As the Southern Baptist Convention held its 2025 Annual Meeting in Dallas, TX, Baptist Women in Ministry hosted a timely conversation regarding the state of women within the denomination. The event featured Dr. Beth Allison Barr and took place on Tuesday, June 10, 2025, at the First United Methodist Church of Dallas.
The gathering occurred amid a backdrop of renewed efforts within the SBC to pass a constitutional amendment that would ban member churches from calling women pastors of any kind. Beyond the debate over pastoral roles, the conversation also addressed other critical issues affecting women that surfaced during the meeting, such as the SBC’s ongoing Sexual Abuse Prevention & Response efforts and various resolutions related to women’s bodies and their roles within the church.
Dr. Barr joined Rev. Dr. Meredith Stone, BWIM’s Executive Director, to analyze the progression of these issues during the Annual Meeting. Together, they explored how these developments mirrored the SBC’s historical actions—and inactions—regarding women. Despite the challenging climate, both speakers shared their perspectives on the convention’s trajectory and their hopes for the future of women in ministry. The evening concluded with a book signing, allowing attendees to engage directly with the author.
Dr. Barr is the New York Times Best-Selling Author of Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Women’s Path to Ministry (Brazos Press, 2025), USA Today Best-Selling Author of Making Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth (Brazos Press, 2021), and co-host of the acclaimed podcast, All the Buried Women.
Dr. Beth Allison Barr
Beth Allison Barr (PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is James Vardaman Endowed Chair of History at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where she specializes in medieval history, women’s history, and church history. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry, and USA Today bestseller The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. She is also co-host of the acclaimed podcast, All The Buried Women. Her work has been featured by NPR and the New Yorker, and she has written for Christianity Today, the Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News, Sojourners, and Baptist News Global. Barr lives in Texas with her husband, a Baptist pastor, and their two children.
Rev. Dr. Meredith Stone
Meredith Stone (PhD, Brite Divinity School at TCU) has served as Executive Director of Baptist Women in Ministry since 2020. She is an ordained minister and has previously served as Associate Dean for Academics and Assistant Professor of Scripture & Ministry at Logsdon Seminary of Hardin-Simmons University, in congregational ministry, and with other Baptist organizations. Meredith is the author of Empire and Gender in LXX Esther (SBL Press, 2018), along with other academic publications and articles related to women in ministry and religious gender justice. Meredith’s advocacy for women among Baptists has been featured in national news outlets such as CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, NPR, and Religion News Service.
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