Changes in the Role and Status of Women in the Nigerian Baptist Convention, 1914–2021

Abstract

This study interrogates the changes in the roles and status of women in the Nigerian Baptist Convention, the largest Baptist denomination in Africa, with over 10,104 churches and about 11 million members. This paper attempts to answer the critical question of how and what processes stimulated and sustained the changes in the role and status of women among Nigerian Baptists from the colonial period to the contemporary era. This paper relied on primary source publications, interviews, and secondary publications, which provided invaluable data in analysing the historical and contemporary issues that have resulted in the changing roles and status of women in the Nigerian Baptist Convention. This study found that against patriarchal traditions that subordinated women to domestic activities in the homes, such factors as access to formal education, the formation of Women’s Missionary Union as an institutional framework to mainstream women’s religious activities, the employment of women with doctoral degrees as theological educators in Baptist seminaries in the 1980s, the ordination of women as Baptist ministers in the late 1990s, and the appointment of women to key positions in the Nigerian Baptist Convention were major factors that moved women from traditional subordinate positions to public leadership in the church. Generally, this has indirectly stirred a process of empowerment for women and agitation for equality with men in the NBC in the past one hundred years. This study concluded that this development has moved women from supportive roles to taking up significant leadership positions within an African patriarchal cultural system.

1. Introduction

From a historical perspective, this study interrogates the changes in the roles and status of women in the Nigerian Baptist Convention (NBC), the largest Baptist denomination in Africa, with over 10,104 churches and about 11 million members. Among other things, this paper discusses factors such as access to formal education, the formation of Women’s Missionary Union as an institutional framework to mainstream women’s religious activities, the employment of women with doctoral degrees as theological educators in Baptist seminaries, and the ordination of women as Baptist ministers as some of the factors that stimulated the changes that indirectly stirred a process of empowerment for women and agitation for equality with men in the NBC in the past one hundred years. This article will also discuss how women themselves conceptualise their roles and status and how women’s new roles have extended beyond existing social and cultural constraints of patriarchy in African society. Further, with the appointment of two women theologians as heads of two Baptist theological institutions in 2019 and 2020, this study explores factors involved in women moving from supportive roles to taking up significant leadership in the Baptist faith within an African patriarchal cultural system.

Drawing on primary source publications, interviews, and secondary publications, this paper attempts to answer the critical question of how and what were the processes that stimulated and sustained the changes in the role and status of women among Nigerian Baptists from the colonial period to the contemporary era.

2. An Overview of the Beginnings of Protestant Christianity in Nigeria and the Nigerian Baptist Convention

Protestant Christianity was introduced into Nigeria in 1838 when liberated slaves who had settled in Sierra Leone (Fyfe 1962) undertook an entrepreneurial venture and visited Badagry, a coastal town in southwestern Nigeria, with merchandise to trade with the indigenous people. Having received an enthusiastic welcome from local rulers because some spoke the local language, more freed slaves emigrated to Badagry and Abeokuta, two major Yoruba towns. These settlers then wrote to their churches in Freetown for missionaries. After an exploratory mission visit in 1842 and 1843, the Church Missionary Society and the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society in 1845 and 1846, respectively, sent resident missionaries to assist these emigrants. Likewise, the Church of Scotland began mission work in Calabar in southeastern Nigeria in 1846, while the Baptists from the southern states in the United States of America and Roman Catholics from Europe began mission work in Yorubaland, southwestern Nigeria in 1850 and 1862, respectively.

In the nineteenth century, most parts of Nigeria were still engulfed in inter-ethnic wars, a major means that supplied captives as slaves to the European slave merchants. Against this background, Britain tried to enforce the abolition of the slave trade and open the country to legitimate commerce. It was in this milieu that Western missionaries operated, and eventually, they became the vanguards of a new civilisation and a new culture that stimulated much social change.

By the late nineteenth century, mission activities had made tremendous progress in the southern part of the country, and in 1900, Christian missions were extended to northern Nigeria. These mission endeavours among the indigenous peoples generated far-reaching cultural, socio-economic, and political transformations largely through their educational, vocational, and medical services. Equally important is the response of Africans to the Christian gospel (Ajayi 1965; Ayandele 1966; Ekechi 1972; Makozi and Ojo 1982; Sanneh 1989; Graham 1966; Tasie 1978).

The Nigerian Baptist Convention is a product of the missionary activities of the Southern Baptist Convention, USA, in Nigeria, dating back to August 1850, when the pioneer missionary, Thomas Jefferson Bowen, arrived in Badagry, then the main seaport into the country. Bowen had been preceded eight years earlier in Yorubaland in southwestern Nigeria by the Anglicans and the Methodists working under the Church Missionary Society and the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, respectively, and four years by the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) Mission that concentrated its mission work around Calabar in southeastern Nigeria (Ajayi 1965; 2010). With the support of additional missionaries from 1853, mission work progressed steadily such that by the end of the century, Baptist churches had been planted in major towns in southwestern Nigeria, indigenous clergy trained by the missionaries had emerged, a few elementary and secondary schools had been established, and an organisational framework for Baptist churches had been formed.

