Understanding the Southern Baptist scandal: For evangelicals, women can't say no

[marmar]

Understanding the Southern Baptist scandal: For evangelicals, women can't say no
Yes, the Bible tells women to "submit" to their husbands — in one verse. For some believers, that's plenty

By NATHANIEL MANDERSON
Contributing writer
PUBLISHED AUGUST 16, 2022 5:45AM (EDT)


The Southern Baptist Conference is under investigation by the Department of Justice due to numerous claims of egregious sexual abuse and sexual harassment within the denomination. Perhaps people wonder why there is such an overabundance of sexual misconduct of various kinds within evangelical circles. The truth is that many believers in Christ have struggled with what was right and wrong in regardsto their genitalia. Is the creator of the universe worried about our private areas? For most conservative evangelical Christians, it is apparently all God thinks about. As an ordained and evangelically trained minister, I tend to disagree.

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. — Ephesians 5

I can barely get through one week of evangelical radio where this scripture is not discussed. It is one of the evangelical community's favorites, and one believers often refer to when they discuss the downfall of American society. They contend that it all went to hell (almost literally) when women decided to be equal to men in the home. Then came Gloria Steinem, Geraldine Ferraro and eventually the ultimate devil herself, Hillary Clinton. These women represented the end of the American family and then the end of God's influence upon American society.

Submission to your husband is not simply a suggestion in the evangelical church, but a command put upon every married woman. This is no more clearly on display than in the sex life of an evangelical married couple. Simply put, a wife cannot refuse their husband when he wants to have sex. She is a sinner for refusing her husband and then can be held responsible for any sexual sin her husband may commit afterward. Naturally, with this being the basic mindset, accusations by women regarding sexual abuse or harassment seem ridiculous to the majority of conservative evangelical men.

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. — I Timothy 2

In the evangelical worldview, a woman must never appear to be in a place where she leads or holds authority over a man. Certainly women may teach children because that work is beneath men anyway. Somehow Biblical theology (in this reading) allows women to teach young boys but not older teenage boys or young adult men. A neat evangelical trick that allows men to neglect their children. Anyway, many evangelical churches enforce an actual age when it becomes inappropriate for a woman to teach a young man. I have heard the age prescribed as young as 13. Certainly by that age boys are taught that as men they are superior to all women. I would venture to guess that this becomes a problem in future relationships with women at work and school, at church and in romantic relationships and marriages. .........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/08/16/understanding-the-southern-baptist-scandal-for-evangelicals-women-cant-say-no/

[Irish_Dem]

1. All of the hard won 20th century gains being wiped out.

Back to the 19th century.

[Ferrets are Cool]

2. Religion is the root of all evil...

or at least a large portion of it. JMO

[2naSalit]

5. +1

[IrishAfricanAmerican]

7. Yep.

[OldBaldy1701E]

10. Hear Hear! (n/t)

[Farmer-Rick]

3. Female slavery was the backbone of developing agriculture societies

Is it any wonder that ancient Roman societies and their religious mythology made women practically sex slaves?

And now here we are over 2,000 years later trying to follow an ancient goat herding societies' strictures because of a god? What a scam.

[magicarpet]

4. Make AmeriKKKa Great Again,....

... can only be accomplished through the total subjugation of women and minority populations.

White Christian Fascist males must reign supreme so that society thrives and remains fully functional.

[Timeflyer]

6. One lousy self-righteous misogynist male

thousands of years ago writes his opinion in a letter ("saint" Paul) and because of that women are subjugated for all time--yeah, give me the flying spaghetti monster any day.

[Duppers]

12. Isn't this the predominant attitude in...

Most all Middle Eastern cultures?

Decades ago we had a male friend from Turkey; I was forever arguing with him. He married an American woman and sure got his comeuppance; that lady wouldn't comply with any of his misogynist attitudes and demands.

