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What you can do may be limited and trivial when viewed by itself; but, remember, it can never be viewed in itself. It is more than itself, just as a thread in a web is more than a thread, and a link in a chain is more than a link. It is a bit of the whole, and the whole is immense, glorious, and eternal. Proceedings of WMU of Texas, 1920, p. 7.

She used numerous metaphors to relate the bigness and complexity of the new order to a single individual's effort, integrating a religious world conquest with the power of "one person, one woman" making "heart to heart, face to face" contact. Minutes of BWMW of Texas, 1909, p. 181.

By 1920—still midstream in the course of Mary Hill Davis's career—the Texas WMU had firmly established its success and developed some aspects of administrative expertise far beyond the BGCT or the SBC. Women found that the establishment of a volunteer network and attention to details were their forte and that the resulting financial and personal gains were sufficient to maintain organizational momentum and to win an undisputed place in the denomination hierarchy. They were able to accept the fact that their position was an "auxiliary" one not only on the basis of tradition, but also under the particular circumstances of working toward a grand ideal. The scope and significance of their religious cause gave their tasks meaning and made them part of an integrated whole. Standing up for what they conceived to be eternal verities gave a sense of dignity and urgency to their efforts. Another explanation for the mantle of dependency resting so lightly on their shoulders was the fact that an intimate, informal network still operated among Baptists in Texas; relationships were still based on a family model rather than an economic one, and traditional, if indirect means of influence between sexes were effective. As Mary Davis admitted in an editorial footnote: "They [the men]seem very much to need us . . . and we need them—a little." BS, October 16, 1913, p. 14. To give just a few examples of the way key Texas Baptists, both male and female, were accessible to one another in informal, sometimes familial relationships: Lou Williams, Mary H. Davis, Mary and James Gambrell, and J. B. Cranfill were members of George Truett's First Baptist Church in Dallas; Truett was married to a sister of Annie Jenkins Sallee, the missionary; the women's father, Judge W. H. Jenkins, was a long-term trustee of Baylor University and deacon at First Baptist Church in Waco, pastorate of B. H. Carroll; J. M. Carroll, the minister and historian, was B. H. Carroll's brother. J. B. Cranfill gives a backstage view of his communication with Lou Williams's husband and with Mary Davis prior to George Truett's call to serve as minister of their church. See J. B. Cranfill, From Memory (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1937), pp. 201-02. Women's talents probably developed with more facility in segregated institutions than they would have in an integrated setting. They extended their possibilities within the boundaries of social feminism, which were the boundaries accepted by most of the culture. Real equality continued to elude them, in part, by their becoming so absorbed in methodological details that they sacrificed (or did not cultivate) theological content and so anxious to maintain the good will of the men that they remained apart from controversy. Ultimately, power among Baptists rests in those who address those arenas: biblical doctrine and politics.

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Source:  OpenStax, Patricia martin's phd thesis. OpenStax CNX. Dec 12, 2012 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11462/1.1
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