|
|
As a child, the Rev. Theresa Langford learned that women couldn’t be pastors in her Southern Baptist church.
“Women made up the majority of the church,” she remembers. “They could be the Sunday school teacher. They could be a missionary. But as far as the hierarchy of the church, no, they couldn’t do that.”
The church also taught her that “at the foot of the cross, we are all equal.” But when she asked her mother how both could be true, the answer was “that’s just the way it is.”
The paradox troubled her.
“I knew that God had something special for me to do all of my life,” Langford said from her office at Lincoln Heights Missionary Baptist Church, where she’s the Pastor of Family Care. “But because of my denominational background and my understanding of the Scripture, I did not think women could be ministers.”
So she went to college to pursue a degree in business administration.
She became a sales manager for AT&T, a job that moved her from Alabama to Cincinnati. She married a minister. She had two sons.
None of it, however, helped her forget her calling.
“Every two to three years, what was in my spirit would rise up and I would cry and say, ‘Lord, I can’t’,” Langford, 47, said.
In the back of her mind, she was still questioning how God could use so many people to do so many things but couldn’t use a woman to preach. “If I listen to man, the answer is, ‘No, he can’t use you.’ It didn’t jive.”
So she reasoned with herself.
“In one vein, we are all ministers because we are to carry the good news,” Langford said, remembering how she looked at the other women in her church and saw they were preaching all the time. “Women don’t need a pulpit. We can be folding clothes or in the grocery store and say, ‘Honey, let me tell you.’ ”
But this thought wasn’t always comforting enough.
Father, May I?
“About eight years ago, I had an encounter with the Lord,” Langford said. “He said, ‘Who are you going to believe, me or man?’ ”
She said she stopped listening to man and started listening to God, knowing this meant she had to do something dramatic: change doctrine. She likens it to women moving up the corporate ladder, gaining access to high-ranking positions and assuming their rightful place next to men in all areas of society.
At the time, Langford attended a church which, like most in its denomination, had never had a female pastor. Talking to the Rev. F.T. Piphus of Lincoln Heights was the first step.
Langford still considers him progressive and a visionary.
“I went to him and said the Lord is calling me to preach and I don’t know what to do with this,” she said.
Piphus also had been taught that women couldn’t be pastors and responded to Langford’s calling with a period of prayer and fasting. After about eight months, he felt the Lord had confirmed her calling with him and he began preparing the congregation.
“He did a series of teachings out of the book of Isaiah on God doing a new thing and at the end of the series he brought me forth to the church,” Langford said.
She went back to school to receive a masters of arts in religious studies. In 1999, she became a reverend.
The reception at Lincoln Heights Missionary Baptist Church was better than Langford expected, which has allowed her to do what she feels called to do without continually defending herself.
“I am a minister of the gospel who happens to be a female and not a female who happens to be a minister,” she said.
She acknowledges that many women haven’t been so lucky when breaking into the ministry. “I didn’t have to prove anything to anybody. I am certain of God’s call and I know what he called me to do.”
Woman in Chains
For Langford, the opportunity to fulfill her calling is a personal renaissance.
“It was healing, validation and affirmation without my even being conscious of it on a day-to-day basis,” she said, adding that she believes it was the same for the women of her congregation to see someone who looks like them offering the gospel. “It was the church that said you can’t preach here. That had a lot of women in bondage.”
The effects of her new post transcend the walls of Lincoln Heights. In short, she’s been a trendsetter.
“As goes Lincoln Heights,” Piphus told her, “so will go other churches in the city.”
And that’s been true. “Within the last five or six years, there has been a birth of female ministers in the city,” Langford said. “There is so much work to be done, it can keep men and women busy from now until the end of time.”
Since her ordination, five women have come forward at Langford’s church expressing interest in becoming a minister.
The Defiant One
The treatment of women in roles of leadership, Langford said, differs from church to church. Even within the Baptist denomination, the acceptance of women in ministry isn’t clear-cut.
“In Cincinnati, there are churches where female ministers are embraced or, if not embraced, at least tolerated,” she said. “But there are others where you are not welcomed in the role as minister.”
The differences in acceptance have presented some obstacles for Langford. Before Piphus publicly announced her calling to the ministry, she was asked to speak at another church in Cincinnati and then asked not to.
“It was my first ‘Dear Theresa’ letter that said, ‘We understand you said you have been called to preach, but we do not believe in female ministry and we are rescinding our invitation,’ ” she said. “I was heartbroken, crushed, in fact.”
She didn’t respond with bitterness, though. Her explanations are gentle as to why this centuries-old tradition survived so long in the church.
“It’s been historical, traditional and to a degree a fear of sharing power,” Langford said.
She believes that throughout history men have interpreted the Bible, leading to certain hierarchical structure and patterns overshadowing the word itself. She defied it simply by turning back to the word and discovering the truth for herself.
“If you look at the ministry of Jesus, women were prevalent,” Langford says. “I think that’s why women flocked to him because he validated women. Some folk will say, ‘There were not women who were part of the 12 disciples.’ And I heard a woman say this: ‘There was no need to call who he already had.’ ”
One recent Sunday, a woman stopped Langford to say her husband didn’t believe women ought to preach. The woman wondered if Langford could tell her how she responds to men who feel that way.
“I don’t say anything,” Langford responded. “I stopped fighting a long time ago. I’m not here to try to change folks’ minds. Time will bear out my call.” ©
This article appears in May 10-16, 2000.