Introducing All the Buried Women

Introduction

Hi! This is not Pete or Jared, but don’t panic. You’re on the right feed. I’m Savannah Locke and I’m here to introduce a new podcast from the Bible for Normal People to you called All the Buried Women.

Here’s how it happened.

In the Spring of 2023, I was working in marketing for The Bible for Normal People. My boss and co-host of the Bible for Normal People podcast, Jared, sensed that I was getting restless and encouraged me to find a passion project. If I came up with something, he said he would help support it however he could… So I tucked the idea away for later. A few months passed, and one day, while I was posting something on X (formerly known as Twitter) for work, I came across a post from Beth Allison Barr. She shared an image from the Southern Baptist Convention’s Archives– a letter written by an 8-year old girl in the early 2000s asking the Board of Trustees why they wouldn’t let girls preach.

I’m not Southern Baptist, but I grew up and currently live in a suburb outside Nashville, the heart of the Southern Baptist world. This is not a lie: there are 14 Southern Baptist churches within 10 miles of my house. Whether I like it or not, the Southern Baptist Convention (otherwise known as the SBC) influences the air I breathe. If you’re in America, they’ve influenced you, too. From politics to media to cultural norms, the Southern Baptist Convention’s reach extends far beyond the walls of their almost 47,000 churches. Their decisions, doctrines, and debates have shaped national conversations about gender, race, and power for decades.

To give you a hint as to how unfamiliar I was with the insides of the SBC, I didn’t even know they had archives. But seeing a picture of that letter from the 8-year old girl made me wonder… what else could be hiding in there? What kind of documents are in the archives of the largest Protestant denomination in America? What if we did a podcast featuring one of the documents in each episode? What if we uncovered a story nobody knew about?

So I reached out to Beth Allison Barr and asked if we could Zoom. It’s worth noting that I had zero relationship with Beth before this– she had been a guest on The Bible for Normal People podcast, but I hadn’t met her so this felt like a total shot in the dark. Luckily, she responded back and agreed to talk.

When we met, Beth shared something that took my idea to another level. She told me she was chasing down a story of abuse that she found in the SBC’s archives—a story nobody had told before. It was personal, gut-wrenching, and emblematic of how the SBC has historically silenced women and dismissed their experiences. Beth believed the story needed to be heard, and she wanted to bring it to light. That conversation changed everything. Together, we realized the podcast could be about more than uncovering forgotten documents—it could be about reclaiming buried truths.

And now, a year and a half later, here we are! Releasing a 5-part miniseries about women’s stories hidden in the SBC’s archives. The final product is a lot different from my original vision– instead of featuring one document per episode, there are dozens and dozens of documents we’ve used to tell the stories of women who were, honestly, buried alive by their own denomination.

We also tell the story of how the SBC has become the monolith it is today. Because, just fifty years ago, it was a very different denomination. The SBC used to be far less centralized, with local churches holding much more power. We found a letter in the archives, for example, asking Tipper Gore, who was then-Vice President Al Gore’s wife at the time, to come speak at a gathering for pastor’s wives in the SBC. Imagine the equivalent of that happening today. We also uncovered a fascinating document from a gathering in the mid-1960s where women in the SBC publicly debated this question: Is being a pastor’s wife the best life? On one side were women who passionately argued that it was the pinnacle of purpose and service. On the other side were women who challenged that narrative, citing the unfair pressures and expectations placed upon pastor’s wives. After the debate, the majority voted in favor of the group arguing that being a pastor’s wife was not the best life.

These are just two small examples that reveal a very different SBC than the one we know today. There were pockets in the SBC’s history where debate and disagreement were welcome– and for the most part, nobody was getting kicked out for diversion in thought. Over time, though, through strategic efforts and calculated reforms, the Southern Baptist Convention has transformed into a colossal, political, uniform body; a tightly controlled institution with immense influence over its members and, by extension, American culture. But you’ll learn more about that in the show— I promise.

We’ve timed the podcast to release alongside Beth’s new book, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry. While some stories from the podcast also appear in the book, this miniseries dives into many archival documents that didn’t make it into Beth’s book, and vice versa. On a personal note, over the last year, I’ve read Becoming the Pastor’s Wife twice, and it is magnificent. I would encourage anyone listening to the show to grab a copy and learn more from Beth’s research.

So that is how All the Buried Women came to be. We have spent hundreds of hours researching, writing, and piecing together these stories. Our hope is that this podcast not only sheds light on the SBC’s treatment of women but also honors the voices and lives of those who refused to stay buried. Their stories deserve to be heard, and we’re grateful to share them with you every Thursday through the Bible for Normal People’s podcast feed.

See you soon.

Footnotes:

1. Conference of Southern Baptist Ministers’ Wives Collection, AR 369, Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, Nashville, TN.