, and there were certain segments filled with stuttering and dead air to the point that it was disruptive to a listener or reader’s ability to understand what was being asked or responded to, so some of the spaces between words and stuttering was omitted as well. Additionally, at one point in the interview, the interviewee makes reference to one of the questions that was sent to her before the interview (to make sure she was comfortable answering it). At this point in the interview, there is a slight addition where I explain what she is referencing. Aside from that, the audio is exactly the same. The audio editing was done via importing the zoom recording (mp3) to audacity, and then exported post-editing as an mp3 to be attached to this website.

Bibliography

Shaw, Susan M. “Purity Culture and the Subjugation of Women: Southern Baptist Beliefs on Sex and Gender Provide Context to Spa Suspect’s ‘Motive’.” The Conversation, 2 Dec. 2021, https://theconversation.com/purity-culture-and-the-subjugation-of-women-southern-baptist-beliefs-on-sex-and-gender-provide-context-to-spa-suspects-motive-157496.

Shaw, Susan M. “Southern Baptist Beliefs about Gender and Power Contributed to the Sexual Abuse Scandal.” Berkley Center Fo Religion, Peace and World Affairs, 25 Sept. 2019, https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/responses/southern-baptist-beliefs-about-gender-and-power-contributed-to-the-sexual-abuse-scandal.

Bailey, Sarah Pulliam. “Newly Leaked Letter Details Allegations That Southern Baptist Leaders Mishandled Sex Abuse Claims.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 5 June 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/06/05/russell-moore-southern-baptist-sex-abuse-allegations/.

“Southern Baptist Convention Conservative Resurgence/Fundamentalist Takeover.” Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias, https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/6591871.

NeONBRAND. White and Black Concrete Chapel in Low Angle Photography Photo. 23 May 2017.