When the Woman is Complimentary to the Man, Look for Violence Against Women
Articles and hand wringing continue about widespread sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention. There is little talk about its root cause, a theology that places men in power and women not in power.
Some conservative Christian buffoons probably will say, "The Bible tells us the man is to rule over the woman. And there are no female preachers or priests because Jesus had all male disciples." To which we can ask, how do you know this is true? Was that part of the Bible written by men or women? What if it is true, who cares?
Statistically, we know violence against women is more common in the Bible Belt. That might be due to cultural factor in addition to religion or instead of religion. Religion, however, does not stop it from happening.
There has yet to be, so far as I know, one Southern Baptist official or preacher to put any blame on the theology of the denomination. All the hand wringing is about what are considered to be rogue preachers and officials. A little inward reflection would be a healthy thing.
I know inward reflection is not possible. Catholics can't do it, nor can any other denomination. Each brand of Christianity is a break away from some earlier branch. Every branch considers itself to be superior. How can any of them admit they are wrong? That hints they may have been wrong when they split off.
It is curious to me as an outsider why any branches of the faith include instructions on how women and men must rank each other. Civil laws handles violence. Why can't the denominations just keep out of advising who in a marriage does what? Or, deciding which gender is qualified to preach and which is not.
The one thing I've learned about news stories and the public is that much of the damage done by the current batch of bad behavior by SBC preachers would flow on down the river of time and be forgotten if there were never another case. But, it is inevitable there will be others. Just as Catholic cases keep trickling out into the public so will they in the SBC. As this happens a large portion of the public decides, rightly or wrongly, the preachers/priests are something to avoid.
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ReplyDeleteI hope Catholic officials read your post which matches to a T their views. Your views were written by men in power to maintain their power. Women are to serve men, men are to run things.
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Deletetsm;
Delete: "IDEOLOGICAL TWADDLE". So, you are saying I'm wrong and the Bible was written by women, not men. And further that my statement it was written by men for men is "ideological?" It is factual, not ideological.
Jon reveals a common tendency of cherry picking one verse and ignoring the rest in context to fortify his bias of contention, stress and competition, Centering alone on Eph 5.24, leaving out the following of Eph 5;25 to 33, while still still in context.
DeleteUsing "complementarian" as a secular application, does not quite fit the remainder of Eph 5 forward of the context. In truth "synergistic" would be a more appropriate, accurate, and unifying term. The harmony of "The sum of the whole is greater than the total of either part. This is more close to husband, wife, and family, which can also be added to community. Difficult for Jon to see.
Jon; I may have miss-spoke. Since I can't yet see my post, I can't remember if I said synergism or syncretism. The intended word is synergism, as I defined, not syncretism, which has an entirely different meaning. You may change my post to make it accurate if I erred.
Deletetsm "who cares whether the Bible was written by men and not by women." One group who cares are women. Another group who cares are men who support equal rights for women. The Bible and the faith to this day is loaded against women. How can you keep denying the obvious? (Maybe for you it is easy.)
DeleteHelper: "Difficult for Jon to see." I agree. When women are assigned roles and they are not equal in authority abuse will happen. It's baked into the cake. You can have your Eph or "synergism." It all adds up to the same thing, prejudice against women. The Bible has been used against certain groups since it was written.
ReplyDeleteJon; I re-read your last; 4;39. That is the weakest excuse you could come up with, and introduces content not related to the topic. As per usual. A joke.
Deletehelper "As per usual. A joke." Whatever you think matters not. What matters are the facts. Women cannot be ministers in your denomination. You should not put up with that.
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