Doing the Word: Southern Baptists' Carver School of Church Social Work and Its Predecessors, 1907–1997 by T. Laine Scales and Melody Maxwell

Abstract

Reviewed by: Doing the Word: Southern Baptists' Carver School of Church Social Work and Its Predecessors, 1907–1997 by T. Laine Scales and Melody Maxwell Clara Delane Tew (bio) Doing the Word: Southern Baptists' Carver School of Church Social Work and Its Predecessors, 1907–1997. By T. Laine Scales and Melody Maxwell. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019. Pp. ix, 243. $64.00 cloth) In Doing the Word, authors T. Laine Scales and Melody Maxwell do a masterful job of illuminating the story of a school that went from providing an education for a small group of young women, supported by a women's organization, to becoming a focus of strife in the conflict over control of the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. The entities involved were the Woman's Missionary Union, the Auxiliary of the Southern Baptist Convention [End Page 657] (WMU), the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS), and the Carver School of Church Social Work. The narrative follows the school's history from its beginnings in 1907, as the WMU Training School for Christian Workers in Louisville, Kentucky, for women desiring to serve as missionaries and in social ministries. The school continued to grow under the direction of WMU leaders such as Fannie E. S. Heck. In 1958, WMU transferred the control of the school to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), becoming part of the SBTS in 1963. By this time, the school was the Carver School of Missions and Social Work. Controversy arose in the SBC in the 1980s and 1990s, as a determined group of conservatives sought to take control of the SBC and its institutions from those whom they deemed liberals. This controversy hit the Carver School when newly elected SBTS president, Al Mohler, moved to eliminate professors who did not hold to conservative theological ideology, especially the precept that women should not serve as pastors. Conservatives challenged the field of social work itself, feeling that evangelism should be the focus of all Christian ministries. This led to the resignation of the Carver School dean, Diana Garland, and many of its professors. Eventually the seminary trustees transferred the school to Campbellsville College in Campbellsville, Kentucky. Diana Garland began teaching at Baylor University and would eventually see the creation of the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work at Baylor. The book concludes with an interesting epilogue discussing the legacy of the Carver School. Outside the fields of WMU and SBC institutional history, the book will be useful to scholars studying female education, development of the social work profession, and Christian involvement in social ministry. Scales and Maxwell bring a wealth of knowledge to this topic, each having researched and written on WMU and the WMU Training School previously. An impressive list of primary sources supports the conclusions, including documents from a wide pool of WMU, SBC, SBTS and several Baptist university archives. The authors [End Page 658] strengthened the material with interviews of individuals involved with the school throughout time, covering all sides of the life of the institution. The authors deftly include secondary sources to situate the narrative in the surrounding history of the time. Deep feelings remain from the conservative takeover. This is especially true for the moderates who felt cast out from their denomination. Those involved as students or employees of Carver School at SBTS continue to mourn the school that once existed. Whereas Maxwell worked at WMU, and Scales was a student at Carver School in the 1980s, one might expect a biased approach to the history. However, except for a couple of instances, the authors succeed in providing readers a balanced view of the full history of the institution. They are to be commended. Clara Delane Tew CLARA DELANE TEW teaches history at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. She has written numerous articles and chapters on WMU, SBC, and church history and is currently researching organizations connected with the American Baptist Convention, USA. Copyright © 2020 Kentucky Historical Society