[PDF] Anatomy Of A Schism eBook

Author : Eileen Campbell-Reed
Publisher : Univ. of Tennessee Press
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 47,89 MB
Release : 2019-08-13
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1621902552

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From 1979 to 2000, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was mired in conflict, with the biblicist and autonomist parties fighting openly for control. This highly polarizing struggle ended in a schism that created major changes within the SBC and also resulted in the formation of several new Baptist groups. Discussions of the schism, academic and otherwise, generally ignore the church’s clergywomen for the roles they played and the contributions they made to the fracturing of the largest Protestant group in the United States. Ordained women are typically treated as a contentious issue between the parties. Only recently are scholars beginning to take seriously these women’s contributions and interpretations as active participants in the struggle. Anatomy of a Schism is the first book on the Southern Baptist split to place ordained women’s narratives at the center of interpretation. Author Eileen Campbell-Reed brings her unique perspective as a pastoral theologian in conducting qualitative interviews with five Baptist clergywomen and allowing their narratives to focus attention on both psychological and theological issues of the split. The stories she uncovers offer a compelling new structure for understanding the path of Southern Baptists at the close of the twentieth century. The narratives of Anna, Martha, Joanna, Rebecca, and Chloe reframe the story of Southern Baptists and reinterpret the rupture and realignment in broad and significant ways. Together they offer an understanding of the schism from three interdisciplinary perspectives—gendered, psychological, and theological—not previously available together. In conversation with other historical events and documents, the women’s narratives collaborate to provide specific perspectives with universal implications for understanding changes in Baptist life over the last four decades. The schism’s outcomes held profound consequences for Baptist individuals and communities. Anatomy of Schism is an illuminating ethnographic and qualitative study sure to be indispensable to scholars of theology, history, and women’s studies alike.

Author : Eileen R. Campbell-Reed
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 22,33 MB
Release : 2008
Category : Baptist women
ISBN :

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In the early 1960s the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) entered a period of conflict and change including disputes over biblical interpretation and women's ordination. The Biblicist and Autonomist parties emerged and struggled for control between 1979 and 1990, and the conflict eventuated in a schism of the SBC. Recent studies portray women's ordination as a primary cause of the split. However, the lives and experiences of clergywomen have rarely been studied as a viable source for interpreting the religious conflict. This dissertation challenges the oversight and asks: How can the narratives of Baptist clergywomen interpret the fracture of America's largest Protestant denomination? As a project of practical theology, the study makes its case by exploring the two intertwined situations: the rise of Baptist women in ministry and the schism of the denomination. The study argues that between 1920 and 1960 Baptists negotiated tensions of belief and practice, as described by Bill Leonard. Between 1960 and 2000 the intertwined stories of SBC schism and women's ordination escalated and polarized those tensions. Narratives from eight Baptist clergywomen, gathered in ethnographic interviews, are analyzed for ways they reinterpret the key Baptist concept of soul competency, which holds in tension the dialectical authorities of the Bible and the individual's liberty of conscience. The theological anthropology of Edward Farley and object relations theories of D.W. Winnicott and Jessica Benjamin are utilized to expose the underlying anatomy of soul competency, highlighting its flexibility and durability. Clergywomen reinterpret soul competency by rejecting its effective history of sexism, and incorporating their experiences and vocations. Their reinterpretation shows how Baptist beliefs and practices of soul competency withstand conflict and change individually and institutionally. Clergywomen's choices to remain Baptist in the face of widespread opposition, demonstrate how late-twentieth century Baptist culture was not only a site of contest, hostility and division, but also one of clarity, creativity and freedom. Rather than being merely a cause of schism, clergywomen are better understood as exemplars of the changing shape of Baptist identity, creators of new roles for women in Baptist life, and innovators for understanding ministerial identity in the Baptist culture.

Author : Pamela Cooper-White
Publisher : Fortress Press
Page : 199 pages
File Size : 19,55 MB
Release : 2022-05-31
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1506482120

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How do we overcome polarization in American society? How do we advocate for justice when one side won't listen to the other and cycles of outrage escalate? These questions have been pressing for years, but the emergence of a vocal, virulent Christian nationalism have made it even more urgent that we find a way forward. In three brief, incisive chapters Pamela Cooper-White uncovers the troubling extent of Christian nationalism, explores its deep psychological roots, and discusses ways in which advocates for justice can safely and effectively attempt to talk across the deep divides in our society.

Author : Seth David Radwell
Publisher : Greenleaf Book Group
Page : 594 pages
File Size : 50,52 MB
Release : 2021-06-29
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1626348626

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An enlightened exploration of history to unite a deeply divided America The political dialogue in America has collapsed. Raw and bitter emotions such as anger and resentment have crowded out any logical debate. In this investigative tracing of our nation’s divergent roots, author Seth David Radwell explains that only reasoned analysis and historical perspective can act as salves for the irrational political discourse that is raging at present. Two disparate Americas have always coexisted, and Radwell discovered that the surprising origin of these dual Americas was not an Enlightenment, but two distinct Enlightenments that have been fiercely competing since the founding of our country. Radwell argues that it is only by embracing Enlightenment principles that we can build a civilized, progressive, and tolerant society. American Schism reveals • the roots of the rifts in America since its founding and what is really dividing red and blue America; • the core issues that underlie all of today’s bickering; • a detailed, effective plan to move forward, commencing what will be a long process of repair and reconciliation. Seth David Radwell changes the nature of the political debate by fighting unreason with reason, allowing Americans to firmly ground their differing points of view in rationality.