Who the F Is … Pastor Susan Parker?

Who she is: Pastor of the Wake Forest Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, N.C.

What she’s accomplished: With the Southern Baptist Convention frequently making news with its anti-LGBT and antifeminist stances – most recently at its annual meeting this week – Parker and her church stand as examples of another type of Baptist.

Parker grew up in a small Southern Baptist church in rural western North Carolina and always wanted to be a minister, she told the Wake Forest University student newspaper in 2012. “Then I grew up and became more aware of my church’s teaching that women are not supposed to be ministers,” Parker said. “Also, as I became more aware of my sexual orientation, I realized I had to leave there. It was unsafe for me.” She recalled the pastor of her childhood church telling her she couldn’t be a part of the church if she were gay and that God wouldn’t love her.

Parker was not yet a pastor but a member of the LGBT-welcoming Wake Forest Baptist Church when she and her then-partner, Wendy Scott, sought to have their union ceremony there in 1997. The church holds its services in Wait Chapel, on the campus of Wake Forest University, although it is independent of the school. University administrators initially refused to permit the ceremony but eventually decided to allow it, with the women’s union taking place September 9, 2000. Their long struggle with the university over the issue is the subject of the documentary film A Union in Wait, released in 2001.

Because of its LGBT-inclusive stances, Wake Forest Baptist lost its membership in the Pilot Mountain Baptist Association and the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, and it voluntarily left the Southern Baptist Convention, but it found a home, as the church’s website puts it, in the progressive, LGBT-affirming Alliance of Baptists. In 2003 Parker became Wake Forest Baptist’s pastor. The previous year she had been a part of the Wake Forest School of Divinity’s first graduating class. She also has a degree from the Chicago Theological Seminary.

Wake Forest Baptist has a long history of progressive activism, which continued during Parker’s tenure. In the 1960s the congregation was active in the movement for African-American civil rights. It has offered many programs assisting the elderly, at-risk children, and people with AIDS. Church members were heavily involved in a campaign that resulted in the exoneration and release of a man wrongly convicted of murder. In 2005 the church received the Kaleidoscope Faith Community Award from PFLAG of Winston-Salem.

From January 2011 to mid-2013, Wake Forest Baptist had two lesbian senior pastors, with Angela Yarber serving alongside Parker, a situation that was most likely unique among U.S. Baptist churches. During that period Parker and Yarber campaigned against Amendment One, a measure writing a ban on same-sex marriage into the North Carolina constitution. In a 2012 opinion column, they wrote, “We’re not asking you to marry us in your church. We’re not even asking that you agree with us. We’re simply asking that you don’t vote to take away the rights of thousands of North Carolinians who are gay and straight, black and white, rich and poor, Baptists and non-Baptists.” Voters, however, ultimately approved the amendment. It is now being challenged in court, as is every remaining same-sex marriage ban around the nation.

Parker’s career with Wake Forest Baptist is ending this month, as she leaves to take a job in social services. “As I said in a recent sermon, I love this church, and that isn’t going to change,” she wrote in the church’s newsletter. There will be an “appreciation celebration” for her June 29.

Choice quote: “It’s been great to be a part of this church because they have been so supportive, they have been so out in the larger community. So, you know, personally, that’s given me the opportunity to be very out as well, and there just is no place in my life where I’m not out. And that’s very nice.” – Parker in a 2012 interview for the Wake Forest University LGBTQ Oral History Archive

For more information: See the Wake Forest University LGBTQ Oral History Archive interview here and the interview with the university’s student newspaper, Old Gold & Black,here. Find out about A Union in Waithere, and learn more about Wake Forest Baptist on its website and Facebook page.