Advent is a season of the Church that is marked by hope for how the presence of Christ changed, and continues to change, the world.
But sometimes hope feels a little outside of our grasp. Inevitably, at some point in our lives we encounter situations in which oppression, illness, grief, pain, or sadness feel incurable. In those moments, hopelessness seems to overtake our ability to hope.
So if you are like me and are finding hope hard to muster this Advent, I would propose that we temporarily put hope aside and, instead, adopt celebration as our resistance to hopelessness.
It is no accident that the first of BWIM’s organizational values is celebration.
Celebrating the successes of women in ministry has been embedded within our organization’s culture since the beginning. In June 1983, the first issue of Folio, a quarterly newsletter for Southern Baptist Women in Ministry, was published. One of the regular aspects included in Folio was an “Ovations” column in which the ordinations and new calls of women in ministry were announced and celebrated.
BWIM’s public-facing celebration continues today as we maintain the practice started by Rev. Dr. Pam Durso of posting on social media each time we are made aware of a woman’s ordination in a Baptist congregation or the new call of a pastor to a Baptist church. In 2024, we have made 39 such posts to-date.
We recognize that like positivity, celebration that is unbalanced can become toxic. BWIM must and will continue to name and challenge the injustices that women experience among Baptists.
However, one of the ways we resist gendered oppression is to celebrate each time patriarchy’s hold on Baptists is defeated.
When we celebrate the successes of women in ministry, we grab the bullhorn to shout in patriarchy’s direction that we know it can be beaten.
As women existing in a patriarchal system, we are often taught, whether consciously or unconsciously, to feel ambiguously or suspicious about the successes of other women.
Female hostility is a real obstacle of internalized gender bias that we have to combat in other women and in ourselves. Without even thinking about it, we may have a gut reaction toward another woman’s success to question her credentials, how she got the job, if she is sufficiently equipped, etc.—which oftentimes amounts to subconscious jealousy that another woman was successful in a way we weren’t or felt we were unique in achieving.
This type of hostility exists in all oppressed groups as we learn through postcolonial theory’s concept of horizontal violence. We know that if we fight against our oppressor (vertically), we will likely be crushed. So instead, our hostility comes out sideways (horizontally) against others who are oppressed like us and who are all vying for what we perceive to be a small, limited quantity of opportunity.
When we celebrate the successes of women in ministry, we also boldly defy patriarchy’s hold over our own subconsciousness and the way it gaslights us into believing only a limited quantity of empowerment exists.
Therefore, on the days when I might feel like the cause of overcoming Baptist patriarchy is hopeless, I find something revolutionary to celebrate—even if it’s a success that has nothing to do with me.
When I can’t seem to muster hope, I know that I can choose to celebrate instead. Perhaps this small act of resistance will be enough to carry me through seasons of hopelessness, and maybe it will even affect a change in others, and in me, in the process.
So as we signed our BWIM Christmas card this year:
May your remembrance of Jesus’ birth into the world through Mary fuel a revolution in which all women believe and are believed when the Lord speaks to them.
“Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” Luke 1:45 (NIV)