Formed in 1914 as a national body uniting all Baptist churches, the Nigerian Baptist Convention is the organised body of Baptist churches tracing their roots to the Southern Baptist Convention, a conservative evangelical denomination in the USA. The Nigerian Baptist Convention is one of the leading evangelical denominations in West Africa, with a 2021 estimate of about 9 million members in 10,104 churches with over 5000 pastors (NBC 2022; Akanji 2023). The Convention is the oldest, largest, most visible, and most organised institution of all Baptist bodies in Nigeria. Other smaller Baptist bodies have been in existence since the 1940s, either by secession or as extensions of Baptist groups from the United States.¹ Of the estimated 80 million Christians in Nigeria at the end of the twentieth century,² Nigerian Baptists are second, perhaps only to the Anglicans, who are about 10 million nationally. However, the Nigerian Baptists are more dynamic in missionary commitments, which have been extended to about fourteen other African countries. In general, NBC has significantly impacted Nigerians and the country through its numerous educational and theological institutions, medical facilities, vocational training centres, and the numerous media centres that specialise in publications for both the Baptist faithful and the larger society.

There are four major epochs in the history of Nigerian Baptists. The first is the missionary era, as already noted, which began with the arrival of the pioneer missionary. The second period, starting in 1888, marked a period when indigenous leadership became more assertive. The schism in the Lagos Baptist Church in February 1888, when some indigenous members left the church following a disagreement with the white resident missionary to create a new one, the Native Baptist Church, was a notable event. This incident precipitated similar schisms in the Anglican and Methodist churches resulting in the African Church Movement—a movement that promoted Christianity under African leadership and was more accommodating to African culture (Webster 1964; Ojo 1998).

Under African leadership, the Baptist faith spread to the Niger Delta area in 1893, from a partnership in mission between Rev William Hughes of the African Training Institute, Colwyn Bay, North Wales, United Kingdom, and the First Baptist Church, Lagos under the indigenous pastor, Dr Mojola Agbebi, an energetic, visionary leader, who initiated other missionary activities that expanded Baptist faith to the midwestern and southeastern Nigeria (King 1986; Atanda 1988).

The Nigerian Baptist Convention formed in March 1914 became a great unifying factor in the Baptist mission work in Nigeria (Pinnock 1917). The Convention not only brought together the Mission and Independent Baptist churches, but it also stimulated a denominational consciousness (Duval 1956).

The third period, beginning in the 1950s, marked the phasing out of European leadership and ushered in the process of Nigerianisation of the social and political structures before the country’s political independence in 1960. The first indigenous leader, J. Tanimola Ayorinde, took over the leadership of the Nigerian Baptist Convention from the Southern Baptist missionaries, and a new era of partnership began. In the fourth period from the mid-1970s, religious forces, such as the upsurge of Pentecostalism, had a great impact on the Baptist faith in the country. It brought in some renewal but at the same time, altered the pattern of worship to be more participatory, emotional, exuberant, and more dynamic.

The Nigerian Baptist Convention, as a conservative evangelical denomination, is fashioned theologically and ecclesiologically after the Southern Baptist Convention, USA because it was the SBC mission endeavour that produced the NBC. However, the NBC is divergent from its parent denomination in some ways. For example, the NBC has been involved strongly in ecumenical movements which the Southern Baptist Convention has shunned. Secondly, by the late 1990s, the Nigerian Baptist Convention had ordained women into the Gospel ministry, while its American parents continued to reject women’s ordination on theological grounds. As conservative evangelicals, both denominations affirm the inerrancy of the Scriptures, believer’s baptism, salvation in the vicarious death of Jesus Christ, the priesthood of all believers, and both practice congregational polity and the autonomy of the local church.

3. Understanding Gender and Patriarchy in Traditional Nigerian Society

It is necessary to understand the social–cultural context of the role and status of women in Nigeria, particularly in Southwestern Nigeria, the dominant region for the growth of the Baptist faith in Nigeria, to understand the journey towards women’s empowerment in the Nigerian Baptist Convention. Generally, women in various societies in Nigeria were considered inferior to men in ability, character, and strength. Patriarchy conditioned women as subservient and subordinate to men, lacking authority except to their children and other women.

Largely, motherhood conferred an enviable status on women. Nevertheless, patriarchy ensures that even motherhood was primarily defined within the realm of marriage, and procreation was a situation within a marital union. Aina better explains that in traditional Nigerian society, women enjoyed two statuses, that of wife and mother. As a wife, the woman is charged with the responsibilities of procreation. As a mother, she is to transmit the culture, norms, values, etc., of the society to her offspring (Aina 2003).

Moreover, women could only make decisions that were binding on the family with the approval of their husbands. In fact, polygamy created a social space that increasingly made women more submissive to men. Although the cash crop economy introduced by the British colonial administration in the late nineteenth century, because of its need for more labourers, brought in some economic power to some women, there were still limitations to the authority that a woman could wield in society. Additionally, the political space restricted access to women except when they became more elderly. Their ritual power was restricted to female cultic observances and often played secondary roles in traditional festivals.³ Sowunmi expatiates this subservient role of women much better when she argues that women are seen as a necessary evil to fulfil men’s sexual needs and desires; hence, they have been exploited as sex objects. Also, they are seen as second-class citizens, inferior to men, and stereotyped into roles of dependency, submission, and passivity (Sowunmi 1998).

Indeed, the patriarchal culture has been a major factor in the subjugation and marginalisation of women. Nigerian patriarchal culture was strengthened by Traditional African Religion with various ritual restrictions on women. Traditional patriarchal culture holds the belief that men are superior to women; hence, as noted by Ndute, religious traditions fashioned from patriarchy further tend to legitimise the perpetuation of the subjugation of women to men (Ndute 1998). Also, as noted by Aina, patriarchy ‘provides material advantages to males, which simultaneously places several constraints on the roles and activities of females’ (Aina 2003).

