The 770,000-member Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) nominated its first female president last month at the denomination’s annual General Board meeting in Indianapolis.
The 770,000-member Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) nominated its first female president last month at the denomination’s annual General Board meeting in Indianapolis.
The denomination’s board unanimously endorsed a 50-year-old female pastor from Oklahoma, Sharon E. Watkins, to serve as General Minister and President of the Christian Church. She will stand for election during the Disciples General Assembly, which will be held July 23-27, in Portland, Ore. If elected, Watkins will be the first woman to head the Christian Church.
‘Sharon is smart and committed to the church. She has a vision, she’s excited, and she has experience and will bring a pastor’s heart and sensibility to the office of the OGMP,’ the Rev. Dr. LaTaunya Bynum, Chair of the Search Committee, told the denomination’s news service.
A product of American frontier Christianity, the Christian Church was founded in 1832 in Lexington, Ky., by Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell. The denomination arose in the years following the famous Cane Ridge revivals in Bourbon County, Kentucky.
Stone, a Presbyterian minister, and Alexander, a Baptist, rejected the use of creeds and confessions of faith–a belief characterized today by the slogan ‘no creed but Christ’–and sought to restore the church to its ‘primitive purity,’ building it upon the Bible alone. The Christian Church is part of what, historically, has been called the ‘Restoration Movement.’
Churches among the Disciples of Christ have long ordained women to the pastorate and many of its congregations believe regeneration accompanies the ordinance of baptism.
The denomination still rejects creeds and confessions, and its leadership characterizes the church as bearing similarities to Roman Catholicism as well as other Protestants including Baptists, Quakers, Presbyterians and Methodists.
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