From the Raleigh News & Observer

Working for women's leadership
For eight decades, a Baptist woman has worked toward the time

By Yonat Shimron, Staff Writer

Anne Thomas Neil was 6 years old when she decided to become a missionary -- a single-minded pursuit that led to a life of adventure in Africa as a nurse educator for the Southern Baptist Convention.

Six decades later, Neil took on another mission -- one she attends with the same focus. She became a champion for women in ministry.

Now 88 and living in a Raleigh assisted-living complex, Neil has just completed a book that is part memoir, part series of sermons. In it, she writes that one of the church's greatest sins has been to deny women the opportunity to "identify, claim and exercise many of their God-given gifts."

"I think the church has been crippled for 2,000 years," she said recently, referring to the absence of women in leadership. "I want something more for my children and grandchildren."

The cause of women in ministry lies at the heart of "Journey Without Map: Words of Hope for Changing Times" (Trafford Publishing), which tells of Neil's leadership in a number of groups formed on the fringes of the Southern Baptist Convention. The groups include Baptist Women in Ministry, which Neil and 32 other women formed in 1983, the Alliance of Baptists and the Baptist Peace Fellowship.

Her devotion to these progressive Baptist groups, now separate from the larger denomination, has brought incremental changes. North Carolina has 17 women in senior leadership roles at Baptist churches -- including two in the Triangle. Nationwide, there are about 100 -- compared with 7,691 women serving as senior and associate pastors in the much smaller United Methodist Church.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest of the Baptist denominations with about 16 million members, insists that the office of pastor is reserved for men. Lately, denominational officials have sought to explain how Southern Baptists might support a woman -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- as vice president by suggesting that female politicians are fine but female clergy are not. It's a position Neil rejects.

"I'm very concerned how you differentiate the political from the spiritual life," she said. "I think it's all of one piece."

A life of spiritual direction

Despite Neil's trailblazing convictions, her personal life has included many conventional roles. A South Carolina native, she married Lloyd Neil at age 28, and the couple reared two daughters. He died in 2001.

These days she sees her role in life as "encourager" to other women. She is a mother, muse, guide and guru to a younger generation.

"When I have a significant decision to make, or I'm in a quandary, there are a few people I turn to, and one is Anne," said the Rev. Paula Clayton Dempsey, director of the Advent Spirituality Center in Mars Hill.

Neil is also a spiritual director, offering women and some men -- a Roman Catholic priest among them -- guidance in finding God.

But 27 years as a missionary, first in Nigeria and later in Ghana, bolstered her independence. Neil said she suffered acute culture shock when she landed in Nigeria in 1953. The poverty and illiteracy seemed almost overwhelming. She told her husband she would stay three years -- pride would let her do no less.

With the help of a cook and a residential supervisor at the Baptist nursing school where she taught -- her evangelistic professors, as she called them -- she found her footing. In addition to teaching nursing, she wrote instructional material for women about nutrition and child development, traveled out to the villages to teach women about hygiene and diet. In Ghana, she worked as a university campus minister.

"There are a lot of strong women missionaries," said the Rev. Mahan Siler, former pastor of Pullen MemorialBaptist Church in Raleigh and a friend of Neil's. "They could exert that leadership on the mission field in ways they never could have here."

Fruits of her labor

In 1982, after retiring to Wake Forest, Neil took a job as visiting professor of missions at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. She wasted no time speaking her mind. When the state Baptist newspaper covered a campus address with the headline "Anne Neil urges female parity with men in missions," her second career was launched.

The next year, she helped form a Baptist women's organization. In 1986, she took a year off to study feminist theology with Rosemary Radford Ruether, a leading feminist scholar at Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill.

Neil never expected to be a leader in the women's movement, but she found that her background as a missionary -- one of the most revered roles in Baptist life -- brought her authority and respect.

Though the leadership at Southeastern had become more conservative, and Neil and other faculty members were no longer welcome, she had found her calling.

On March 19, 2000, just days before her 80th birthday, she was ordained at her church, Millbrook Baptist, where her daughter, the Rev. Rebecca Neil Albritton, served as a minister.

These days, she drives herself to Millbrook Baptist, a church affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. There, she looks up to her new pastor, the Rev. Andrea Dellinger Jones, with a certain satisfaction.

"She was 6 years old when we started," Neil said. "She wouldn't be there if we hadn't done it."

yonat.shimron@newsobserver.com or (919) 829-4891