It was within this context that Christianity made its inroads in the nineteenth century. Nineteenth-century Christian missions were essentially male-dominated, and it was only at the beginning of the twentieth century that wives of missionaries and single women missionaries became visible to claim the same social power as their male counterparts. Literacy, which came with the Western formal school system, and which served as the catalyst for social reconstruction in African society, was initially reserved for men, as parents did not envisage any social benefits of education for women who would eventually end up as wives and mothers. The few attempts by women missionaries among Anglicans, Methodists and Baptists in Southern Nigeria in the mid-nineteenth century did not have much impact on the society and did not change the status of women.

The masculine image of God persisted in Christianity in Africa until the late twentieth century. In addition, the popular narrative of the Biblical story of salvation is that of Jesus Christ, as the Saviour who was a man, who had disciples as males, and no woman was included. This is an indication that women were not recognised in the Jewish religion and traditions.

From the above, one can draw some inferences that missionary Christianity did not treat women better than the traditional African culture. Hence, some liberal feminists have advocated that liberation theologies should number the Church among the oppressors since it is seen as an institution from which women must be liberated (Ayegboyin 1991).

Overall, Christianity, with its strong inherited patriarchy of the Jewish tradition, only helped to strengthen the existing African culture. For example, the dominant episcopacy of the Anglicans, Methodists, and Roman Catholics further helped to dethrone women’s role in the Church and society. Since members of a religion share certain collective dimensions such as social, economic, political, cultural, educational, etc., Christianity is therefore closely linked and interrelated with all the subordination and subjugation of women in Nigerian society.

Even the constitutional guarantee of the rights of women in the independent nation still had to contend with many cultural barriers and constraints. Certain taboos and assumptions inherited from culture have placed constraints on women even though their potential cannot be denied. Ladan highlights some of these constraints, which militate against women from actively participating in decision-making or being assigned to any leadership role in public life. These include assumptions and generally held moral imperatives as follows:

• (a). Well-mannered and God-fearing women are chaste and discreet;

• (b). Good women do not and should not usurp men’s given roles and responsibilities;

• (c). A woman’s place is in the home where she supports both her husband and children;

• (d). Women are (naturally) ill-endowed with the intellectual and managerial skills required for decision-making in public life (Ladan 2003).

Generally, both traditional culture and missionary Christianity put women as subordinate to men, and women’s progress could only be determined as men wanted.

4. Theoretical Framework

We find Kurt Lewin’s Change Theory to be applicable to analysing how women in Baptist churches under the Nigerian Baptist Convention have achieved much social mobility and visibility within this religious body. The religious and social changes resonate with the idea of how driving forces and restraining forces influence the direction and nature of change within any organisation (Nurhasanah et al. 2024). In general, Lewin’s Change Theory focuses on how people and groups of people behave and change within organisations (Cummings et al. 2016). There are several dimensions of the theory; however, for our purpose in this essay, we want to show its applicability to our discussion on the change in roles and status of women in the Nigerian Baptist Convention.

Lewin’s Group Change Theory has three distinct stages. These include the following stages: Unfreeze, Change, and Freeze models. At the Unfreeze stage, individuals or groups recognise the need for change and become open to it. With such openness to change, it implies that the existing behaviours and mindset gradually become ‘Unfrozen’. The second stage is the ‘Change’. It is at this phase that the actual intended or desired change occurs. In other words, new behaviours, processes, structures, and so on are introduced within the group to foster change at this level. The third stage is called the ‘Freeze’ stage. Once the change has been implemented in the second stage, then, in this third stage, the change becomes the new norm of the group. Thus, the group then stabilises around the new state (Cummings et al. 2016). For Kurt Lewin, individual or group behaviours occur because of the dynamic balance of forces. Driving forces are said to push people towards change while restraining forces resist it. Thus, for Lewin, effective change management in organisations involves increasing driving forces and reducing restraining forces.

Indeed, a close observation of the change in the roles and status of women in the Nigerian Baptist Convention aligns with Lewin’s Change Theory. As we shall see later in the study, for over a century, women were bound to specific traditional roles fostered by patriarchy in the Nigerian Baptist Convention. However, by the late twentieth century, the ‘Unfreeze’ stage occurred in which women and the Convention at large recognised the need for change in women’s roles and became open to such possibilities. Soon came the ‘Change stage’, in which the actual change occurred when women took up new roles and statuses they had never attained before. Since the desired changes have been implemented, now, these new roles appear frozen and solidified as the normative practices in the Nigerian Baptist Convention.

5. Female-Directed Education as a Catalyst for Change in the Role and Status of Women

A major factor that stimulated change in the role and status of women in Nigerian society, and among Baptists in particular, was formal education at the elementary and secondary school levels. Christian missions laid the foundation of Western education in Nigeria in the 1840s and controlled the provision of educational institutions until 1927 when the British Colonial government enacted certain Education Ordinances and began to regulate the standard and curriculum of schools (Fabunmi 2005). Even then, Christian missions controlled more schools than the government.

In the nineteenth century, Western education was greatly used as a tool of evangelisation, and children were targeted because they were more malleable to change than adults. On the mission field and in many communities, every missionary utilised education as a tool of evangelization for the purpose of transforming individuals and society. This education began with the Sunday School, which drew the domestic staff of the missionaries as the first set of pupils. Thereafter, some forms of formal schooling were established for the children who were residing with the missionaries. The CMS in Abeokuta in fact came with a schoolmaster, Mr. Phillips, from Sierra Leone (Tucker 1854), and he soon set out to create a school system for the children.

Western missionaries perceived education as the bedrock of human progress and civilisation, and indeed it was. It soon created a new social class of educated elite who disdained traditional culture and authority and who sought equality in access to social and political power like the Westerners. Eventually, Western education supplanted Islamic education and traditional forms of education majorly because it created marketable skills for the recipients, fostered upward social mobility, and provided immediate economic benefits when compared to subsistence agriculture, which was the main occupation of people in traditional society.

