Southern Baptists: Males are Superior, Nothing Wrong With That


A news story says the Department of Justice is poking into the history of sex abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention. Conventional wisdom in U.S. politics is religions must be left alone to commit their crimes and terrible deeds. DOJ looking into the Baptists seems unusual.

In response, an official in the Southern Baptists said there is nothing wrong with "our beliefs." In fact, "our beliefs our strengths." I suppose there are Catholic Bishops saying the same thing about the powers of clergy there. In both cases, the belief men are superior to women has to be a big contributing factor in continuing sexual abuse in churches across the country and specifically among Catholics and Southern Baptists.

What is interesting about this Southern Baptists defense of "our beliefs" is that he feels the denomination is on the defensive. The idea women cannot be clergy is so foreign to modern U.S. society it is scoffed at. Southern Baptists would be smart to wake up and smell the roses.

Equality for women is sweeping across the globe. I read an article today about how women are reacting to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.  Women have been fired from jobs they have held for years. Not all education has been stopped for women but most has been stopped. Across that country, women have responded by hosting secret schools for girls in homes. In some homes, fathers or older brothers disapprove of education for girls so their daughters and sisters lie about where they spend their days. 

The parts of Christianity which prevent women from becoming clergy are not the Taliban. But they are not entirely separate from it either. They are taking self-serving ideas from an ancient past and trying to shoehorn them into modern society. The Southern Baptist Convention has been shrinking at a rate of 10% a year for several years. I would predict that in a generation all the churches who exclude women from the pulpit will have either changed or will have disappeared. 

When people enjoy the work they do and get paid adequately, usually they see no need the rock the boat or upset the apple cart. We will not see any part of anti-women Christianity change much until the old die off.

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