A federal judge has dismissed a gender discrimination lawsuit filed by a professor and minister who lost her bid to become the first woman to serve as senior pastor of New York City's prominent Abyssinian Baptist Church.
The Rev. Eboni Marshall Turman, a Yale Divinity School professor and former assistant pastor at Abyssinian, was among the candidates interviewed in the search for a successor to longtime senior pastor Calvin O. Butts III, who died in 2022.
After not being named a finalist, Marshall Turman sued the church and the search committee for gender discrimination in December 2023. No woman has ever been senior pastor of Abyssinian, which was founded in 1808
In a ruling Monday to dismiss Marshall Turman’s lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Dale Ho referred to the legal concept of “ministerial exception,” which grants religious organizations some protection against employment discrimination claims related to the hiring and firing of clergy.
Ho also said Marshall Turman did not make a sufficiently persuasive case that she was more qualified than the five men who were named as finalists.
Marshall Turman, in an email to The Associated Press on Wednesday, said she was considering an appeal and depicted Abyssinian as “mired in hypocrisy.”
“The case was not dismissed on its merits but on a technicality — religious exception — which contends that the church has a right to discriminate, even though the Bible says, 'in Christ there is neither male nor female,’” Marshall Turman wrote.
“My moral claim still stands: gender discrimination against me or anyone else has no place in God’s house.”
Abyssinian defended its selection process and welcomed Ho's ruling.
“While the church celebrates this legal victory, it reaffirms its commitment to gender equity in religious leadership and remains committed to its long history of championing social justice and equality for all,” it said in a statement Wednesday.
Among the five finalists for the senior pastor position, the selection committee’s eventual choice was Kevin R. Johnson, who founded Dare to Imagine Church in Philadelphia after a contentious resignation and split with historic Bright Hope Baptist Church in 2014.
Abyssinian congregants elected Johnson as senior pastor in June 2024.
However, some longtime members were displeased by the selection process, and the election itself. Four filed a lawsuit in October in a New York State court, alleging that several aspects of the process violated the church's bylaws.
That lawsuit remains pending, though Abyssinian filed a motion in December seeking its dismissal.
The lawsuit “is nothing more than a scheme developed by Petitioners to remove the duly-elected pastor of a historic Baptist Church in Harlem, simply so they can propose a candidate whom they believe is more spiritually qualified for the position," the motion said. “They have not made sufficient allegations to demonstrate fraud or wrongdoing in the election process.”
Based in Harlem, Abyssinian became a famous megachurch with the political rise of the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., perhaps the most influential of the many men who have led the congregation. Powell, pastor from 1937 to 1972, served in Congress for 26 years. Over the years, Abyssinian has been the spiritual home of many influential New Yorkers.