However, the educational projects of Christian missions in the 19th century were segregated along social classes and gender. It was disproportionately targeted at children and young people, and it was overwhelming in favour of boys in its conception and execution until the early decades of the twentieth century.

It was in the late nineteenth century that Christian missionaries turned their attention to promoting formal education for women and it did this by creating separate schooling for them. As noted by a CMS missionary,

“Much more need to be done for the education of girls. … Young girls attend many of the elementary schools and prove bright scholars. But they are few as compared with the boys, and in some cases, owing to the marriage customs, they are taken away too soon. To deal effectively with the problems of the African home we must face up to an extension of all branches of education for girls”.

(Walker 1931)

Commonly, female-directed education was initially pursued so that indigenous catechists and teachers would have educated Christian girls to marry (Walker 1931), because, in some traditional societies, traditional authorities in the nineteenth century disallowed girls to marry Christians! Eventually, this domestic objective stimulated more interest in the promotion of female-directed education in many parts of southern Nigeria, and by the early twentieth century with wider perspectives. Although there was an increased awareness of the education of girls, this awareness was developed on the philosophy that female-directed education was of domestic value.

Female separatism was soon encoded into formal education, and it became a major means of attending to the educational needs of women and socialising them into the Christian culture, which was needed for the survival of every mission endeavour. Ultimately, girls’ schools soon became the new agenda of Western missionaries in their attempt to transform the status of women in traditional society. In the 1880s, the philosophy of the education of girl-child was that the training was preparing them ‘for the duties of life as wives to the male converts’ (Walker 1931). C. E. Smith, a Baptist missionary in Nigeria in about 1900, has argued that “I think it will be a fine thing to have a girls’ training institution school that the wives of our young men might be suitable helpmeets for their husbands in the work” (Roberson n.d.b). Therefore, female-directed education as conceived then was to prepare girls as prospective Christian wives for male converts, and also for the girls to take their domestic roles as good Christian mothers in the homes.

In 1872, the Church Missionary Society established a female-only institution in Lagos, while the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, after establishing the Methodist Boys’ High School in Lagos in 1878 with twelve high school students, went ahead to establish the Methodist Girls’ High School in Lagos in January 1879 (Oduyoye 1992). The Methodist Girls’ High School did not fare well due to a shortage of qualified teachers and a deficit in infrastructural facilities (Oduyoye 1992). For the focus of this paper, the Baptists established a Girls’ School at Abeokuta in 1910, which developed into a secondary and a teachers’ training institution (Roberson n.d.b). A second female-only institution was the Reagan Memorial Girls’ School, which was established in Lagos in 1941 and named after a former female missionary (Roberson n.d.a). One of the women missionaries expressed her wish that the school would produce women who would play leading roles in building their nation (Historical Committee 1991). This aspiration indicated how female-directed education has changed to become more functional in the mid-twentieth century. By the 1950s, female-directed education was no longer a utopian idea but became the new face of Western missions in southern Nigeria.

By the fourth decade of the twentieth century, the domestic orientation to female-directed education had been abandoned and comprehensive education began to be offered in most secondary schools operated by Christian missions. The only exception was in northern Nigeria where under the guise of Islamic culture of chastity, the Emirs, i.e., traditional Islamic rulers, opposed female-directed education on the grounds that the Islamic dichotomy between young boys and girls after puberty should never be altered. Secondly, the Islamic practice of early marriage for girls as young as twelve years became a major constraint to sending girls to schools—an engagement that took years to complete.

As more women were educated and assumed leadership responsibilities as teachers and role models in society, the traditional perspectives of the roles and status began to change. With the introduction of university education in 1948 and the admission of women to degree programmes, and many of them graduating to assume important positions in governmental affairs, it became clear that education has provided a pedestal that initiated a fundamental shift in the status and role of women in the Nigerian society. Indeed, in 1985, when Professor Grace Alele-Williams was appointed the President/Vice-Chancellor, the first woman to occupy the highest office in a public university in the country (Black Women in Mathematics 2024),⁴ it was clear that for those women who had received formal education, they could no longer be tied down by traditional norms of disparity in men and women roles and status in the society.

As change agents for a hundred years from 1842 on, Christian missions provided the direction of female-directed education in the country. Although the number of schools for women and the enrollment was small, looking back, this innovation could be considered a noble achievement. However, with the benefit of hindsight, we consider the quality of the education as deficient, 19th-century Christian missions did not originally set out to provide education for the material benefits of girls; rather, they aimed at character training and the spiritual development of converts. Nevertheless, the girls and women who attended these mission schools derived some prestige as educated women in what could be considered a hostile environment. In addition, in terms of their sexuality—the moral purity of being chaste brides and their potential as good marriage partners—rather than destabilising the existing social values about women, female-directed education reinforced traditional values, as these women became potential role models to other women. This was a complementary advertisement to the Christianized men, and really an achievement of Christian missions’ social goal of having women ready to live forever in monogamous relationships.

6. Early Roles and Status of Women in the Nigerian Baptist Convention

Since the establishment of the Nigerian Baptist Convention, up until the early 1990s, women played what we may call traditional roles. Most of those who had received a Western education, apart from serving largely as teachers in elementary schools also served as Sunday School teachers for children in the churches. Laurena Bowen, the wife of the pioneer missionary, was the first to start Sunday school classes for children in the Baptist Mission work (High 1970; Akinola 1992a). Generally, and even into the contemporary era, the teaching of children at the Sunday School remains one of the traditional roles of women in the churches. Related to this is the role of serving as children’s workers, which involved taking care of children in separate worship sessions. Thus, women have been known in the traditional business of providing Christian education for children right from the inception of the Baptist Missions until date (Lateju 2023).

