Pioneer preacher abides in patience and realism

The event was recently celebrated at Watts Street Baptist Church in Durham, N.C., which performed her ordination on Aug. 9, 1964. (See story in Saturday's Extra section.) Davis traveled to Durham from her home in Covington, where she grew up, and worshipped with that congregation earlier this month. Watts Street church since then has ordained five other women, but the fact is that while its members must have thought they were providing the breakthrough that would open the path to the pulpit to women throughout the denomination, that hasn't happened.

Oh, there have been some changes - there are at least three women pastors in the Roanoke Valley who later were ordained by churches associated with the Southern Baptist Convention. But resistance has continued to be strong, as it has in many other denominations.

For Southern Baptists, whose congregations individually decide whom to ordain and whose ordination to accept as valid, the tradition against ordaining women was strengthened four years ago when the national convention revised its doctrinal statement.

The Baptist Faith and Message now says: "While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."

Almost certainly, the majority of Christians in this country belong to denominations whose official policies or standard practices limit the role of church pastor or priest to men. And the Southern Baptist statement is undoubtedly a reflection of the beliefs of a majority of the 41,000 or so Southern Baptist churches. But, until 2000, that loose confederation's national assembly had never tried to use it as a defining standard for the convention.

She preaches patience

As official policy or not, that standard precluded Davis from finding a Southern Baptist church to pastor after her ordination. She ended up moving to New England, where she first led a congregation in Vermont and then another in Rhode Island - both of which were affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA, the slightly more liberal northern counterpart of Southern Baptists.

She came home to Covington to retire and now serves as one of four pastors at the tiny Rich Patch Union Church in Alleghany County, where she preaches one Sunday a month to its multidenominational congregation.

Davis says she wouldn't trade her pastoral experience for anything, and would encourage any young woman with a calling to follow it. She still gets letters from former parishioners who tell her what a difference she made in their lives.

She says "it's too bad" that women are still so rarely ordained either as deacons or pastors in the denomination that provided her Christian roots but that "has grown more fundamentalist."

Still, there's no bitterness in her voice or her words when she says those things, as she maintains her hope that women will have more opportunities like hers.

"It is hard to wait. We want instant satisfaction," Associated Baptist Press quoted her as telling the Watts Street congregation. "Waiting is not one of our best characteristics."

She "called for patience and affirmed that God's timing is perfect," the independent news service said.

That attitude reflects a type of faith that some supporters of women's ordination may find frustrating. It also reflects the simple reality that movements to change church doctrine have far more in common with glaciers than rivers.

Davis didn't become another Billy Graham, didn't found a mega-church, didn't spark a new Great Revival. But, judging by the letters she gets, she did influence a number of lives for the better.