The historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, which was led by the late has been levied with a lawsuit from one of its former ministers after she was not selected as a finalist for its new pastor citing gender discrimination.

According to CBS News, Dr. Eboni Marshall Turman, a current professor at Yale Divinity School, filed the unprecedented suit against her former church alleging sexism from members of the board during the pastoral selection process after she was not included as one of the top five candidates.

Filed Dec. 29, the suit names Valerie S. Grant, the search committee chair of asking pressing questions on subjects that Marshall Turman's male counterparts were not subject to. 

“Gender discrimination motivated the decision not to hire (Marshall Turman), a fact discussed openly during meetings of the Committee, including by Grant and another Committee member, who said that Abyssinian would only hire a woman as its Senior Pastor ‘over my dead body,’” the complaint read.

Grant noted that Marshall Turman was one of 11 people who advanced from 47 prospective applicants.  While some of the committee members believed that Marshall Turman was the strongest candidate and Butts previously described her as “the best minister I have ever had” she did not gain the appropriate amount of votes to advance to the next round, Grant added.

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The five finalists are all male candidates and Marshall Turman received a written notice from Grant that she did not receive the required number of votes to proceed in the process.

Grant also argued the selection process “was designed to be fair to everyone.”

“I have an issue with people characterizing this process as discriminatory and designed to deny opportunities to women,” Grant said. “It’s simply not the case.”

After being notified that she was one of the finalists, Marshall Turman wrote a Facebook post in September alleging that was not included in the running for the job because of gender bias. She accused the deacon board of Abyssinian of being “an energized group of Morehouse supporters and committee leadership to systematically eliminate all female applicants from the pool of candidates.”

“I write only to underscore that gender bias has no place in God’s house,” Marshall Turman wrote. “Moreover, gender bias is illegal in the City of New York in 2023 no matter the prior legacy of the organization involved.”

In a brief statement, LaToya Evans, a spokesperson for Abyssinian, addressed Turman’s lawsuit.

While she and others were considered for the role because of their impressive backgrounds, she ultimately fell short of some key requirements for the role, where other finalist candidates prevailed and moved forward in the process,” Evans’ statement read.

For more than 200 years, Abysininian has been one the most prominent Black megachurches in the nation. The church has been led by several notable pastors such as Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, the Hon. Rev, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Dr. Samuel Dewitt Proctor, and Butts who pastored the church from 1989 until his death in 2022.

A noted minister and religious scholar, Marshall Turman became the youngest minister ordained in the storied history of Abyssinian.

Per the suit, Turman is seeking unspecified monetary damages from the defendants for "lost wages, lost benefits, other economic damages, shame, humiliation, embarrassment, and mental distress," and an injunction that will forbid gender discrimination in future hirings.