Women also served as deaconesses, in particular, taking care of the hospitality units of churches. They catered for the welfare of members, particularly widows. As deaconesses with their male counterparts, they assisted in leading worship, particularly related to bible reading, prayers, leading offertory sessions, and so on.

Furthermore, one major role that women have been known for traditionally in many Nigerian Baptist Convention churches is their role as choristers. Within many Baptist Church choir groups, women have been dominant. As choristers, they also took the lead as praise singers during Sunday worship services. Lastly, women functioned traditionally in the Baptist Church as ushers. It was believed that by nature they possess motherly personalities adequate for welcoming guests into the church for church services.

Thus, traditionally, until the early 1990s, women in the Nigerian Baptist Convention played notable roles as children’s workers, worship set-up (ushering), members’ welfare, and providing diaconate support to the substantive church pastor, largely based on assigned roles by the church through the Pastor. However, by the mid-1990s, some major shifts began to take place that eventually affected the status and roles of women in the NBC. We now give attention to these major changes in status and roles.

7. The Ordination of Women as Baptist Ministers

The first of such major changes in the status of women in the NBC was the ordination of women into the pastoral ministry. In the history of the NBC, the first person to be ordained was Moses Ladejo Stone, an indigenous assistant to a Southern Baptist missionary based in Lagos. Stone was ordained on 22 February 1880 at the First Baptist Church, Lagos, (High 1970) and that ordination set him apart for ministerial tasks. He was trained by the missionaries who recognised his calling and gifts in the gospel proclamation. Following Stone’s ordination, others who had trained at two other towns, the Ijaiye and Abeokuta mission schools, soon followed. Some of these included Odegbaro Fadipe in 1897, Lajide Tubi in 1900, and so on (High 1970). After the formation of the Nigerian Baptist Convention in 1914, attempts were made by Southern Baptist missionaries to regulate the practice of ordination in the NBC. The major one was in 1930, which prohibited the ordination of anyone who approved or supported polygamy. In 1931, an Ordination Council was formed consisting of five indigenous ministers and some missionaries. Following its formation, the Council, among other things, recommended that candidates for ordination must do some theological studies prior to ordination, and this brought about the centralisation of the ordination of candidates to the gospel ministry of the Nigerian Baptist Convention (High 1970). Since then, the terms and conditions governing ordination in the NBC have witnessed important reviews to maintain a high standard in the practice of ministerial ordination.

It is not certain when discussions began in the NBC on the ordination of women; nevertheless, at different points in the 1980s, discussions on the matter of women’s ordination took place at informal levels, particularly with the successive graduation of more women from the theological institutions of the NBC. One significant development in those years that also stimulated discussions on women’s ordination in the NBC was the 1984 resolution by the Southern Baptist Convention, USA, the mother convention for the NBC, which discouraged women from seeking pastoral leadership positions (Grenz and Kjesbo 1995), This development generated a lot of informal debates among men and women in the NBC.

What may be described as the initial agitation for the ordination of women began at the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary in Ogbomoso in the early 1990s. Janet Ojo, who trained at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, USA, and taught Religious Education and Sociology at the Seminary championed these agitations. However, her agitations remained at the level of personal expressions of dissatisfaction against the non-ordination of women. Later in 1991, the issue began to attract formal discussions at the NBC Executive level. In that year, the Ministerial Training Board examined the issue and recommended a course of action to the NBC family (Nigerian Baptist Convention 1992). Members of the NBC were asked to write memoranda on their views on women’s ordination in the Convention. Following submissions from the NBC family and diverse contentions against the ordination of women in the NBC, the Ministerial Board resolved in 1992 that it was not yet time for the ordination of theologically trained women in the NBC (Nigerian Baptist Convention 1993).

The resolution not to ordain women in 1992 by the Ministerial Board was not the end of the matter. Some agitations persisted, with prominent persons in the NBC lending their support for the ordination of women. Among such major voices was Aduke Akinola, the Executive Director of the Women’s Missionary Union, an auxiliary organisation to NBC. In July 1992, under the umbrella of the WMU, Akinola wrote an article in the Nigerian Baptist Convention monthly magazine, The Nigerian Baptist, to vehemently argue for the ordination of women who have received theological training in the NBC theological institutions. She argued that in His ministry, Jesus accepted all persons and did not discriminate against men and women in ministry. Thus, she advised the Ministerial Board of the NBC to be properly guided by the Scriptures in the matter of women’s ordination. She decried the imposition of culture over the Scriptures and urged churches to give appointments to women who had received theological training (Akinola 1992a). It is important to note that the agitation for women’s ordination by Aduke Akinola, who was the leader of all women in the Nigerian Baptist Convention, had so much weight and made a significant impact in influencing the later decision to ordain women in the NBC.

Likewise, Osadolor Imasogie, a theologian and former President of the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso, Clement Amadi, a former Assistant General Secretary (Ministerial) of the Convention, and others gave their support to the ordination of women. Of course, there were also prominent NBC voices who were not in favour of the ordination of women.

Following further submissions in favour and against women’s ordination in the NBC, the Ministerial Board of the Convention in 1993 recommended to the Convention annual session an approval to ordain women into full-time ministry. At the annual meeting of NBC in 1994, the issue was thoroughly discussed before it was finally approved (Nigerian Baptist Convention 1994). Following the approval, ordination was initially limited to women Pastors who were engaged by the churches in one capacity or the other. However, later, at its meeting of 22 July 1999, the Ministerial Board added to the list of potential women ordinands those who served at theological institutions, denominational offices, and as missionaries (Nigerian Baptist Convention 2000).

