Reuters reports on a New York Baptist preacher who fired an 81 year old Sunday School teacher — with more than 50 years in that job — because she is… female. He does not “allow women to teach or have authority over a man.”
I guess he doesn’t believe in college, since there are female professors and deans.
Over the last couple of years, the Southern Baptist Convention has wrangled with the question of whether to officially encourage their members to remove their children from the “godless” public schools. Is it because so many public schoolteachers are women? Or, because public schools recognize that it’s the parents’ role to see to their children’s religious instruction, if any?
Then, there’s this group — advocating the abolishment of all public schools. If you go to their search page and type in local zip codes (37830 for Oak Ridge, 37716 for Clinton), you come up with names of local people who agree. I didn’t know all on the list, but those that I did recognize are — you guessed it — Baptists.
More disturbing is that the Republican candidate for State Representative in our district is on the list. Of course, Rep. Jim Hackworth (D) has done a good job for us, and has been particularly helpful to me in gathering information on the battle for state funding for our schools, so I wasn’t going to support the preacher anyway.
Back to the “women shall not teach” thing: it rather reminds me of the Palestinian (IMHO, terrorist-in-training) from my sophomore year of college, who dropped a beginning computer science course because I was the instructor of the only section. I still remember his “a woman is not qualified” statement, which I found amusing, since I knew the subject matter, and he did not.
What is the world coming to? Unfortunately, one extremist is no better, no less dangerous, than the other. I fully support anyone’s right to home school their kids, or to send them to a religious school; why do they wish to trample the rights of everyone else?
Why does anyone ever want to trample the rights of other for anything?
Sounds like a silly question, but yet there are people every day who are pushing and advocating the removal of freedoms instead of trusting their own and others’ judgement.
Completely different scenario, but something that comes to mind is Knox County Schools’ abolishment of pizza, ice cream and cake parties for students. They don’t want kids to get fat. Well, how about letting the kids’ parents worry about teaching their own kids about moderation instead of taking the fun away from everyone.
Back to religion, you have conservative groups pushing to put stricter regulations on music, movies, television and other media outlets because they don’t want any heathenness available to anyone, instead of just controling what their own kids watch/hear/read.
These type of people drive me crazy. Have some responsibility, people. Don’t take away mine.
Sorry, feeling ranty this evening.
MC?
NM, I think that no matter how much light you shine on them, you’ll have ignorant people. There will be people who’ll flat out believe any kind of gibberish if it helps with their world views. If they want to believe that you’re not qualified to teach because you have ovaries, well, they’ll do it. If they want to believe that Abraham rode a dinosaur, they’ll believe that.
I like the idea personally that these idiots move to South Carolina and suceed. It’d be a shame, because I have a deep love for S. Carol, but it’d be worth it to rid ourselves of these weirdos.
Their brand of logic, unfortunately, is easy to adapt by the short witted, and religious indignation is the best kind of indignation by the downtrodden.
I think moderate Christians have to be held accountable for their lack of a counterpoint to these wackos you spotlight. IMHO, these are the folks who have forgotten how to speak in any serious way about Christianity.
I don’t know, but these sensitive types seem to be afraid of hurting anybody’s feelings. They’re so concernced about inclusiveness, that they end up being like teddy bears.
One of the arguments for the kind of things being advocated is that parents don’t take responsibility for their kids, and we are left having to deal with their behavior ourselves.
I don’t agree with it in every situation, but I can see the point. It’s become incumbent on half of the population to take care of the children of the other half, as well of our own.
Netmom, I have to take issue with your attempt to put all “Baptists” in the same room as those examples you cited. I have been a Southern Baptist all my life in churches in Oak Ridge, Farragut, Florida, and now Ohio. Most of these were larger churches with memberships of 1,000 to 2,000 people. I have never encountered a situation where a woman was not allowed to teach in classes that included boys and/or men. Nor have I ever heard anyone in those churces of which I have been a member (as well as serving in leadership roles)espouse the elimination of public schools.
Thanks for the opportunity to “speak my mind”. I enjoy your blog.