Seen and not heard

I have always loved the Southern Baptist Convention.

I grew up glad to be part of one of the most effective organizations ever to take on the task of spreading the Gospel of Jesus. You see, that was reason for the founding of the SBC - for congregational churches to share resources and support. It was never intended to be a confessional church. The details of each church were left up to that church. The point was that together they could accomplish more than they could alone.

From the beginning of the SBC, there were women - active, involved, working and sacrificing to spread the Good News. The International Mission Board's Christmas offering is called the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, named after one of the most influential women in SBC history. Her letters back home detailing her experiences in China motivated Southern Baptists at home to give beyond measure to send more missionaries and to see the possibilities for evangelism. In 1912, a famine in China took a tragic toll. Miss Moon had shared all that she had with the Chinese people she had loved so dearly, and was starving right along with them. In December when she was too weak to put up a fight, she was forcibly evacuated by other missionaries, but she died Christmas Eve 1912 on a ship in the harbor at Kobe, Japan that was bound for America.

Annie Armstrong was the first Corresponding Secretary of the Woman's Missionary Union. The purpose of WMU is to do missions education, to promote mission action, and to encourage support, both financial and spiritual, for the missionaries and missions efforts of the SBC. Miss Armstrong was a tireless crusader for spreading the gospel at home and abroad. She crossed racial and ethnic lines long before it was fashionable or respectable. She had strong convictions about what was ladylike and what was not, but she was not afraid to challenge the social conventions of the Victorian Era if it advanced the cause of Christ.

These are only two examples of the women from the early history of the Southern Baptist Convention. Mom was the Associational WMU Director for many years and a Divisional Vice President with Georgia WMU. She brought many of these godly motivated women into my life and they showed me that doing the work of God had nothing to do with your chromosomes. It was first and foremost a matter of unwavering and unquestioning obedience to God alone.

My Dad has always been a strong supporter of missions and WMU. He taught me to believe that I was personally responsible for what I heard from the pulpit. He taught me that while everything that is said from the pulpit should come from God, not everything does, and that it is my responsibility to compare what is said to what God has said in scripture. He taught me that that it is a dangerous thing to accept what one is told by any authority figure as truth simply because it was said by one in authority.

Unfortunately for today's SBC female members, there is not as much hope and the examples are dwindling. The trend within the SBC is to delete women from any position in the church. In some SBC churches, women may not teach adult men, and in some SBC churches they may not teach males at all except in primary grades. In some churches, I could not even teach David in Sunday School whether I felt God's call to do so or not. Recently, a female professor of Hebrew at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary was denied tenure and later released from employment because the administration did not want a woman teaching a man. Her gender was the only reason ever given for her termination. The divisions in the SBC over the role of women are deep and painful for many people, because while many SBC churches find this sort of thing appalling, the ultra-fundamentalists are driving the educational and administrative arms of the church. And of course, women have an extraordinarily limited venue for making objections.

Now whether or not you believe that women should be pastors is not the question. As an Episcopalian, I don't have a problem with it. Actually, I believe that if God calls you and you don't do it, well, you'll have to answer to Him for that one yourself. I have other friends who hold to a strict interpretation and who don't believe it is scriptural for women to pastor. That's fine, too. There's room in God's house for all of us.

My problem is with the teachings that women should be seen and not heard. It implies that women are lesser creations, and sets up problems for women in society. I am also concerned about the fact that women are only valued and only have a voice through their husbands.

And, unfortunately, it is a short ride down the slippery slope to excusing emotional, financial, verbal, and physical abuse.

You have no authority to teach men in church.
You have no right to speak out in church.
I am better than you.
You have no right to disagree with me.
You are bad if you disagree.
I can treat you as I want because you are bad.

I am concerned that they are teaching boys that Mom can say nothing they have to heed. After all, if Mom can't teach them spiritual lessons at church, why should they listen at home?

I am concerned that they are teaching our daughters that apart from a husband they have no voice in the church, that they are second class humans.

What about the widows? What about the Navy wives who husbands are gone half the time?

What about the women who choose a religious vocation and remain unmarried in order to offer more of themselves undistracted to God?

What about the women whose husbands are unsaved and abusive? How far does their doctrine of wifely submissiveness go?

Our wedding vows came right out of Ephesians. I don't have a problem with Paul's instruction to submit myself unto my husband as unto the Lord, because Kenny also promised to love me as Christ loves the church and give his life for me. When he does that, when he loves me beyond himself and puts my happiness and welfare first, my promise is easy to keep.

I didn't say anything about submitting to anyone else.

anything but typical