In 1997, two women candidates were recommended for ordination from their local churches by the Lagos Baptist Conference. Their names were published alongside other successful male counterparts (Nigerian Baptist Convention 1997). Thus, on 31 May 1997, Bosun Adegboyega, a female pastor, was ordained at First Baptist Church, Aguda-Surulere, Lagos, while Olusola Ayo-Obiremi, another woman, was ordained on 21 June 1997 at New Estate Baptist Church, Surulere, Lagos. Both women had their theological training at the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso (Moronfoye and Adeleke 1997).

Following the ordination of these two women in 1997, the opportunity became available for all theologically trained women serving in churches, theological institutions, Convention offices, mission fields, etc., to be ordained. In subsequent decades, more women who were in theological institutions had been ordained in NBC. By 2010, eighty-three women had been ordained into the full gospel ministry, and these women came from different regions of the country (Adeleke 2011).⁵

With this development, a few women have become substantive ministers in some Baptist churches in the NBC. Although there are no statistics of these women who served as substantive congregational leaders or pastors in the NBC, there were a few of them recorded in Baptist churches in southwestern Nigeria. Two of such ordained women, Yemi Aderibigbe and Florence Popoola, led their congregations in Lagos for about ten years each until they retired from active service in the second decade of the twenty-first century. These women ministers served very well, and there were reports of appreciation for their ministerial leadership. There was no known or reported case of pastoral misdemeanour against any of these substantive women pastors.

Thus, with this change in status from a subordinate position, women were thrust into the limelight when as ordained ministers they began to perform the Baptist ordinances of administering the Lord’s Supper like their male counterparts. This indicated a change in the status of women in the NBC. Overall, the approval of the ordination of women lifted any restrictions, whether patriarchal or theological arguments, that had previously placed women in subordinate positions to men in the Baptist ministry.

8. Appointment of Women as Directors in NBC

Another major area the Convention has yielded to the agitation for the equality of women to men has been in their appointment to leadership positions in various organs of the NBC. Beginning with the Women’s Missionary Union, two American Southern Baptist missionaries served as its Executive Secretary from 1922 to 1961, and 1961 to 1984. In late 1984, the first Nigerian woman, Pastor Aduke Akinola was appointed as WMU Executive Secretary, later renamed Executive Director. She served in this position until she retired in April 2002.

Apart from being the first indigenous Executive Secretary and Director of the WMU, she was also the first black woman to serve as Secretary/Treasurer of the Baptist World Alliance Women’s Department, a position she held from 1990 to 1995. She was privileged to be the only African among the over eighty contributors to the highly cherished The Woman’s Study Bible, NKJV. She was awarded an honorary doctoral degree by the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso in June 2002 (Adeleke 2011).

Ibiyemi Ladokun, an ordained minister who had been the Director of the Convention’s Lydia programme, took over from Akinola as WMU Executive Director in 2002. Prior to assuming the WMU Director’s office, she served as the Vice President of the Baptist Women’s Union of Africa in 1997 and later became the President of the same union in 2002. She also served as the Vice President of the Baptist World Alliance in 2005, a position she held for five years. She was highly mission-minded and led the WMU with the same vision. Amidst other achievements recorded during her tenure as Director, the WMU began to zone her annual conference to increase the coverage of the union’s work in the East, North, and West (Adeleke 2011).

Rachel Lateju, another ordained minister, took over the leadership of WMU from Ladokun in 2009. She has continued to consolidate the achievements of past leaders as well as bringing innovative programmes, publications, and policies towards the growth of the union (Adeleke 2011). Overall, these leadership positions brought these women into equal positions of leadership with their male counterparts since all the women automatically served in the Executive Committee of the Nigerian Baptist Convention.

Three Southern Baptist Convention women missionaries were the trailblazers who served as Directors in the Media Department, Student Ministries Department, and Publications Department of the NBC in the 1980s and 1990s. Thereafter, three other Nigerian women have served as the Directors of the Sunday School Department, the largest department in the Convention, the Director of the Publication Department, and the Director of the Social Ministries Department. Besides the above, other notable women have served as substantive Directors of some other Departments of the NBC. These women possessed higher degrees in Christian Education and Theology, and a few have served as Professors in the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso, the foremost theological institution in West Africa. However, the most notable and significant was the appointment of two women as Rectors (i.e., Presidents) of two theological seminaries in 2019 and 2020.

9. Appointment of Women as Heads of Theological Institutions

Another significant change that has occurred in the status and roles of women in the NBC is the appointment of women as heads of theological institutions of the Nigerian Baptist Convention. Following the completion of theological training and attainment of higher theological degrees since the 1980s, women were engaged as theological educators in many of the NBC theological institutions. Like their male counterparts, they continued to achieve promotions and rose through the ranks in their careers as theological educators. Few rose to become Senior Lecturers, Associate Professors, and Professors, and eventually, in 2021, the first woman was appointed a Professor in the NBC. Esther Ayandokun, who had earned her PhD from the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso became the first woman to rise to the rank of a Professor in the NBC (Insights Journal 2024).

More importantly, Helen Ishola-Esan, who earned her PhD degree in Religious Education from the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso, and had served as the Dean of the Faculty of Education of the same institution, was appointed as the President of the Baptist Theological Seminary, Eku in 2019. Likewise, Esther Ayandokun earned her PhD in Educational Administration from the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso in 2006, and completed further graduate studies at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas, USA and the Dallas Baptist University in Texas, USA, was appointed as the Rector, Baptist College of Theology, Oyo in 2020 (Insights Journal 2024).

