She Was the First

Fifty years ago, she was the first woman ordained to the gospel ministry by a Baptist church in Kentucky.

February 17, 1974. Lyndon Baptist Church of Louisville. Esther Hargis.

We need to pause and take note. At a time when the rights of women are being undermined and repudiated in wide stretches of American society (and elsewhere around the world), it is important that we celebrate the pioneers who were brave enough to push social norms aside and follow the call of God wherever it led.

Hargis was a senior at Georgetown College when I was a freshman. Which is why I recognized her name in the news article last week. I picked up the phone and called her at her retirement home in California.

“Edwina Snyder urged me to come to California,” she said, naming a professor we both knew and loved. After her stint at Georgetown, Dr. Snyder taught preaching (mostly to men) at Pacific School of Religion and then Union Seminary in New York. She died in 1917.

“There were more opportunities for women here than in Kentucky,” Hargis continued with a chuckle. That, of course, goes without saying.

Kentucky is still dominated by the Southern Baptist Convention which will vote in June to disfellowship any church that gives a female minister any title that includes the word “pastor.” Last year, they kicked out the famous and influential Saddleback Church in California (launched and led by Rick Warren, in California!) for that very reason.

Ten years before Hargis was ordained, Addie Davis was “set aside for the gospel” (as we used to say) by the Watts Street Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina. Now her name is attached to the award and scholarship given by Baptist Women in Ministry to women attending seminary and pursuing ministerial vocations. She died in 2005 at the age of 88.

Hargis, though, is very much alive.

At the time of her ordination, Hargis had graduated from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and was serving as a ministerial intern at the Lyndon Church with then pastor Rev. Hugh Goldsby.

Later, after a ministerial stint in Massachusetts, Hargis found a home in California, eventually becoming pastor of First Baptist Church of Berkeley. There, her long friendship and partnership with Dr. Martha Olney (a professor at UC Berkeley) was made public, and after same sex marriage was ruled legal by the Supreme Court, they tied the knot. They have now been together more than 40 years.

As a college freshman in the fall of 1968, I would have been appalled by such things. I would have written a letter of protest to somebody somewhere (as I did more than once in those days of high-minded self-righteousness).

But now, not so much.

I am the fourth pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Hendersonville NC and the first to be a male! Our congregation is one third LGBTQ, and I cannot describe what a wonderful experience it has been to pastor and preach for such a special and spiritual group of people.

We still need people of courage like Esther. Even as I write, the three largest Christian networks in the United States (Roman Catholics, United Methodists, and Southern Baptists) are embroiled in heated and hurtful disputations about the role of women and LGBTQ people in the life and work of the Christian community. They all need people like Esther Hargis.

Thank you, Esther, for being the first. You have made a difference in the church, in the world, and also in my life.