[prodigitalson]

18. Most scholars don't believe Paul wrote it

Authorship of the Pauline epistles
The authorship of First Timothy was traditionally attributed to the Apostle Paul. He is named as the author of the letter in the text (1:1). Nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship questioned the authenticity of the letter, with many scholars suggesting that First Timothy, along with Second Timothy and Titus, are not the work of Paul, but rather are unattributable Christian writing some time in the late-first-to-mid-2nd centuries.[3] Most scholars now affirm this view.[4][5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Epistle_to_Timothy

Most scholars do think he wrote First Corinthians, which contains some of the more egalitarian views mentioned in the article.

I'm not suggesting anyone follow any religion, I just think it is probably unfair to blame someone for a likely later forgery.

[czarjak]

8. First cherry picked every time. Followed closely by the dark-skinned ones need to be mastered over.

[lees1975]

9. Even within the denomination there are those who label this an apocalypse

"Too little, too late," say the victims.

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-southern-baptist-convention-is.html

And you're exactly right. The attitudes and actions that led to a scandal that is proportionately as large as that of the Catholic church are based on faulty interpretations and applications of a few verses in the Bible, written in a completely different cultural context.

But it took 130 years for Southern Baptists to repudiate their past history with slavery and segregation.

[Skittles]

11. why do women take part in this misogynist nonsense

UGH

[Mopar151]

13. Paradise for the cruel ones

Target Rich Environment and all...

I'm not sure some are even human..

[Skittles]

14. I don't get women sometimes, and I AM one

they participate in religion that sees them as inferior, they allow themselves to be given away from one man to another, and take on his name, they revel in fashions that are utterly ridiculous and cannot be seen without makeup......then they wonder why they are seen as second class citizens

[Brenda]

15. Some reasons

1. They are uneducated, sheltered, raised in an environment much like a cult and are physically unable or unwilling to fight back.

2. They grokked the game and chose safety and economic security by playing their part and supporting the system.

3. Millions of years of male violence.

[lees1975]

16. It's based on a faulty theology.

Southern Baptists believe in some man-made, presupposed assumptions that developed along the edges of the Protestant Reformation, and which became part of the liturgy of revivalism in America, among Christian groups with very little idea of how to interpret the Bible, and particularly the New Testament, in its historic context. Specifically, they believe that the Bible is inerrant and infallible and they see it as a book of literal commandments instead of a progressive revelation written by men with Christ as the primary object of all that was written, and his words and teaching as the interpretive standard for everything else. But they will cite verses like those in this article as "stand alone" commands.

And yet, approach a hard line conservative Southern Baptist (or a Pentecostal or Charismatic for that matter) with the thought that Romans 13:1-7, Titus 3:1-2 and I Peter 2:13-17 literally applies to the Obama and Biden administration as it does to the Bush, Trump or Reagan administrations, and see what happens. You'll get an encyclopedia-sized argument of convoluted explanations and reasons why that's not literally the case. Then they will have made your point about the few references to women of this nature for you.

Ironically, the Southern Baptist Convention has established and supported dozens of colleges, universities and graduate schools, a number of whom they've actually been fighting against and battling for several decades now because those institutions gradually, and systematically, developed a Biblical theological and doctrinal stance that interprets the Bible in its context, and not just by the subjective emotional perspective of someone reading King James English and claiming to "feed the illumination of the Spirit," and yes, that's a very common statement used to end an argument. Most of these schools, including Baylor University, Wake Forest University, Furman University in South Carolina, Belmont University in Nashville and Mercer University in Georgia have gone to self-perpetuating trustee boards rather than those elected by the denomination.

There are a couple of groups that have splintered or split off of the main denomination, one of which had a woman as its executive director for a while, and the membership in the Southern Baptist Convention itself has dropped by almost 3 million in a decade, more than half of that since 2015.

[lees1975]

17. From a former Southern Baptist...

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2022/08/a-warning-to-churches-infiltrated-by.html

[pfitz59]

19. I lived in Florida for three years

met many of these assholes. i was a good listener, to their women. all told the same story of macho, rapey jerks. i was happy to leave that shitty culture behind. Gaetz is not an aberration.