T. Laine Scales and Melody Maxwell trace the history of the Carver School of Church Social Work in Louisville, Kentucky, from its founding in 1907 as a missionary training program for women to 1997 when it was dissolved as a result of the Southern Baptist fundamentalist controversies. Doing the Word makes an important contribution to the growing scholarship on Southern Baptist women by highlighting tensions over gender, theology, and social justice that continue to plague the conservative denomination. Scales and Maxwell offer a fresh perspective on the Carver controversy by drawing upon new primary sources including over thirty oral history interviews and the personal papers of the final dean, Diana Garland. The authors write from the perspective of insiders and are transparent about their personal connections to the Carver story. As a result, Doing the Word has overtones of memoir in that it celebrates the authors’ “vocational kinship” to the generations of Baptist women who served and studied at the Carver School (172).

Doing the Word is divided into six chronological chapters with an introduction and an epilogue. The first five chapters provide an engaging institutional history of the Carver School. In 1907, leaders of the Southern Baptist Woman's Missionary Union (WMU) established a women's missionary training school in Louisville, Kentucky. WMU President Fannie Heck worked with the founding principal, Maude Reynolds McLure, to emphasize social reform in the school's curriculum. Under their leadership the school established a Baptist version of a social settlement to provide practical experience in social work, even though many Baptists remained skeptical that social ministry could coexist with conservative theology. In response to declining enrollment in the post-war era, the school became coeducational in 1952 and changed its name to the Carver School of Missions and Social Work. Scales and Maxwell recount a story of the integration of Carver in 1955 that may leave some readers wishing for further analysis of the racial attitudes at Carver but is fascinating nonetheless.

In 1957, WMU voted to transfer the Carver School and all its assets to the male dominated Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS), officially severing ties between the school and WMU. For nearly three decades, the social work program existed as a degree in the seminary's School of Religious Education. In the early 1970s, Anne Davis, a Carver School alumna, became director of the social work program. She immediately began making plans for an accredited master of social work (MSW) degree. In 1984, the seminary established the School of Church Social Work with Davis as the first dean. Scales and Maxwell enumerate the obstacles that Davis and the social work faculty encountered in securing accreditation for an MSW. The accrediting agency, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), initially denied the application for accreditation based on concerns that the program was housed in a seminary. In spite of the initial rejection, Davis and colleague Diana Garland worked diligently to answer all the accreditors’ concerns. Finally, on March 4, 1987, the CSWE granted Carver School its initial accreditation, making it the first Church Social Work program to receive this affirmation.

The final chapter of Doing the Word is a masterful treatment of the Carver controversy. By the 1990s, a conservative faction within the Southern Baptist Convention had cemented its control of all the denominational boards and agencies. Scales and Maxwell skillfully narrate the conflagration between Diana Garland (who had replaced Anne Davis as dean) and the seminary's new fundamentalist administration. Carver's emphasis on social work and its historic support for women in ministry placed the school in the cross hairs of the conflict. Tensions erupted when the seminary's new president, Albert Mohler, Jr., refused to hire a faculty candidate who had expressed support for women in ministry. Garland protested this decision, and Mohler refused to compromise. When Diana Garland called a press conference and publicly denounced Mohler's methods, the die was cast. Under pressure from the ultra-conservative faction, Mohler dissolved the school. As the chapter title indicates, “the walls came tumbling down” (137). The final class of the Carver School of Church Social Work graduated in May of 1997.

In the epilogue, Scales and Maxwell trace the influence of Carver's “scattered stones” as students and faculty left Louisville to find new places of service (169). Diana Garland eventually moved to Baylor University, where she served as dean of Baylor's School of Social Work. In many ways, this work stands as both a tribute and a eulogy for the Carver School of Church Social Work and its final dean, Diana Garland, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2015. In her honor, Baylor renamed their school the Diana Garland School of Social Work. Doing the Word also stands as a public lament for the loss of women's status in the Southern Baptist Convention. The history of Carver School is inextricably tied to Baptist women's struggles with patriarchy. The first women who attended the WMU Training School understood that they must stay “within the limited roles considered appropriate for their gender” (13). Subsequent generations of women struggled to expand their sphere of influence in the conservative denomination. Scales and Maxwell present the rising acceptance of social work in the 1960s and the rebuilding of the social work program in the 1970s and 1980s as a story of growing success for both women and social work. Their celebration of the achievement of accreditation in 1987 only makes the subsequent dismantling of Carver School all the more excruciating.

Doing the Word is well written, carefully documented, and a valuable addition to the growing body of scholarship on Southern Baptist women.