Annie Lee Thomas Neil

Annie Lee Thomas Neil, age 94, died peacefully on Sunday, June 8, 2014, at Transitions LifeCare, in Raleigh, N.C. Anne Neil spent her formative years in Fairfax, S.C, one of eight children. At an early age, she discerned her life’s calling to be a missionary. She received degrees in music, nursing, and seminary studies before being appointed in 1952 with her husband, Lloyd (deceased), as a Southern Baptist missionary, serving in Nigeria and Ghana for twenty-seven years. Along the way, Anne pursued further studies in counseling and guidance and spiritual formation. During a hiatus from the mission in the early 1970s, Anne worked as Academic Adviser to students at Campbellsville College in Kentucky. In West Africa, she served as nursing instructor, writer of religious literature, teacher, out-reach nurse, house parent for missionary children, leader within the mission, spiritual adviser to university students, and seminary instructor. Her career was characterized by her remarkable capacity to draw forth other people's gifts.

Retiring with her husband to Wake Forest in 1981, Anne began a second career of advocacy for women in ministry, studying for a year at Garrett Theological Seminary in Chicago. Neil’s passion for equal opportunity in women’s response to God’s call led to her role as founder or contributing leader of Baptist Women in Ministry, the Alliance of Baptists, Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School and the Baptist Peace Fellowship. She was an early president of the Alliance.

At eighty years of age, she was ordained to the gospel ministry by Millbrook Baptist Church. Her life choices emblemized her commitment to justice for disenfranchised people within every community she entered, whether in Nigeria, Ghana, or the American South. A reasoned and prophetic voice for human liberation, she spoke truth to power as she lived out her faith by visiting women in prison, feeding the poor, bringing wholeness to the sick, writing and speaking for justice, inspiring the voiceless, and loving the outcast.

Anne Neil is survived by daughters Rebecca Albritton (Bob) and Elaine Orr (Anderson); three grandchildren, Joel Orr (Dominique) and Neil and Anne Albritton; a great grand-daughter, Scarlett Orr; and a sister, Adrienne Loadholt.

A memorial service will be held Saturday, June 21, at 1:00 p.m., Millbrook Baptist, 1519 E. Millbrook Rd., Raleigh. Visitation will follow in the fellowship hall.

Memorial gifts can be made to Bread for the World (http://www.bread.org/); the Anne Thomas Neil/Alan Preston Neely Endowment Fund, Alliance of Baptists (mail your gift to: Alliance of Baptists • 3939 LaVista Road, Suite E-122, Atlanta, GA 30084, or contribute on-line, https://app.etapestry.com/hosted/AllianceofBaptists/OnlineGiving.html, marking the gift for the Anne Neil Endowment); or Nigeria Faithful Works (http://www.nigeriafaithful.org/