Lesbian Pastor Focus of Controversy Among Southern Baptists

The sermon at Glendale Baptist Church one recent Sunday recalled how Jesus mingled with tax collectors and prostitutes, refusing to snub people for the unpopular things they did.

“What does it mean that God’s love is for everyone?” asked Eileen Campbell-Reed, a member of the congregation and doctoral student in religion.

“What will happen when we move from the center to the margins, and make friends ... with those that our society smugly thinks of as the disinherited and marginalized? What will happen when they become our heroes and heroines of friendship and faithfulness, forgiveness and grace?”

These were not rhetorical questions.

Listening in the front row, dressed in her black sacramental robe, was April Baker, the church’s associate pastor (and its only full-time minister) -- a lesbian who lives openly with her partner.

The unlikely combination -- a lesbian pastor in a church long affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention -- has created an increasingly public controversy.

Earlier this year the Baptist convention, which is the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, dissolved its half-century-old ties with Glendale.

“In having a homosexual or lesbian minister, they are clearly endorsing homosexual behavior, and thus have defined themselves outside of the Southern Baptist Convention,” said Richard Land, president of the denomination’s public policy arm.

Baker becomes visibly uncomfortable when asked about the controversy over her sexual orientation. She frowns and pauses several moments to gather her thoughts.

She says the denomination has terribly wounded gay people.

“I say that the Southern Baptist Convention left me, because the SBC as it is today is not the same spiritual and theological home in which I grew up,” Baker said. “I think that there’s a distinct call to the church to push the edges of inclusiveness.”

Nationally, conservatives within the Southern Baptist Convention won a struggle with moderates and liberals to take over leadership two decades ago. Since 1988 the denomination has severed ties with more than 10 other congregations over the issue of homosexuality.

At the convention’s annual meeting in Phoenix last month, leaders proclaimed an initiative to help homosexuals “find freedom from this sinful, destructive lifestyle.”

Glendale’s 250-member congregation has long been considered a liberal church. In the early 1970s, the church supported the desegregation of Nashville public schools and lost a large part of its membership.

The congregation long ago forged bonds with more liberal Baptist organizations, including the Alliance of Baptists, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America.

But the church had belonged to the Southern Baptist Convention and the Tennessee Baptist Convention since its founding in 1951. The loss of tradition hurts, as does the rejection, members of the congregation say.

When the church went looking for an associate pastor last year, the search turned up two of three candidates who disclosed that they were lesbians. Church leaders took the matter to the congregation. It decided to pick the best candidate for the job, regardless of sexual orientation.

Baker, a 39-year-old graduate of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., was the choice. She has worked as a counselor to female felons but never before held a minister’s job.

When Kreis White’s family was considering whether to join Glendale, he was told about Baker’s sexual orientation. He didn’t see it as relevant.

“My kids got to help in the soup kitchen yesterday, and Habitat for Humanity is a blast. The activism is what attracted me,” he said.

Baker’s sexual orientation is “such a small fraction of who she is,” White said. “She is a very spiritual leader for the kids.”