These, indeed, were significant leadership positions that had an impact on how women were perceived in the Nigerian Baptist Convention and the society at large. Prior to the 1990s, it was perhaps inconceivable to think that a woman could become a Professor of Theological Studies in any of the NBC theological institutions. Additionally, it was also unthinkable for a woman to be appointed as a Rector or President in any of the NBC theological institutions.

Equally important, in 2023, two women were appointed to serve as the Chairperson of the Board of Trustees (i.e., usually called Governing Council in Nigeria) of the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso and Bowen University, Iwo, two major educational institutions of the Nigerian Baptist Convention.⁶

It is important to note that these appointments were not isolated cases, but they represented the changing status and role of women in the Nigerian Baptist Convention. With such ascendancy, roles previously reserved for men have been taken up by women. For instance, ordained women serving as substantive Pastors had the additional roles of leading the Baptist ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Similarly, women in leadership capacities as heads of theological institutions combined the official roles of seeing to the day-to-day running of the affairs of their institutions with their traditional roles as women or mothers.

While it is true that in the Nigerian Baptist Convention, there have been changes in the restriction to the ordination of women, the case is not so with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the mother convention of the NBC. As Grenz and Kjesbo (1995) have rightly noted, the SBC ‘as a denomination has never officially sanctioned the inclusion of women in pastoral positions’.

10. Factors That Precipitated the Changes

10.1. The Women’s Missionary Union

The Women’s Missionary Union (WMU) is an auxiliary of the Nigerian Baptist Convention (NBC). What metamorphosed into the WMU began as women’s societies that had been formed in some local Baptist churches in Nigeria between 1875 and 1919. Women’s church societies were formed in Araromi Baptist Church, Lagos in 1896, then in First Baptist Church, Lagos in 1915, and Ebenezer Baptist Church, Lagos. Other mission centres in Ogbomoso, Oyo, Abeokuta, Shaki, Ibadan, and Sapele also had women’s societies. On 14 April 1916, the Baptist Women’s League was formed in Lagos by Adeotan Agbebi, the wife of the nationalist minister, Mojola Agbebi, who was then the pastor of the Araromi Baptist Church, as a forum to bring women together on a regional platform. Three years later in 1919, during the fifth annual session of the Nigerian Baptist Convention held at Ogbomoso, the WMU was formed, with Adeotan Agbebi becoming the first President (Akinola 1992b).

Over the past one hundred years, WMU has grown as an auxiliary to NBC into a formidable entity. The objective of the group, as stated in its constitution, is ‘to emulate the Spirit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and to promote Christian Missions through WMU Organizations’ (Lateju 2019). The WMU organisations include subsidiary groups such as Sunbeam Band for children, the Girls Auxiliary (G.A.) for young girls below seventeen years old, the Lydia Auxiliary for young women eighteen years and above who are preparing for marriage, and the Women’s Missionary Society (WMS) for married women. Through these arms of the WMU, the group continues to operate at the local churches, associations, and conferences of the NBC (Lateju 2019).

Through the WMS, which is based in local Baptist churches, married women continued to be empowered in Christian education through formal and informal discipleship programmes, leadership training, and skill acquisition training programmes. By the late twentieth century, it was organising workshops for young widows and women suffering from infertility. In all these programmes, women were exposed to Christian Education that entailed prayers, Bible and Missions Studies, Stewardship and Services, and practical evangelism. All these exposures and activities by the WMS stimulated the women into higher callings. Moreover, as an auxiliary of the NBC, the group continued to promote mission activities in various ways. WMU through its work has mainstreamed women’s equality and empowerment in society. As already noted, delayed fertility has been addressed through various seminars, and early widowhood has been addressed in various teachings, widowhood rites that are discriminatory against women have been attacked, etc. Overall, women in Baptist churches have come to understand what gender equality and women empowerment mean in a patriarchal society.

10.2. Theological Training of Women

In 1898, Southern Baptist missionaries began to provide theological training through the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso (NBTS). In the early years of the Seminary, only men were afforded the opportunity for theological training. Traditional culture, as earlier noted, denied women the opportunity of Western formal education in society. Moreover, the Southern Baptist Convention that brought Baptist missions to Nigeria had some reservations towards women’s leadership in pastoral ministry and theological training. Perhaps only a few or none of the foreign women missionaries had theological training.

The domestic objective was the most paramount for the missionaries. Hence, the Women Training Centre (WTC) was established in the 1950s for wives of male students to provide some orientation of support to the husbands’ pastoral ministry. Indeed, the missionaries did not consider it relevant to admit women into the Seminary for theological training until the early 1960s.

However, by the 1960s, a gradual change began in the theological training of women in the NBC. Thus, in 1965, two women, S.A. Babalola and I.C. Ugunkah, bagged a certificate each in Religious Education (C.R.E) (Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary 1965). Later, in 1977, Moji A. Adepoju and Mary O. Ologunde became the first recipients of the Bachelor of Religious Education (B.R.E) degree from the NBTS (Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary 1977). Thereafter, more women were admitted into NBTS for training in Religious Education, Theology, and Christian Music. Between 1998 and 2004, four women enrolled and obtained their doctoral degrees (PhD) from the NBTS. As noted in earlier paragraphs, such training opportunities in theological studies and later their appointment to the main spheres of Baptist work enabled some women to agitate for ordination. As earlier noted, with ordination, their status and roles changed in the NBC.

