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Saturday, Nov. 22, 2008

Winthrop grad making history

Ordained at Oakland Baptist in Rock Hill, Ginger Barfield is poised to become first female and first non-Lutheran to serve as dean and vice president at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary

COLUMBIA -- When the Rev. Virginia "Ginger" Barfield stepped onto the campus of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary five years ago, she was simply a Baptist pastor recruited by a friend to teach an evening course in Greek.

"It was a very casual walk onto the campus," Barfield said Wednesday. "I didn't know anybody here, and I wasn't looking for a job."

Now, the 53-year-old Barfield -- who has directed the seminary's Baptist Studies program, taught New Testament and Baptist Studies and served as the seminary's registrar -- is poised to become the new dean and vice president of the seminary.

That she will become the first female dean and the first non-Lutheran in the position does not faze her.

Barfield celebrates the fact that her Baptist faith tradition mingles among the traditions of the Lutheran, United Methodist, African-Methodist Episcopal, and Catholic students on the pastoral North Columbia campus.

"If you read about the 175 years of existence of this place, there has always been an attention to openness toward others," she said. "We are first committed to Christ."

Not that there weren't a few questions among students at the beginning.

"There is a caricature of Baptists, particularly in the South," she said, "so there was some misunderstanding of what I might be."

Barfield was raised in a Southern Baptist family in Kershaw County where faith was "foundational." She had Presbyterian and Methodist classmates and one Lutheran friend, but everyone went to the Baptist church for youth group on Friday night, she said.

By high school, she envisioned a place for herself in church vocations.

But Barfield, like so many other Southern Baptists, was caught up in the very public battle between hard-line conservatives and moderates within the Southern Baptist Convention.

After graduation from Winthrop University, Barfield obtained a master's degree, graduated from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1982 and began coursework toward a doctorate at Duke University.

While at Duke, she also taught classes in New Testament and Greek at the Wake Forest seminary, a contract that was not renewed in 1988 when the conservative wing of the denomination solidified its takeover.

She was told she could not longer teach because "I would be in a position of authority over men."

Barfield was ordained in 1981 at Oakland Baptist Church in Rock Hill. Although it was a Southern Baptist congregation, it nurtured her through her seminary training and supported her in ministry.

"There has always been this moderate presence in Southern Baptist life," she said. "Those are the churches I was always part of."

In Columbia, she found a home at Kathwood Baptist Church, the Trenholm Road congregation she served first as a consultant and then as its associate pastor for seven years.

Today, she is a member of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a moderate group of Baptists who fled the Southern Baptist Convention and established a separate group in the early 1990s.

'We are not about exclusion'

Barfield believes Baptists have more in common with other faith groups born in the Protestant Reformation than is commonly believed.

"We are not about exclusion," she said.

The faculty, in recommending Barfield for the post, also emphasized her unity in faith: "Dr. Barfield shares with us the Christological and Trinitarian commitments embodied in the creeds of the church and a belief in the Bible as the inspired Word of God. She brings the experience and gifts that our faculty needs at this moment in its history."

Marion Aldridge, coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in South Carolina, said he couldn't be more pleased by her appointment, noting that both the CBF and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which operates the seminary, has "ecumenism in its DNA."

"The Bible is pretty clear that Christians ought to be able to get along with each other," Aldridge said. "It's part of our sorry history that we have sometimes emphasized our differences rather than our common faith."

Barfield will officially begin her new duties in July. She succeeds Michael Root, who served as dean for four years and will continue on the faculty as professor of systematic theology.