Magazine Featuring Female Pastors Pulled From Shelves, 'Treated Like Pornography'
ATLANTA — The five women on the cover are dressed in black and smiling — not an uncommon strategy for selling magazines.
But these cover girls are women of the cloth, featured in Gospel Today magazine's latest issue, which the Southern Baptist Convention has pulled from the shelves at its bookstores, though the magazine is available for sale upon request.
The group says women pastors go against its beliefs, according to its interpretation of the New Testament. The magazine was taken off stands in more than 100 Lifeway Christian Bookstores across the country, including six in metro Atlanta.
Published for nearly 20 years, Gospel Today is the largest and most widely distributed urban Christian publication in the country, with a circulation of 240,000. The magazine's publisher, Teresa Hairston, said she was just reporting on a trend, not trying to promote women pastors.
"They basically treated it like pornography and put it behind the counter," she said. "Unless a person goes into the store and asks for it, they won't see it displayed."
Nationally, the Southern Baptists have adopted statements discouraging women from being pastors, but their 42,000 U.S. churches are independent and a few have selected women to lead their congregations. The faith was organized in 1845 in Augusta, Ga.
Chris Turner, a spokesman for Lifeway Resources, said the cover was not the reason the magazine was pulled from Lifeway's shelves.
"The buyers said the statements that were in it took positions that were contrary to what we would say," Turner said. "It wasn't so much that there were women on the cover."
Featured on the cover are Pastor Sheryl Brady of The River in Durham, N.C.; Pastor Tamara Bennett of This Is Pentecost Ministries in Sacramento, Calif.; Bishop Millicent Hunter of The Baptist Worship Center in Philadelphia, Pa.; Pastor Claudette Copeland of New Creation Christian Fellowship in San Antonio, Texas; and Pastor Kimberly Ray of Church on the Rock in Matteson, Ill.
Bennett said the issue of women in the ministry is not one that should be shelved.
"It's a story that needs to be told," she said in a telephone interview Friday. "Sometimes we forget that ministry is God's business. It's not a man's business. God gives gifts to whomever he sees fit."
Bennett said she is encouraging people to ask for the magazine.
"All Dr. Hairston did was tell a story, she didn't preach a doctrine," Bennett said of the article. "It's just sharing news."
Ms. Bennett, God does indeed gives gifts where He sees fit, and the Scripture is one of those gifts. His Scripture is clear who is and who is not to be called as pastors...
The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil. (1 Timothy 3:1-7)
That is pretty clear, isn't it? For further clarification...
I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. (1 Timothy 2:12)
ATLANTA — The five women on the cover are dressed in black and smiling — not an uncommon strategy for selling magazines.
But these cover girls are women of the cloth, featured in Gospel Today magazine's latest issue, which the Southern Baptist Convention has pulled from the shelves at its bookstores, though the magazine is available for sale upon request.
The group says women pastors go against its beliefs, according to its interpretation of the New Testament. The magazine was taken off stands in more than 100 Lifeway Christian Bookstores across the country, including six in metro Atlanta.
Published for nearly 20 years, Gospel Today is the largest and most widely distributed urban Christian publication in the country, with a circulation of 240,000. The magazine's publisher, Teresa Hairston, said she was just reporting on a trend, not trying to promote women pastors.
"They basically treated it like pornography and put it behind the counter," she said. "Unless a person goes into the store and asks for it, they won't see it displayed."
Nationally, the Southern Baptists have adopted statements discouraging women from being pastors, but their 42,000 U.S. churches are independent and a few have selected women to lead their congregations. The faith was organized in 1845 in Augusta, Ga.
Chris Turner, a spokesman for Lifeway Resources, said the cover was not the reason the magazine was pulled from Lifeway's shelves.
"The buyers said the statements that were in it took positions that were contrary to what we would say," Turner said. "It wasn't so much that there were women on the cover."
Featured on the cover are Pastor Sheryl Brady of The River in Durham, N.C.; Pastor Tamara Bennett of This Is Pentecost Ministries in Sacramento, Calif.; Bishop Millicent Hunter of The Baptist Worship Center in Philadelphia, Pa.; Pastor Claudette Copeland of New Creation Christian Fellowship in San Antonio, Texas; and Pastor Kimberly Ray of Church on the Rock in Matteson, Ill.
Bennett said the issue of women in the ministry is not one that should be shelved.
"It's a story that needs to be told," she said in a telephone interview Friday. "Sometimes we forget that ministry is God's business. It's not a man's business. God gives gifts to whomever he sees fit."
Bennett said she is encouraging people to ask for the magazine.
"All Dr. Hairston did was tell a story, she didn't preach a doctrine," Bennett said of the article. "It's just sharing news."
Ms. Bennett, God does indeed gives gifts where He sees fit, and the Scripture is one of those gifts. His Scripture is clear who is and who is not to be called as pastors...
The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil. (1 Timothy 3:1-7)
That is pretty clear, isn't it? For further clarification...
I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. (1 Timothy 2:12)
And...
For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. (1 Corinthians 14:33-35)
Kind of hard to be a pastor and preach when you are not to have authority over men and you are supposed to remain silent! It is not an issue of ability, it is an issue of obedience. We don't get to ignore Scripture as we see fit because someone has a "gift". I am sure Ms. Bennett and these other ladies have Bibles, they ought to check out these passages instead of being concerned with that their "gifts" are.
Well, I guess it makes some sense. Women are clearly prohibited by Scriptural mandate from serving as pastors but the Bible is also clear that we worship a triune God. The magazine in question, Gospel Today, featured heretic T.D. Jakes on a cover, declaring him "America's most prominent preacher" as well as "Pastor" Paula White, who "preached" the heretical prosperity gospel. Clearly not a very discerning magazine. If Scripture prohibits women from being pastors, and the cover declares the five women on the cover as "pastors" then it shouldn't be sold in a Southern Baptist bookstore.
Well, I guess it makes some sense. Women are clearly prohibited by Scriptural mandate from serving as pastors but the Bible is also clear that we worship a triune God. The magazine in question, Gospel Today, featured heretic T.D. Jakes on a cover, declaring him "America's most prominent preacher" as well as "Pastor" Paula White, who "preached" the heretical prosperity gospel. Clearly not a very discerning magazine. If Scripture prohibits women from being pastors, and the cover declares the five women on the cover as "pastors" then it shouldn't be sold in a Southern Baptist bookstore.
Does that mean that women have no role in the church? Certainly not! Just not as pastors (or I would argue as teachers of classes including men) So what are they to do? Luckily Scripture has an answer for that too!
Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. (Titus 2:3-5)
Love your husbands and your children, teach the next generation of girls to be godly women, keeping their home. Those are noble tasks and to assume that women have to be pastors instead of mere "housewives" demonstrates that one is more concerned with the world's opinion than God's commandments. Being equal does not mean being the same. Being a mother and a wife is a high calling, a noble calling. What the Apostle Paul has to say should be more important to Christian women than what Gloria Steinem has to say.
(As a side note from the sixth paragraph: The faith was organized in 1845 in Augusta, Ga. . The Southern Baptist faith was not organized in Georgia in 1945, it was organized in Jerusalem in the first century. The denomination was organized in Georgia in 1845)
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