Baptist Women in Ministry http://www. bwim.info/index.php/welcome - see Resources
Carolyn Goodman Plampin http://home.netcom.com/~cplampin

Series-Subjects Relevant to an Informed Opinion about Christian Women in Ministry

INTRODUCTION

First created in January, 1996, Revised January 10, 2007

Baptist Women in Ministry http://www.bwim.info/index.php/welcome
c/o McAfee School of Theology
3001 Mercer University Drive
Atlanta, GA 30341
(678) 547-6475
BWIM@hotmail.com

Questions, comments, or suggestions
of bibliography or sites to include may be sent to
Carolyn Goodman Plampin
Coordinator Subjects Relevant to an Informed Opinion
1220 Vienna Dr., #504
Sunnyvale, CA 94089-2007
(408) 734-5141
Master of Teaching, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil, March 20, 1968
Master of Divinity, Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, June 2, 1978
Missionary to Brazil of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1957-1988
Academic dean (without title) and professor, Instituto Biblico Batista, A.B. Deter and
Seminário Teológico Batista do Paraná, Curitiba, 1959-1979
Academic dean and professor, Seminário de Educacao Crista, Recife, 1980-1986
e-mail: cplampin@ix.netcom.com

The bibliography on nearly all of the subjects relevant to an informed opinion about women in ministry is enormous. Where to start and how to get a quick handle on it is very time consuming. I would like to point the way and share some of what I have learned with you. The more I study, the more subjects I discover that need to be explored. I may not even know the best sources, as I have stacks of books waiting to be read. This is where I am at the present. If you know of better and quicker sources, write, call, or send me an e-mail.

I started studying women in ministry in August, 1976, and have been doing so ever since. I had been a missionary to Brazil since 1958 and had never questioned either the place of woman in the home or in the church. But circumstances made me start researching, and God used those circumstances to give me a new calling. I was motivated by world mission and woman's place in world evangelism.

My missionary career lasted thirty-one wonderful years. For twenty-one years in Curitiba in South Brazil I taught in a Bible institute which became the Parana Baptist Theological College, of which my husband Richard was president. When we moved to Recife in North Brazil I became academic dean of a WMU seminary, now named the Christian Education Seminary, where I developed and taught a course on The Ministry of the Christian Woman for seven years.

Because our seminary studies are principally a selection of material by men, about men, and for men, neither our seminary professors nor our pastors are equipped to help us much with this study.

Quite applicable to the subject of women in ministry is the saying of Mrs. John Maguire of Florida: "Baptists have enough ignorance to ignorance the whole world," quoted by Carolyn Weatherford Crumpler ("Winter Storms" Fellowship News, Vol. 5, No. 1, Jan/Feb 1995, p. 16). Baptists are not studying women in ministry because they think they know all the answers. We do not understand the New Testament teachings on the role of women in ministry, we do not know our church history, and we are not reading the wealth of scholarship on this subject.

Just read what you need to know or are interested in. Even a selected bibliography has taken me since 1976 to read. Just knowing the relevant subjects is a big step in the right direction.

The psychological pressure on women and men against reading in these areas is very real. On the part of women, keeping a low profile in an androcentric (man centered) world is a safety mechanism. Women do not want to stand out and expose themselves to ridicule and abuse. On the part of men, the misogynism (woman hating) necessary to maintain male supremacy is a power mechanism. Men do not want to give up their power over women. Sometimes just the title of a work has scared me so badly that I couldn't read it for years. I doubt that I can imagine what these titles do to a man.

For love of a lost world, Christian women and men need to come to a new understanding of the biblical and historical material on women. Christian women need to be liberated to participate in the very heart of missions, which I understand to be evangelism and the founding of churches.

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