Thank you Emily & Julie! by Helen LaKelly Hunt

Helen LaKelly Hunt has been active within the Women’s Movement for over twenty-five years. She is founder of The Sister Fund, a private women’s fund dedicated to the social, political, economic, and spiritual empowerment of women and girls and Women Moving Millions, an initiative to mobilize unprecedented resources to girls & women around the globe. Helen has worked in behalf of other women’s organizations, and is honored to be an inductee in the National Women’s Hall of Fame, in Seneca Falls, New York. 

Emily Nielsen Jones is making a tremendous contribution by highlighting those entities where women have a more important spiritual status and those where women are somewhat derivative.  I grew up in the Southern Baptist tradition.  I know the courage it takes to speak out.

In my church, all the deacons were male and of course, women are not allowed to be ministers.  For all the years I attended church, the only people who were allowed to pray publicly were men.  Visiting the church as an adult, the wives can now go up as the husband prays from the pulpit.  But only to stand behind him and in silence.  Women cannot even offer public prayer in the church. 

This sends a subtle, but profoundly, disempowering powerful message to women throughout the church. 

How wonderful that Emily and her sister Julie are speaking up!  May this message be heard throughout our culture and a transformation happen around gender roles in a rapid way.  God bless Emily and Julie!

Helen LaKelly Hunt