10.3. The Influence of African Pentecostalism

The explosion of Pentecostal churches in Nigeria since the 1980s has been astounding. By the mid-1980s, the rise of this new Christianity was very visible and too important to be ignored, because the movement was reshaping the religious landscape of the country. By the beginning of the late twentieth century, the movement had become a major expression of Nigerian Christianity. The enthusiasm that accompanied the worship services, increased media attention on the movement, proliferation of Pentecostal churches and ministries, and other dynamic features all contributed to this development (Ojo 1995, 1988, 2012).

In defiance of the African traditional culture and context which subscribes to the dominance of men, Pentecostal churches emerged and gave recognition to the wives of their pastors and further sought to promote gender equality in religious worship and Christian activities. Beginning in the late 1980s, women became more visible as they performed important functions in worship and other group activities and conspicuously adorned publicity materials of their churches. Women actively served within these new churches as Bible study teachers, Sunday school teachers, children’s teachers, counsellors, assisting in women’s deliverance sessions and a few actually became founders and leaders of Pentecostal churches. In many Pentecostal churches, the wives of the founding pastors, who usually go by the title “Mummy G.O.”, meaning literally, ‘our mother’, led their churches alongside their husbands. Largely, the Pentecostals offer ministry opportunities, self-expression, and actualization to women. Generally, women have been attracted to the services of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches partly because the domestication of the messages and the emphasis on spiritual equality rather than traditions have undermined patriarchy and indirectly enhanced the role and status of women. In all of these, Ojo (2006) rightly noted that the emphasis was on the Spirit rather than on tradition. Thus, the visible examples of women operating in ministry as preachers and church leaders became an impetus for other women in other Christian denominations in Nigeria, including Baptists. These women met in conferences, seminars, etc., and exchanged ideas.

Other impetus for change that could be alluded to include women in the public sector who became successful Chief Executive Officers of banks and other industries, and some who served as judges, heads of schools, heads of public universities, etc. Such examples stimulated women in the religious sphere to aspire to also have a higher status and new roles in church life.

11. Conclusions

The changing status of women, particularly from non-involvement in ministerial roles to becoming ministers and apex leaders in strategic NBC institutions, departments, and directorates, was of profound importance in the change in the status and role of women in the realm of religion. One of the impacts of the changing status and roles of women is that it provided women in the Nigerian Baptist Convention the opportunity to utilise their God-given abilities and talents in contributing to church growth. Related to this is the fact that with their new status and roles, they had the privilege of reaching the highest point in their various careers and posts.

Our study has shown that for over a century in the history of the NBC, women appeared to have been passive and bounded by restrictive socio-cultural traditions within the context of African patriarchal practises. However, by the 1990s, the situation began to change, as women began to assume new statuses and were granted new roles within NBC. Factors like agitations by the Women’s Missionary Union, exposure to theological training, and Pentecostal influences, among others, all contributed to a realisation of the new status and roles of women. These drivers culminated in women’s ordination into the full gospel ministry, their assumption of apex leadership positions in NBC strategic departments and theological institutions, and so on. What has changed is that competence and qualification aided the appointment of these women over men. This is a form of gradual displacement of traditional African patriarchal culture. Although patriarchy still exists, its strength has been weakened since women now have more important ecclesiastical and social roles than they did in the nineteenth century when Christianity arrived. Indeed, women have been empowered through missions, theological education, ordination, Pentecostal spirituality, etc. The impact of this development is enormous, contributing ultimately to church growth and kingdom expansion. However, all of these have implications for the women in relation to their families, and they also have implications for NBC at the three tiers of her existence at the association, conference, and convention levels. What remains of interest as history unfolds is what further new status and roles women would attain in the future developments of NBC.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, M.A.O. and E.O.A.; methodology, M.A.O. and E.O.A.; formal analysis, M.A.O. and E.O.A.; investigation, M.A.O. and E.O.A.; resources, M.A.O. and E.O.A.; writing—original draft preparation, M.A.O. and E.O.A.; writing—review and editing, M.A.O. and E.O.A. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Data Availability Statement

The publications used are available in the Library of the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso, Nigeria and in the Office of the President, Nigerian Baptist Convention, Baptist Building, Ibadan, Nigeria.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Footnotes

Notes

1. Among the indigenous ones are the African Baptist Church in Saki and Benin City from 1938 and 1942, the Gospel Baptist Convention from 1974, the Independent (Fundamentalist) Baptist churches from the late 1980s, and the Freewill Baptist Mission from 2006. Other Baptist groups are single congregations, and, hence, of little social significance.

2. In 1963, out of Nigeria’s 56.6 million people, 19.2 million or 34.5% of the population were Christians (Population Census of Nigeria 1963—Combined National Figures, vol. III, p. 10 and p. 36). According to the 1991 census, about 40 million out of the country’s population of 88.51 million were Christians (Census News 1992–1991 Population Census (Provisional Results), 1992, p. 8). Although the 1991 and 2006 censuses did not include religious affiliations, projections of population growth at an annual rate of 2.98% suggest a Christian population of about 48 million by the mid-1990s. The 2006 Census officially puts the country’s population at 140 million.

3. Although in ritual observances in Traditional Religion, particularly of the Yoruba, women were the custodians of certain rituals, and they indeed have cultic functions reserved for them. Hence, women served as coteries of some traditional gods, such as priestesses, mediums, diviners, medicine women and so on. However, in general, women did not have equal status as men in African societies.

4. Grace Alele-Williams (1932–2022) served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria from 1985 to 1992, the first woman in such a position in a public University in West Africa. See http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/PEEPS/williams_grace_alele.html, accessed on 16 July 2024.

5. Statistics are sourced from the Nigerian Baptist Convention Book of Reports, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2010.

6. Dr. Sarah Alade, OON and Deaconess Joan Olatoyosi Ayo, OON.

Footnotes

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