LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Early one Saturday in June 1983, Reba Sloan Cobb hopped in a Pittsburgh-bound car filled with women. She’d slept poorly, sensing, with some anxiety, that she was about to partake in something historic.
In prior years, a feminist movement had reshaped many Americans’ ideas about the roles of women and men in society, and the Southern Baptist Convention was no exception.
Cobb and a cadre of Southern Baptist women had been meeting in private to discuss expanding their role in the church. In Pittsburgh, they intended to assert themselves more forcefully, with the first public meeting of Baptist Women in Ministry, SBC — a gathering where women were to be in charge, a clear break from the patriarchal spiritual community many grew up in.
“All of my life, I have faced this reality,” recalled one woman in “Midwives of a Movement,” a new documentary film set for public release Monday after a monthslong church tour. “No matter well how I perform, no matter how excellent my work, there is always in the final scene a closed door. And I’m not allowed to enter.”
The timing of the release of the film — which profiles the women who created Baptist Women in Ministry — is no coincidence. Several decades after the film’s subjects sought ministry roles once forbidden to them, including preaching and pastoring, the Southern Baptist Convention approaches another historic moment: Its delegates this week in Indianapolis will vote whether to more forcefully move to eject churches with woman pastors of any kind.