The Southern Baptists - When Someone Tells You Who They Are Believe Them!
Their misogyny is on full display!
When the signs say something disturbing please believe them! Being able to read the signs or portents or times is an underrated life skill.
Night before last I’m winding down for bed, in the shower in a haze of bubbles scrubbing away the day while yawning hard. Suddenly I’m jolted awake when the first loud rumbling came. The floor moved side to side and up and down at the same time it was trembling! We’d just had a 5.3 earthquake with the epicenter being a mere 13 kilometers from the house. The shaking went on so long I just knew there would be consequences. Maybe a crack or two, but mostly jangled nerves and aftershocks galore.
Didn’t need to be a genius to figure out what it was and what would follow. The earthquake announced its presence well before either the USGS Shake Map or the OVSICORI-UNA Shake Map confirmed it had arrived. So it has also been with this week’s Southern Baptist Annual Conference where they announced and named themselves as a problematic high demand religious organization with misogyny already baked right in while pretending to esteem women.
I know, this is an odd one for me because I barely ever mention the Southern Baptists. This cannot pass without comment.
Since the Southern Baptist denomination was started in the Deep South pre-Civil War by folks that didn’t want slavery to end I never expected much from them. Yes, founded on the backs of an enslaved people! Being raised Catholic/Episcopal I avoided too much interactions with the kids who were Southern Baptists. If you walked home from Catholic school they’d toss rocks and jeering insults at you in some parts of South Louisiana. Let’s just say I’ve never been impressed, not even when I was non-denom Evangelical and Al Mohler Jr. - head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary - was doing a church plant in our area of Virginia aimed at the non-churched. This is the same church plant that later gobbled up the remnants of different toxic churches post-split.
Recently Al Mohler has been sounding off on his ideas of the role of women in the church, and it’s not been good at all! What was the main issue? It was a silly one, Al claimed that women were not to interpret the Bible on podcasts. Say what? Even as other denominations had loosened the restrictions on women Al was doubling down even on newer things like podcasts. The religious world roared with debate on both sides.
Mohler brought a constitutional amendment proposal with even more reduced roles for women at the Southern Baptist churches and the silly thing passed with more than two-thirds of the vote. It spells out the roles of men to teach, preach and lead while suppressing those same actions carried out by women. Looks like it’s a direct action taken by Mohler in the wake of criticism over his podcast remarks and has the ridiculous name of “The Truth and Unity Amendment.” Only men can speak scripture in a teaching and preaching way.
A few did speak out against it, pointing out that the Southern Baptists already had a He-Man Woman-Haters Club stance with zero women preachers. Sorry/not sorry for the sarcasm! This is exactly the kind of thing that makes me want to fly double birds and issue cursy words in public. Because of course they could they shut down discussion and debate after a mere eight minutes instead of the allotted twenty.
If all of that wasn’t evil enough they voted in a new president, a man who called the recent SBC sexual abuse crisis that roiled the church “mostly a hoax” and “overblown.” This is Willy Rice of Clearwater, Florida’s Calvary Church, a place I once visited and was told I was “dancing too much” during worship. Not impressed at all. I also wasn’t impressed by much I heard coming off that pulpit either!
People wonder why ex president Jimmy Carter and his Baptist Church, Maranatha Baptist Church, left the SBC for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 2000. It was due to the beginnings of this conservative turn towards insisting on wives submitting strictly to husbands and the refusal to ordain women. Sensible responses to stances from the 1950s, no, 1850s! The CPF supports gender equality and religious freedom. Carter could see how little esteem women were held in while doing most of the grunt work of the church, yet how many times they were being sexually abused while being taken advantage of.
As I’ve been going around my usual places here and reading what other Christians I respect have to say about what happened I stumbled across this by the always lovely Sheila Wray Gregoire of “Bare Marriage” -
“As healthy people leave toxic spaces, I believe healthy churches will grow. I think another Reformation is coming between churches that are focused on being Jesus’ hands and feet and serving the kingdom of God, and churches that are focused on power and hierarchy.
As sad as this week is for women, I believe it ultimately will be used for good. More of us are finding each other, and our voices will not be quenched, because the Holy Spirit won’t be quenched!”
This is the way forward. Eventually this madness of men trying to shut up women will end. In the meantime we must speak out against this and find each other!
